“Do I know him well?” Miss Grison gave a hard laugh, and her eyes glittered viciously. “Yes, I may say that I know him very well.”
Alan, looking closely at her, wondered if the enemy of her brother to whom she had referred so positively was Mr. Sorley, and thought that it was extremely likely from the vicious emphasis with which she spoke. But Miss Grison, giving him no time to make any comment on her last speech, continued as though she had not stopped to draw breath.
“I know the house very well also,” she said calmly, “and I have been walking all over it, while waiting to see Mr. Sorley.”
“Walking all over it,” repeated Marie rather indignantly. “A stranger?”
“I am not a stranger either to Mr. Sorley or to The Monastery,” replied the small woman with great coolness. “When my brother was his secretary here, years ago, I used to spend days wandering about the rooms and corridors. I know every nook and corner of it, my dear, and could tell you of many a secret hiding-place and hidden passage which were used in ancient times. Your mother made a friend of me in those days, and we used to explore the house together before you were born.”
“Still Uncle Ran would not like you walking about the place when I was out and he was asleep. Didn’t Jenny or Henny stop you?”
“Do you mean the servants?” inquired Miss Grison smoothly. “Well they did express surprise when I walked into the kitchen. But I told them I had come to see Mr. Sorley, and they showed me in here to wait for him—as if I required showing,” ended Miss Grison disdainfully.
Fuller stared at her hard. She seemed to be in her right senses and what she said was reasonable enough, but it struck him that there must be something eccentric about her when she ventured to enter a house and explore it without the owner’s permission. Again Miss Grison gave him no time to make a comment, but went on talking in the shrill voice which Latimer had noted and mentioned.
“Henrietta and Jane Trent are twins,” she explained to Marie as if the girl knew nothing about her own servants. “I remember them as little toddlers in the village. The mother took in washing. Fine bouncing women they have grown into, my dear: red cheeks and black hair and wooden expressions, just like two Dutch dolls. Are they good servants?”
Marie was so taken aback by the audacity of her visitor that she replied, as she would have done to her schoolmistress: “They are very good and do all the work of this big house.”