“I suppose you don’t happen to have seen him about this morning?” he went on, in a jocular tone.
“Seen the thief! Lor, no, sir. If he’s been in the house, he must have got out again pretty quick, for I got down pretty near as soon as the master himself; an’ there was nobody about then, for sure, but ’im and me and Miss Nell.”
“The poor young lady was frightened, I’m afraid, by the commotion?”
“Oh, well, we’re used to these set-outs by this time,” replied Meg, philosophically. “Miss Nell did look very white an’ faint-like, an’ she was all of a tremble, poor thing, when she heard about the fuss. So master packed her off to the colonel’s, and told her as she was to stop there till he sent for her.”
“The colonel’s! And who is the colonel?”
“Oh, an old gentleman as lives a little way from here along the Courtstairs road. Miss Nell takes them their milk there fresh from the cow every morning and evening.”
“Oh,” remarked the detective, highly satisfied at having tapped the fount of Meg’s loquacity, “I should have thought she was too much of a fine lady for that, your Miss Nell.”
“Ah, but she wouldn’t do it for anybody else,” replied Meg, anxious to defend her mistress. “You see, the colonel an’ his daughter are real gentlefolks, only they’re poor—very poor. An’ they don’t keep no servant, an’ Miss Theodora does all the work herself. So, you see, as she’s been kind to Miss Nell, an’ got the master to give Miss Nell her fine eddication, and French an’ the pianner, why, Miss Nell don’t seem to know how to do enough for her. That’s how it is, sir. I’d be glad to take the milk myself, or we could easy get the boy to do it, only Miss Nell likes to do it herself like.”
The detective was about to interrogate Meg further, when the voice of the innkeeper, shouting to her to know why breakfast was not ready, prevented his hearing any more. And, much to his regret, he found, on his next meeting with her, that the poison of suspicion had been instilled into her mind by her master, and that she was communicative no longer.
Finding this source of information dry, therefore, the detective, who shrewdly concluded that Nell would not return until he had taken his departure, sent a boy off toward Stroan with his luggage on a barrow, and paid his bill and went away.