There was a pause. Mrs. Bean took up a fork and violently stirred the contents of a saucepan she held.
“Look here, my dear,” she said, “what has put all these silly ideas into your head? Don’t you know there’s going to be an inquest?”
She went on stirring her saucepan without looking up. Freda turned to her eagerly.
“And are these inquest-people men who have known him, and seen him, and talked to him?”
“Why, of course they are. They’ll be tradesmen out of the town, most of them, who have supplied him with butter and cheese, beef and candles, for years and years.”
“Oh,” said Freda, evidently much relieved.
“Now then, you’re satisfied, I suppose?” said Mrs. Bean rather curiously.
“Oh, yes, thank you very much.”
But in the girl’s tone there was still the vestige of a doubt, and she went out with a thoughtful face.
It was a very curious thing, Freda thought, that the servant Blewitt’s body should be found shot in the back, and then that her father should be shot in exactly the same way. She puzzled herself over this until her brain reeled, and then she unlocked the front door, and went along the foot-tracks in the snow the whole length of the garden to the wall at the bottom. Here was a door, which she went through, and instead of following the little lane which ran to the right, down towards the town, she still followed the foot-marks over a couple of meadows straight in front of her until, coming to a stone wall, she looked over and discovered the road by which she had come to the Abbey. A great heap of freshly dug up snow stood almost in the middle of the road, and by the help of a shed on the right, Freda was able to identify the spot on which the body of the servant Blewitt had been discovered by Barnabas Ugthorpe.