“Oh, I'm not saying she isn't perfectly polite, but do you get anywhere with her?” demanded Mrs. Midgeholme. “When I asked her about her people, and where she came from, and how long she'd been married, she was evasive. There's no other word for it: evasive! I wondered at the time if she had anything to hide. Well, it isn't natural for a girl—for that's what she is to me!—not to talk about her people! And I'll tell you another thing,” she added, rounding on Hemingway, “they never have anybody to stay! You'd think her mother and father would visit her, or his mother and father, or a sister, or something, wouldn't you? Well, they don't! Not once!”
“Perhaps they're dead,” suggested Hemingway.
“They couldn't all be dead!” said Mrs. Midgeholme. “Everybody has some relations!”
“Oh, Mrs. Midgeholme, please don't talk like that!” begged Mavis. “Now Poor Uncle has passed over I haven't any relations either. Not ones I know!”
“But you're not married, dear,” said Mrs. Midgeholme, somewhat obscurely, but with an air of one who had clinched the matter.
At this point, the Chief Inspector intervened. He said that he would like to go through the late Mr. Warrenby's papers, and in Miss Warrenby's presence.
“Must I?” Mavis asked, shrinking from the prospect. “I'm sure Uncle wouldn't have liked me to pry into his desk!”
“Well, it's not to be supposed he'd have liked any of us to do so,” said Hemingway practically. “However, that can't be helped, and as I understand you're an executor to his Will, I think you'd better come and keep an eye on me.”
A biddable girl, she rose to her feet, saying as she did so: “I couldn't believe it, when Colonel Scales told me that! I never had the least idea Uncle meant to appoint me. I'm afraid I don't know what executors do, but I'm so touched it makes me want to cry!”
She then led the way across the hall to the large, sunny room on the other side of it, which Mr. Warrenby had appropriated as his study. She paused on the threshold, and smiled wanly upon Hemingway. “I expect you'll think me very foolish, but I hate going into this room! Of course, I know he wasn't—I know it didn't happen there, but still I can't help looking for him when I go in. And I want to get rid of that seat in the garden at once. That is, if the police don't mind? I know nothing must be touched until you say so.”