“No! What happened? Tell me!”
“I don't know, except that he's made Thaddeus behave like a cat on hot bricks. He came up here after supper with one of the feeblest excuses I've ever heard, and tried to make me remember what time it was when Mavis came to tell me her uncle had been killed. I'm not surprised he's losing ground in his practice: make him grasp that I wasn't likely to remember something I'd never known I could not! I couldn't think what he was after. You'd never guess what it turned out to be! He's trying to prove that Mavis killed her uncle! Silly old fool! The fact of the matter is he's lived the whole of his life wrapped up in cotton-wool, and this affair has frightened him out of his wits.”
Abby, who was trying to pour out a glass of lemonade without allowing the scraps of peel to slide out of the jug, suspended her operations to stare at her aunt. “Is he really scared?” she asked. “Then it all goes to show! Why should he be scared if he had nothing to do with it? Trying to divert suspicion on to someone else, too!”
Miss Patterdale was rather amused by this. “Well, you all of you seem to suspect someone, so why shouldn't he?”
“No, only Charles and me, really, because Gavin isn't serious. The Haswells don't suspect anyone, and the Major doesn't either.”
“Flora does,” said Miss Patterdale, with a short bark of laughter. “Lord, what a fool that woman can be! She can't make up her mind whether that Pole did it, or the Lindales—either one of them or both.”
“The Lindales,” repeated Abby, considering this suggestion dispassionately. “I don't know them well enough to say. Why does Mrs. Midgeholme think they might have?”
“No reason at all. Mrs. Lindale has been a little standoffish to her. Don't blame her!”
“What do the Lindales themselves say about it?”
“My dear girl, you don't suppose I've been up to Rushyford, do you? I've no idea.”