Inspector Harding drove up to Lyndhurst Vicarage at half past eight, and sent in his card. The parlour-maid, reading it, stepped back from him as from a coiled cobra and, leaving him standing in the hall, disappeared into a room at the back of the house. She came back in a few minutes, and intimated that he was to step this way, if you please.
He passed unannounced into the room she had come from, and found himself in a fair-sized apartment crowded with china cabinets, incidental chairs, smell tables, knick-knacks, and hassocks. The walls were papered in a design of white and silver stripes, and hung with a heterogeneous collection of paintings, photographs, and Crown-Derby plates. A tapestry fire-screen was set before the empty grate, and the long windows were obscured by very stiffly starched white muslin curtains, and flanked on either side by faded blue brocade ones, looped back with thick silken cords. The room was lit by a central light in an alabaster bowl, and had beside, a standard lamp with a pink silk shade behind the sofa.
Mrs. Chudleigh, in a nondescript garment known to her as 'semi-evening dress', was seated bolt upright on the sofa with her work-basket beside her, and a piece of embroidery in her hand. The Vicar, as Harding entered the room, got up from a deep arm-chair on the oppossite of the fireplace. He held Harding's card between his fingers, and said in a vague way: 'Er — good evening, Inspector. Pray come in. You find us all unprepared for visitors, I fear." With a slight gesture and an apologetic smile he indicated his carpet slippers, and his wife's needlework.
Harding came forward. "I hope I haven't come at an inconvenient hour, sir? My time is rather limited, you know, and I wanted to be sure of finding Mrs. Chudleigh at home."
Mrs. Chudleigh removed the steel-rimmed spectacles she wore for working or reading, and replaced them by her pincenez. "I must say, it is a very odd hour to come," she said. "However, please don't apologise! I am quite at liberty, though what you can have to say to me I am entirely at a loss to discover." She broke off to admonish her husband, who had placed one of the incidental chairs for Harding. "Not that one, Hilary: you know one of the legs is broken."
"Ah, tut, tut! My memory again!" said the Vicar ruefully. He returned the chair to its place, and pulled forward another. "I trust we have no broken legs here. Sit down, Inspector. It was my wife, I think, you wanted to see?"
"Thank you. Yes, I have something I want to ask Mrs. Chudleigh," said Harding, seating himself. "I'm working, as I expect you've guessed, on the case up at the Grange."
The Vicar shook his head. "Shocking, shocking! A terrible affair! What a judgment! Dreadful, dreadful!"
Mrs. Chudleigh stuck her needle into her work, drew off her thimble, and executed a profound shudder. "I'm sure I have no desire to speak of it," she said. "Either my husband or I would have been willing and glad to have visited Lady Billington-Smith in her hour of trouble, but since she apparently feels no need of spiritual consolation I have nothing further to say. I have no doubt that a great many vulgarly inquisitive people will flock to the inquest, which I suppose will be held any day now, but I for one should not dream of forcing my way in."
"Quite, Emmy, my dear, quite! Naturally you would not wish to be present," said the Vicar gently. "That goes without saying. But I think the Inspector wants to ask you some questions."