“What I can’t say. And there’s men always after watching this house. There’s Black-and-Tans in civies in the road this very minute.”
“How do you know they’re Black-and-Tans?”
“Polly Pluck knows them all. She lives just behind Beggars Bush Barracks. There are spies everywhere, and you never know who you’re talking to.”
“That’s quite true. You be very careful, Mrs. O’Grady.”
“Me? The Irish are born careful. They need to be. The best known saying round these parts is never trust the heels of a horse, the horns of a bull, or the smile of an Englishman. And it’s true.” She came near, flourishing her duster and peering at me. “It’s been on me mind to tell you, for I sez to Polly Pluck, the lady what has the drawing-room flat has more brains than the lot of us put together, and it’s she will know what to do.”
“Well,” I said, “go on, Mrs. O’Grady.”
She shuffled. “Bedad, I may keep me thoughts to meself, as O’Grady was after saying only last night. The fewest knows, the least harm, sez he, and it’s himself is mostly always right.”
“Something Mrs. Slaney has been doing, I suppose?”
She tiptoed to the door, looked out, shut it carefully and then came back to me, looking as mysterious as an ostrich which is about to bury its head in the sand.
“No, I don’t trust the mistress that far,” she declared, waving her arm. “But it’s meself that I keep me thoughts to. She’s up to something, and if you’d seen what I’ve seen in this very house, you’d know it too. And it’s Polly Pluck who knows it. She’s a smart little girl, is Polly; but I don’t trust her. Blowing hot first and then cold, and first this way and then that, walking out one week with a Black-and-Tan and the next with a Shinner. If you can’t be for one side, I sez, for land’s sake be for the other, and don’t go chopping and changing like a cock with no head. But do you think she’ll listen. Not she.”