Once again the crafty look came into the little black eyes and she considered him dubiously, but she was much too eager to tell her story to be dissuaded by any suspicions.
‘It was on the Friday night,’ she said, dropping her voice to a confidential monotone. ‘After dinner had been brought out, Mrs Browning, that’s the housekeeper, sent me upstairs to see to the fires. I hadn’t been up there more than ten minutes when I come over faint.’ She paused and eyed the two defiantly.
‘I never touch liquor,’ she said, and hesitated again. Abbershaw was completely in the dark, but Meggie had a flash of intuition, born of long experience of Mrs Meade’s prototypes.
‘But as you weren’t well you looked about for something to revive you?’ she said. ‘Of course. Why not?’
Mrs Meade’s dubious expression faded.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What else was I to do?’
‘What else indeed?’ said Meggie encouragingly.
‘What did I do?’ said the old woman, lapsing once more into the rhetorical form she favoured. ‘I remembered that in the Colonel’s study – that’s through his bedroom, you know – there was a little cupboard behind the screen by the window, where he kept a drop of Scotch whisky. That’s soothing and settling to the stomach as much as anything is. So, coming over faint, and being in the Colonel’s bedroom, I went into the study, and had just poured myself out a little drop when I heard voices, and the German gentleman with his friend Mr Gideon and Dr Whitby come in.’ She stopped again and looked at Meggie.
‘I didn’t holler out,’ she said, ‘because it would have looked so bad – me being there in the dark.’
Meggie nodded understandingly, and Mrs Meade continued.