“I think I’ll go so far as to promise ye that no one else will see the doctor or Miss Jean before you come back. Will that satisfy ye?”
And then the Scotsman came close up to her.
“Look here,” he said in a low voice, “I’m sure you could tell me something that would be worth while hearing? What sort of a girl is this young lady who’s brought all the trouble about? You must know the truth—if any one knows it.”
Elsie looked at him shrewdly.
“Look here, my bonny man,” she ordered, “you just go and join the other two. You won’t get anything more out of me because you come from Aberdeen, and don’t you be expecting of it!”
“Though you’re so unkind to me, I’ll be kind to you,” he answered significantly. “See that every door and window in this house is tight shut this morning. There’s a swarm of reporters coming out from Grendon. The public is just thirsting for a good murder mystery,” and then he ran off to join the other two, who were already in the car.
Hurrying through her kitchen Elsie slipped the bolt in the back door which gave into the scullery, and glad was she that she had done so when a few minutes later there came a loud knock on the bolted door. She started so violently that she nearly dropped the kettle of boiling water she had taken off the fire.
But it was only the milkman, who had been amazed to find the door locked against him. He and Elsie were old cronies, but when he ventured on just a word—and it was a kindly word, too—with regard to Miss Jean, she answered him so roughly that he was quite offended.
“You needn’t bite my head off,” he said in an injured tone. “Nobody talks of anything else in Terriford, and no more they won’t till that fine gentleman, Mr. Harry Garlett, has been strung up. I’d go a good way to see ’im hanged, that I would! Think of all the trouble he’s brought on your poor young lady—to say nothing of the good doctor and his missus.”
“And what if I say that I believe Mr. Garlett to be innocent?” asked Elsie pugnaciously.