“Never!” exclaimed Elsie. “She’s far too proud a body to demean herself by writing for a newspaper. This is a man’s work—unless I’m much out of my reckoning.”
“Maybe it’s the Reverend Cole-Wright.”
“No, ’tisn’t him neither,” said Elsie decidedly.
Her quick mind was darting hither and thither. She felt genuinely puzzled, and then there came to her a sudden illumination.
“It’s that fat Kentworthy!” she exclaimed, remembering that Mr. Kentworthy had highly approved of the bountiful tea which had been spread out in his honour. Also, now that she came to think of it, he had said that he liked Scotch cakes owing to his mother having been a Scotswoman. Well, well, the world’s a small place!
Elsie took her old worn leather purse out of her pocket. “I’d like to keep this paper,” she observed. “Here’s a penny, milkman, for you to get yourself another one.”
“You can keep the paper and your penny, too,” said the man offended. “I never thought, Miss MacTaggart, good friends though we may be, that you’d take me for a Scotsman!”
Locking the scullery door, Elsie went back into her kitchen, and there she spread the newspaper out on the table, and once more read the article through.
Now Elsie never went into the village to do her daily shopping without hearing Mrs. Garlett’s mysterious death discussed from every point of view, but never once had any one even so much as hinted that the late mistress of the Thatched House had committed suicide.
Again and again she now read over the words: “She is inclined to believe that Mrs. Garlett, a bedridden invalid who was known to have attacks of depression at times, administered the poison to herself.”