“Miss Cheale? Are you sure of that, Lucy?”
There was deep disappointment, instinctive relief, and a touch of incredulity in the way in which Jean Bower repeated the name of the young lady who for a year had been an inmate of the Thatched House.
Lucy moved a little closer to Jean Bower.
“Us servants,” she said meaningly, “knows a lot more than we’re meant to know. We all knew well enough that Miss Cheale fair doted on Mr. Garlett—though he was always trying not to see it. Why sometimes she’d be talking about him in her sleep!”
Jean Bower’s face, from pale became very red. Could this be true? Or was it only an example of the kind of vulgar, dangerous gossip of which she now knew village life to be ever full?
“What I’d like to ask Miss Cheale,” went on Lucy in an excited voice, “and what ought to be asked her, is why she told them lies about them strawberries?”
“Lies?” repeated Jean in an oppressed tone. “I don’t understand, Lucy. What lies did Miss Cheale tell?”
“She told your uncle, miss, that Mr. Garlett had given the missus some strawberries that had been left for her by Miss Prince. Well, that was just a lie! Them strawberries were there on a chest of drawers in the corridor outside Mrs. Garlett’s room in the early afternoon. I saw them there myself. Then they just vanished off the chest of drawers—long before Mr. Garlett went into Mrs. Garlett’s room. I can swear to that! I happens to have a special reason for remembering it, for he said to me, ‘Lucy, will you please go in and ask Mrs. Garlett if she can see me now?’ And I says, says I, ‘No, sir, I don’t feel I can do that. The missis is so angry with me about last night.’ So I went and got the housemaid to go in—that’s why it remained so plain in my mind.”
“You mean,” said Jean slowly, “that the strawberries disappeared early in the afternoon.”
“Ay, that’s what I do mean,” said Lucy confidently. “They were there, a good ’elping, not more, on one of them small dishes belonging to the best dessert service.”