“There ain’t nobody to talk to except the cat,” retorted Mrs. Gunnet, “and she don’t answer.”
She had no cause, however, to complain of the village of Keys that night. Even in Glasgow she had never spent an evening more replete with variety. Gunnet’s return, and almost immediate departure, an hour later, was followed by the arrival of the Sergeant and a Constable from Whitbury, the market-town to which Gunnet had telephoned. To Mrs. Gunnet was left the important task of directing them to John Leslie’s farm and she would have given a great deal to have gone with them.
Gunnet opened the door to them when they arrived at the farm. John Leslie was standing just behind him and did not miss the sharp, appraising glance bestowed on himself by the Sergeant as he came in.
“Have you got the doctor?” was his first question.
“Couldn’t get him, sir,” Gunnet answered. “He was out when I telephoned, but I left word for him to come up the instant he returned to inspect the deceased.”
Overshadowed as his spirits were by the whole unpleasant affair, Leslie could not resist an internal chuckle at this new aspect of Gunnet. The easy-going, rather garrulous villager had already draped himself in the majesty of the Law and was expressing himself accordingly.
Gunnet led the way into the sitting-room. Leslie had placed the lamp on the mantelpiece before making his hasty expedition to the police station and it still burned there, lighting up the writing-table with its tragic burden.
The Sergeant bent down and felt the cold cheek of the woman who lay across it. Then he lifted her eyelid and looked under the soft, bobbed hair that fell round her face.
“Dead, all right,” he said. “She’s just as you found her?”
Leslie stepped forward into the ring of light.