“So I am assured. I have got a very good line; I could go a long way and not find another handkerchief just like this one. Or indeed six other handkerchiefs just like these six. They are distinctive, that is the great point. Even you, Angela, will have difficulty in getting them lost at the wash.”
“And how was Mr. Simmonds?” asked Angela, dropping her voice.
Bredon looked round cautiously. But Angela had chosen her place well; she knew that publicity is the surest safeguard of privacy. In the open square in front of the inn nobody would suppose that you were exchanging anything but trivialities. Bredon communicated his mystification and his alarm, depicting the strange behaviour of that haberdasher in terms that left no room for doubt.
“Yes,” said Angela when he had finished, “you were quite right not to press him with any more questions. You do seem to be rather heavy-handed, somehow, over these personal jobs. Now, I’ve been having it out with ‘Raight-ho’ since breakfast, and I got quite a lot out of her. Miles, that girl’s a jewel. If she wasn’t going to be married, I’d get her to come to Burrington, in spite of your well-known susceptibility. But it’s no use; the poor girl is determined to sign away her liberty.”
“To Mr. Simmonds?”
“So I gather from what Mr. Leyland told me last night. But of course I was far too discreet to ask for any names.”
“How did you manage to worm yourself into her confidence? I’d as soon tackle a stone wall.”
“One must unbend. It’s easier for us women. By a sudden inspiration, I reflected that it must be an awful nuisance washing up all those plates after breakfast, especially in a pub where they seldom have more than two guests at a time. So I offered to help. That was just about the time you went out shopping. I’m quite good at washing up plates, you know, thanks to having married beneath me. She said ‘Raight-ho,’ and we adjourned to the scullery, where I did wonders. In the scullery I saw a copy of Home Hints, which was very important.”
“I don’t quite see why.”
“Don’t you remember that cantankerous old bachelor friend of yours who came to us once in London—Soames, I think his name was—who told us that he wrote the column headed ‘Cupid’s Labyrinth’? The column that gives advice to correspondents, you know, about affairs of the heart. It’s the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that the modern pillion-girl is any less soppy about her amours than the young misses of last century. I knew instinctively that ‘Raight-ho’—her name, by the way, is Emmeline, poor thing—was an avid reader of ‘Cupid’s Labyrinth.’ And I’m afraid I rather prevaricated.”