“Indeed, sir, yes. But for her—she had been setting traps! She and a girl called Tird: a charming couple!”
“Oh?”
“Your daughter and she used frequently to take their meals in the boxes, which made, of course, for mice. There was a well, you know, below the stage.”
“So she wrote her mother.”
Mrs. Sixsmith fumbled in the depths of a beaded pouch.
“There was a letter found in one of her jacket-pockets, Canon,” she said. “Perhaps you might care to have it.”
“A letter? From whom?”
“A young coster of Covent Garden, who saw your daughter at a stage-farewell.”
“Be so good, dear lady, as to inform me of its contents.”
“It’s quite illiterate,” Mrs. Sixsmith murmured, putting back her veil and glancing humorously towards the grave.