“Under that laburnum outside the window?” I asked, for I suddenly remembered the crooked evil thing.
“Exactly. She broke the tree in falling. But no death has ever taken place in the house, so far as we were concerned. You can make yourself quite easy on that point. Mr. M'Leod's extra thousand for what you called the 'clean bill of health' was something toward my cousins' estate when we sold. It was my duty as their lawyer to get it for them—at any cost to my own feelings.”
I know better than to argue when the English talk about their duty. So I agreed with my solicitor.
“Their sister's death must have been a great blow to your cousins,” I went on. The bath-chair was behind me.
“Unspeakable,” Baxter whispered. “They brooded on it day and night. No wonder. If their theory of poor Aggie making away with herself was correct, she was eternally lost!”
“Do you believe that she made away with herself?”
“No, thank God! Never have! And after what happened to Mary last night, I see perfectly what happened to poor Aggie. She had the family throat too. By the way, Mary thinks you are a doctor. Otherwise she wouldn't like your having been in her room.”
“Very good. Is she convinced now about her sister's death?”
“She'd give anything to be able to believe it, but she's a hard woman, and brooding along certain lines makes one groovy. I have sometimes been afraid of her reason—on the religious side, don't you know. Elizabeth doesn't matter. Brain of a hen. Always had.”
Here Arthurs summoned me to the bath-chair, and the ravaged face, beneath its knitted Shetland wool hood, of Miss Mary Moultrie.