“Now where did you get that from?” Keede insisted.
“From Godsoe—on the twenty-first Jan.... ’Ow could I tell what ’e meant to do?” he burst out in a high, unnatural key—“Any more than I knew she was dead.”
“Who was dead?” said Keede.
“Me Auntie Armine.”
“The one the telegram came to you about, at Sampoux, that you wanted me to explain—the one that you were talking of in the passage out here just now when you began: ‘O Auntie,’ and changed it to ‘O Gawd,’ when I collared you?”
“That’s her! I haven’t a chance with you, Doctor. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with those braziers. How could I? We’re always usin’ ’em. Honest to God, I thought at first go-off he might wish to warm himself before the leaf-train. I—I didn’t know Uncle John meant to start—’ouse-keepin’.” He laughed horribly, and then the dry tears came.
Keede waited for them to pass in sobs and hiccoughs before he continued, “Why? Was Godsoe your Uncle?”
“No,” said Strangwick, his head between his hands. “Only we’d known him ever since we were born. Dad ’ad known him before that. He lived almost next street to us. Him an’ Dad an’ Ma an’—an’ the rest had always been friends. So we called him Uncle—like children do.”
“What sort of man was he?”
“One o’ the best, sir. ’Pensioned Sergeant with a little money left him—quite independent—and very superior. They had a sittin’-room full o’ Indian curios that him and his wife used to let sister an’ me see when we’d been good.”