"This is Mr. Blair, of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet-the firm who have that lovely house at the top of the High Street."
As Robert bowed the old woman fixed him with her seagull's eye.
"Needs re-tiling," she said.
It did, but it was not the greeting he had expected.
It comforted him a little that her greeting to Grant was even more unorthodox. Far from being impressed or agitated by the presence of Scotland Yard in her drawing-room of a spring afternoon, she merely said in her dry voice: "You should not be sitting in that chair; you are much too heavy for it."
When her daughter introduced the local Inspector she cast one glance at him, moved her head an inch, and quite obviously dismissed him from further consideration. This, Hallam, to judge by his expression, found peculiarly shattering.
Grant looked inquiringly at Miss Sharpe.
"I'll tell her," she said. "Mother, the Inspector wants us to see a young girl who is waiting in a car outside the gate. She was missing from her home near Aylesbury for a month, and when she turned up again-in a distressed condition-she said that she had been detained by people who wanted to make a servant of her. They kept her locked up when she refused, and beat and starved her. She described the place and the people minutely, and it so happens that you and I fit the description admirably. So does our house. The suggestion is that she was detained up in our attic with the round window."
"Remarkably interesting," said the old lady, seating herself with deliberation on an Empire sofa. "What did we beat her with?"
"A dog whip, I understand."