Pendleton turned to the women ranged along the wall, whose examination was shorter. Harmony, Em, and Jael, minxes with buxom bodies and good fresh faces, were “not Welshly people,” and had no traditions of Parson Lolly in their mental make-up, but they evidently had some respect for him born of the stories of indigenous servants. Harmony’s troubled look showed, to be sure, that she was remembering painfully to keep the secret of the new announcement of the Parson, but by none save Crofts and me was her embarrassment marked. Ardelia Lacy, minute and prim, personal maid of Alberta Pendleton, was also a “Londoner.”
The two dark-featured, vivacious women, were the “Clays,” Rosa and Ruth, cook and housekeeper, nieces, it appeared, of Hughes. Rosa Clay it was who had shown a little animosity toward the “foreign” Ardelia, indicating possibly a rivalry in respect to the favour of Morgan the stableman. They knew of no doings of Parson Lolly prior to the arrival of the guests for the Bidding Feast.
There remained three men-servants grouped in chairs about the foot of the table: Blenkinson the staid, Soames, footman, with mutton-chops and unction, and old Finlay the gardener with his irrepressible silent guffaws. And in the background against the screen loomed the figure of the man in out-of-doors clothing and cartridge-belt, the gamekeeper. Crofts looked at Soames and Blenkinson reflectively, but passed them as already examined. He raised his eyes.
“How about you, Hughes?”
“What about me, sir?” Again the keeper’s voice betrayed his kinship of race with Morgan.
“You, too, have this mythology of the Parson pat, like Morgan?”
“Well, sir, I hardly think Morgan had it ‘pat,’ as you say,” answered the man, turning the eyes in his motionless head toward the stableman, who muttered something unintelligible. “I don’t think he was very well taught, sir—things mixed up, or something, and things that didn’t belong there, you might say. Now, as it was always told me—I come from down Powys-way, sir—”
“You surprise me, Hughes, a man of your age and sense. Now, what about this? While the House was empty and you and the rest were caretaking, what signs were of Parson Lolly then? I don’t mean larks and pigeons—I mean real evidence lying around, or real activity.”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Not anywhere in the preserve? Not in the whole estate?”