“Damned lucky for us, then.”
Pendleton was unsteady with righteous embarrassment and rage when Cosgrove interrogated him. “Where was this thing found?—who found it?—when—”
“Harmony—one of the housemaids—the vixen,” snapped Pendleton, and seemed unable to make headway.
“Why is the good Harmony held in such opprobrium?” I inquired.
“I swear she’s lying—the minx—or she put it there herself.”
“Where?”
“In your room, Sean, lying in the middle of the floor.”
Perhaps Pendleton had been saving that item for rather a stiff jolt at the last. I happened to be looking at Cosgrove and saw his eyebrows jerk upward prodigiously, as if they were going to fly off his forehead, and the eyes beneath them bulged and stared like glass.
“In my room? When was this?”
“She just came down from doing the beds—says she found it there not five minutes ago.”