Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ Minnie.”

      “Well, I won’t promise,” the girl responded coquettishly, “but—”

      She paused; the clock was striking.

      “Ten!” she said in alarm. “Why, I don’t know what Mrs. Parkyns will say!”

      “I was to be at the house at ten o’clock,” the man interrupted. “Sir Arthur was coming to speak to me. He may be a bit late, but I must run. You won’t be afraid to go back alone, Minnie? You see, if I kept Sir Arthur waiting—”

      “Oh, I shall not be a bit afraid now,” the girl said cheerfully, “now I know there’s no call to be! You make haste, Jim.”

      They separated, and the superintendent, watching them, saw the man hurry off round the corner of the house. Minnie turned back towards the kitchen entry.

      Superintendent Stokes came to a sudden resolution, and stepping quickly forth from the shadows, he laid his hand on her shoulder. The girl shrieked aloud, nor did her terror seem allayed when she recognized him.

      “Oh, it’s the superintendent! What were you wanting with me?”

      “Only just to have a little chat with you,” he said blandly. “It is Miss Spencer, Miss Hargreave’s maid, isn’t it? Ah, I thought so! Just the person I wanted! There is a question—”

      “I haven’t any time to answer questions now,” Minnie said, with a sulkiness underlying which there was an element of fear, as the superintendent was quick to discover. “If I am not back in a minute Mrs. Parkyns will be fine and angry.”

      The superintendent kept pace with her hurried steps.

      “Maybe, then, I had better come in with you and tell Mrs. Parkyns how things are, and that I have a question or two to put to you,” he suggested as they crossed the stable-yard and came in sight of the brightly-lighted kitchen entrance. “Perhaps that will be best; we shall be quieter than we should be out here.”

      Minnie stopped suddenly and faced him.

      “Pretty talk there would be if you were to do anything of the kind, as you know, Mr. Stokes! Will you tell me what you want to know?”

      The superintendent stood with his back to the open door, and by the light from the inside he could see the girl’s face, while his own remained in shadow.

      “I want to know first why you think you are as good as Mary Marston’s murderess?”

      The girl shrank back as if he had given her a blow.

      “You—you were listening?” she gasped.

      “It would be as well for you to keep a civil tongue in your head, young woman. If I am taking a walk in the shrubbery of an evening, me being employed on business as brings me there by Sir Arthur, and you and your young man choose to stand there talking out loud and taking no heed who is about—well, you must expect to have your words brought up against you, that is all I can say; and naturally, me being looking into this case of Mary Marston, when I hear a young woman say that often and often when she thinks of Nurse Marston she feels like a murderess—why, I come to her to know what she means by it.”

      “I never harmed Nurse Marston,” said Minnie shortly, “and I don’t believe anyone else did either.”

      He glanced at the bright, defiant eyes, at the hot red spots that were beginning to burn on her white cheeks.

      “Why should you feel like a murderess, then?” he asked in the crisp, concise manner that was familiar to subordinates.

      Minnie paused.

      “Because I was a fool,” she burst out at last. “It was me as took her message from my lady as she was to go to the small library, and it was me as showed her the way there, and if she hadn’t gone there none of this might have happened.”

      The superintendent looked at her.

      “I don’t see that you have any call to blame yourself for that.”

      “Don’t I tell you that I was a fool to think about it?” said Minnie testily. “But there, ever since that cuff was found I have had it on my mind as I was the one to take her the message. Then when we saw her the other night in the shrubbery, me and Alice Brown, she pointed at me. I thought as it was her ghost then; but now I feel sure that it was her herself.”

      “What has made you change your mind?”

      Minnie fidgeted.

      “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

      “Sensible girl!” he commented gravely. “What has made you feel sure that there are no such things as ghosts?”

      Minnie moved her head as if his steady glance embarrassed her.

      “Oh, sometimes I think one thing and sometimes another!” she said evasively. “We are all alike for that, I expect.”

      “Just so! just so!” he assented suavely; then with an oblique glance, “It wasn’t for instance, anything that Jim Gregory said to you just now that brought you round to his way of thinking?”

      “Said to me!” Minnie repeated. “Why, what should Jim Gregory have to say to me about it?”

      “Ah, that is for you to tell me!” parried Superintendent Stokes. “You and him had got your heads pretty close together when he was talking to you.”

      He fancied a shade of relief flitted over the girl’s face, and she even smiled slightly as she looked down.

      “Bless you, Mr. Stokes, do you think it was of Mary Marston we were talking then?” she asked coyly. “It—we have other matters to think about, Jim and me, we are going to have our banns put up a month on Sunday. If that is all you want to know I must be going in, or I shall get into trouble.”

      “You can’t tell me any more?”

      “Haven’t I told you I can’t?” she retorted. “You’ll get no more out of me if you keep me here until midnight.”

      “Ah, well, I shall not do that,” he said carelessly. “We will have another little talk one day before long, Miss Spencer. Good night.”

      He stood still a little while after she had left him.

      “That girl is telling lies,” he ruminated. “Why, I wonder? I can’t see how she could be mixed up in it. I may have been on the wrong scent all this time, but it don’t seem likely. However, I will look Miss Minnie Spencer up a bit; and while I am about it”—he pulled his lower lip out thoughtfully—“I shall devote a little of my attention to Mr. Jim Gregory also. I wish he had whispered in my ear instead of in Minnie Spencer’s!”

      Chapter XVII

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      “I hope it will be fine for Tuesday, Miss Mavis.”

      “So СКАЧАТЬ