drowned her? I mean—like that! But that isn’t mine. There are thousands of buttons like that. What makes you think it is mine?”
“I don’t think anything, Mr. Tisdall. I am only eliminating possibilities. All I wanted you to do was to account for any garment owned by you which had buttons like that. You say you had one but that it was stolen.”
Tisdall stared at the Inspector, his mouth opening and shutting helplessly.
The door breezed open, after the sketchiest of knocks, and in the middle of the floor stood a small, skinny child of sixteen in shabby tweeds, her dark head hatless and very untidy.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought my father was here. Sorry.”
Tisdall slumped to the floor with a crash.
Grant, who was sitting on the other side of the large table sprang to action, but the skinny child, with no sign of haste or dismay, was there first.
“Dear me!” she said, getting the slumped body under the shoulders from behind and turning it over.
Grant took a cushion from a chair.
“I shouldn’t do that,” she said. “You let their heads stay back unless it’s apoplexy. And he’s a bit young for that, isn’t he?”
She was loosening collar and tie and shirt-band with the expert detachment of a cook paring pastry from a pie edge. Grant noticed that her sunburnt wrists were covered with small scars and scratches of varying age, and that they stuck too far out of her out-grown sleeves.
“You’ll find brandy in the cupboard, I think. Father isn’t allowed it, but he has no self-control.”
Grant found the brandy and came back to find her slapping Tisdall’s unconscious face with a light insistent tapotement.
“You seem to be good at this sort of thing,” Grant said.
“Oh, I ran the Guides at school.” She had a voice at once precise and friendly. “A ve-ry silly institution. But it varied the routine. That is the main thing, to vary the routine.”
“Did you learn this from the Guides?” he asked, nodding at her occupation.
“Oh, no. They burn paper and smell salts and things. I learned this in Bradford Pete’s dressing-room.”
“Where?”
“You know. The welter-weight. I used to have great faith in Pete, but I think he’s lost his speed lately. Don’t you? At least, I hope it’s his speed. He’s coming to nicely.” This last referred to Tisdall. “I think he’d swallow the brandy now.”
While Grant was administering the brandy, she said: “Have you been giving him third degree, or something? You’re police aren’t you?”
“My dear young lady—I don’t know your name?”
“Erica. I’m Erica Burgoyne.”
“My dear Miss Burgoyne, as the Chief Constable’s daughter you must be aware that the only people in Britain who are subjected to the third degree are the police.”
“Well, what did he faint for? Is he guilty?”
“I don’t know,” Grant said, before he thought.
“I shouldn’t think so.” She was considering the now spluttering Tisdall. “He doesn’t look capable of much.” This with the same grave detachment as she used to everything she did.
“Don’t let looks influence your judgment, Miss Burgoyne.”
“I don’t. Not the way you mean. Anyhow, he isn’t at all my type. But it’s quite right to judge on looks if you know enough. You wouldn’t buy a washy chestnut narrow across the eyes, would you?”
This, thought Grant, is quite the most amazing conversation.
She was standing up now, her hands pushed into her jacket pockets so that the much-tried garment sagged to two bulging points. The tweed she wore was rubbed at the cuffs and covered all over with “pulled” ends of thread where briars had caught. Her skirt was too short and one stocking was violently twisted on its stick of leg. Only her shoes—scarred like her hands, but thick, well-shaped and expensive—betrayed the fact that she was not a charity child.
And then Grant’s eyes went back to her face. Except her face. The calm sureness of that sallow little triangular visage was not bred in any charity school.
“There!” she said encouragingly, as Grant helped Tisdall to his feet and guided him into a chair. “You’ll be all right. Have a little more of Father’s brandy. It’s a much better end for it than Father’s arteries. I’m going now. Where is Father, do you know?” This to Grant.
“He has gone to lunch at The Ship.”
“Thank you.” Turning to the still dazed Tisdall, she said, “That shirt collar of yours is far too tight.” As Grant moved to open the door for her, she said, “You haven’t told me your name?”
“Grant. At your service.” He gave her a little bow.
“I don’t need anything just now, but I might some day.” She considered him. Grant found himself hoping with a fervour which surprised him that he was not being placed in the same category as “washy chestnuts.” “You’re much more my type. I like people broad across the cheekbones. Goodbye, Mr. Grant.”
“Who was that?” Tisdall asked, in the indifferent tones of the newly conscious.
“Colonel Burgoyne’s daughter.”
“She was right about my shirt.”
“One of the reach-me-downs?”
“Yes. Am I being arrested?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“It mightn’t be a bad idea.”
“Oh? Why?”
“It would settle my immediate future. I left the cottage this morning and now I’m on the road.”
“You mean you’re serious about tramping.”
“As soon as I have got suitable clothes.”
“I’d rather you stayed where I could get information from you if I wanted.”
“I see the point. But how?”
“What about that architect’s office? Why not try for a job?”
“I’m never going back to an office. Not an architect’s anyhow. I was shoved there only because I could draw.”
“Do I understand that you consider yourself permanently incapacitated from earning your bread?”
“Phew! That’s nasty. No, of course not. I’ll have to work. But what kind of job am I fit for?”
“Two
