Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

Looks as if he had chest trouble as a child. That peaky look, and thin wrists. Not strong enough to dangle anyone. Certainly not out of a fifth-storey….”

The gentle monologue went on, all through the pudding course; and Robert withdrew his attention and thought about The Franchise. He came to the surface as they rose from table and moved into the sitting-room for coffee.

“It is the most becoming garment, if maids would only realise it,” she was saying.

“What is?”

“An apron.

She was a maid in the palace, you know, and wore one of those silly little bits of muslin. So becoming. Did those people at The Franchise have a maid, by the way? No? Well, I am not surprised. They starved the last one, you know. Gave her—”

“Oh, Aunt Lin!”

“I assure you. For breakfast she got the crusts they cut off the toast. And when they had milk pudding….”

Robert did not hear what enormity was born of the milk pudding.

In spite of his good dinner he was suddenly tired and depressed. If kind silly Aunt Lin saw no harm in repeating those absurd stories, what would the real gossips of Milford achieve with the stuff of a real scandal?

“And talking of maids – the brown sugar is finished, dear, so you will have to have lump for tonight – talking of maids, the Carleys’ little maid has got herself into trouble.”

“You mean someone else has got her into trouble.

”

“Yes. Arthur Wallis, the potman at The White Hart.”

“What, Wallis again!”

“Yes, it really is getting past a joke, isn’t it. I can’t think why the man doesn’t get married. It would be much cheaper.”

But Robert was not listening. He was back in the drawing-room at The Franchise, being gently mocked for his legal intolerance of a generalisation. Back in the shabby room with the unpolished furniture, where things lay about on chairs and no one bothered to tidy them away.

And where, now he came to think of it, no one ran round after him with an ash-tray.

Chapter 5

It was more than a week later that Mr. Heseltine put his thin, small, grey head round Robert’s door to say that Inspector Hallam was in the office and would like to see him for a moment.

The room on the opposite side of the hall where Mr.