How did she find out, Superintendent?"
"You're not used to living in the country, Mr. Burton.
It's a kind of miracle how things get around.
First of all there's the telephone call.
Who overheard it on your end?"
I reflected.
"I took the call originally. I called up to Partridge."
"Mentioning the girl's name?"
"Yes - yes, I did."
"Did anyone overhear you?"
"My sister or Miss Griffith might have done so."
"Ah, Miss Griffith.
What was she doing up there?"
I explained.
"Was she going back to the village?"
"She was going to Mr. Pye first."
Superintendent Nash sighed.
"That's two ways it could have gone all over the place."
I was incredulous.
"Do you mean that either Miss Griffith or Mr. Pye would bother to repeat a meaningless little bit of information like that?"
"Anything's news in a place like this.
You'd be surprised.
If the dressmaker's mother has got a bad corn everybody hears about it!
And then there is this end.
Miss Holland, Rose - they could have heard what Agnes said.
And there's Fred Rendell.
It may have got around through him that Agnes went back to the house that afternoon."
I gave a slight shiver.
I was looking out of the window.
In front of me was a neat square of grass and a path and the low prim gate.
Someone had opened the gate, had walked very correctly and quietly up to the house, and had pushed a letter through the letter box.
I saw, hazily, in my mind's eye, that vague woman's shape.
The face was blank - but it must be a face that I knew...
Superintendent Nash was saying:
"All the same, this narrows things down.
That's always the way we get 'em in the end.
Steady, patient elimination.
There aren't so very many people it could be now."
"You mean -?"
"It knocks out any women clerks who were at their work all the afternoon.
It knocks out the schoolmistress. She was teaching.
And the district nurse. I know where she was yesterday.
Not that I ever thought it was any of them, but now we're sure.
You see, Mr. Burton, we've got two definite times now on which to concentrate - yesterday afternoon, and the week before.
On the day of Mrs. Symmington's death from, say, a quarter past three (the earliest possible time at which Agnes could have been back in the house after her quarrel) and four o'clock when the post must have come (but I can get that fixed more accurately with the postman).
And yesterday from ten minutes to three (when Miss Megan Hunter left the house) until half past three or more probably a quarter past three as Agnes hadn't begun to change."
"What do you think happened yesterday?"
Nash made a grimace.
"What do I think?
I think a certain lady walked up to the front door and rang the bell, quite calm and smiling, the afternoon caller... Maybe she asked for Miss Holland, or for Miss Megan, or perhaps she had brought a parcel.