"That's sensible of you, sir.
And let me tell you, the person we're after is dangerous.
She's about as dangerous as a rattle-snake and a cobra and a black mamba rolled into one."
I gave a slight shiver.
I said,
"In fact, we've got to make haste?"
"That's right.
Don't think we're inactive in the force.
We're not.
We're working on several different lines." He said it grimly.
I had a vision of a fine, far-flung spider's web...
Nash wanted to hear Rose's story again, so he explained to me, because she had already told him two different versions, and the more versions he got from her, the more likely it was that a few grains of truth might be incorporated.
We found Rose washing up breakfast, and she stopped at once and rolled her eyes and clutched her heart and explained again how she'd been coming over queer all the morning.
Nash was patient with her but firm.
He'd been soothing the first time, so he told me, and peremptory the second, and he now employed a mixture of the two.
Rose enlarged pleasurably on the details of the past week, of how Agnes had gone about in deadly fear, and had shivered and said
"Don't ask me" when Rose had urged her to say what was the matter.
"It would be death if she told me, that's what she said," finished Rose, rolling her eyes happily.
"Had Agnes given no hint of what was troubling her?"
No, except that she went in fear of her life.
Superintendent Nash sighed and abandoned the theme, contenting himself with extracting an exact account of Rose's own activities the preceding afternoon.
This, put baldly, was that Rose had caught the 2:30 bus and had spent the afternoon and evening with her family, returning by the 8:40 bus from Nether Mickford.
The recital was complicated by the extraordinary presentiments of evil that Rose had had all the afternoon and how her sister had commented on it and how she hadn't been able to touch a morsel of seed cake.
From the kitchen we went in search of Elsie Holland, who was superintending the children's lessons.
As always, Elsie Holland was competent and obliging.
She rose and said,
"Now, Colin, you and Brian will do these three sums and have the answers ready for me when I come back."
She then led us into the night nursery.
"Will this do?
I thought it would be better not to talk before the children."
"Thank you, Miss Holland.
Just tell me, once more, are you quite sure that Agnes never mentioned to you being worried over anything - since Mrs. Symmington's death, I mean?"
"No, she never said anything.
She was a very quiet girl, you know, and didn't talk much."
"A change from the other one, then!"
"Yes, Rose talks much too much.
I have to tell her not to be impertinent sometimes."
"Now, will you tell me exactly what happened yesterday afternoon?
Everything you can remember."
"Well, we had lunch as usual. One o'clock, and we hurried just a little.
I don't let the boys dawdle.
Let me see.
Mr. Symmington went back to the office, and I helped Agnes by laying the table for supper - the boys ran out in the garden till I was ready to take them."
"Where did you go?"
"Toward Combe Acre, by the field path - the boys wanted to fish.
I forgot their bait and had to go back for it."
"What time was that?"
"Let me see, we started about twenty to three - or just after.
Megan was coming but changed her mind. She was going out on her bicycle.
She's got quite a craze for bicycling."