Emily Barton spoke abruptly and turned away, walking very fast.
Pye looked after her. His cherubic face was pursed up quizzically.
He turned back to me and shook his head gently.
"A sensitive soul.
A charming creature, don't you think?
Absolutely a period piece.
She's not, you know, of her own generation, she's of the generation before that.
The mother must have been a woman of very strong character. She kept the family time ticking at about 1870, I should say.
The whole family preserved under a glass case.
I do like to come across that sort of thing."
I did not want to talk about period pieces.
"What do you really think about all this business?" I asked.
"Meaning by that?"
"Anonymous letters, murder..."
"Our local crime wave?
What do you?"
"I asked you first," I said pleasantly.
Mr. Pye said gently:
"I'm a student, you know, of abnormalities.
They interest me.
Such apparently unlikely people do the most fantastic things. Take the case of Lizzie Borden. There's not really a reasonable explanation of that.
In this case, my advice to the police would be - study character.
Leave your fingerprints and your measuring of handwriting and your microscopes.
Notice instead what people do with their hands, and their little tricks of manner, and the way they eat their food, and if they laugh sometimes for no apparent reason."
I raised my eyebrows.
"Mad?" I said.
"Quite, quite mad," said Mr. Pye, and added, "but you'd never know it!"
"Who?"
His eyes met mine.
He sighed.
"No, no, Burton, that would be slander.
We can't add slander to all the rest of it."
He fairly skipped off down the street. Chapter 6
As I stood staring after Mr. Pye the church door opened and the Rev. Caleb Dane Calthrop came out.
He smiled vaguely at me.
"Good - good morning, Mr. -er-er-"
I helped him.
"Burton."
"Of course, of course, you mustn't think I don't remember you. Your name had just slipped my memory for the moment.
A beautiful day."
"Yes," I said rather shortly.
He peered at me.
"But something - something, as, yes, that poor unfortunate child who was in service at the Symmingtons'.
I find it hard to believe, I must confess, that we have a murderer in our midst, Mr. -er-Burton."
"It does seem a bit fantastic," I said. "Something else has just reached my ears."
He leaned toward me.
"I learn that there have been anonymous letters going about.
Have you heard any rumor of such things?"
"I have heard," I said.
"Cowardly and bastardly things."