Eternity Ring by Patricia Wentworth Page A

at the three houses whose back gates opened upon the Lane. Since she neither drove a car nor possessed a bicycle she had to make these deliveries on foot, and regular exercise in the open air being one of the things recommended by Dr. Wingfield, Mrs. Stokes made no bones about keeping her up to it—not that Mary appeared at all disinclined to go. Just how she managed to take so much time over her errands, Mrs. Stokes never quite made out, but she was an easy-tempered woman and supposed that it was dull for the girl on the farm, and that she would be talking with the maids and perhaps get invited in for an elevens. Mrs. Abbott had those two nice girls under Mrs. Mayhew— sisters they were, from the other side of Lenton. And there would be Mrs. Caddie at the Grange garage, which you had to pass to get in from the Lane. Not that she’d be Mary’s sort at the best of times, and a very peter-grievous poor thing these days by all accounts, but perhaps a word with Mary would cheer her up—you never could tell. And there was always Mrs. Green and her daughter up at the House, doing for Mr. Harlow like they did for his uncle. Nice steady women the both of them, but of course too old for Mary—Mrs. Green in her sixties, and Lizzie forty odd. She did wish there were more girls of her age for Mary to be friends with, but what with her having such high notions and thinking nobody good enough—well, it wasn’t too easy.
    Continuing up the Lane in her mind, Mrs. Stokes arrived at Deepside. Mrs. Barton, the housekeeper there, was a friend of her own and as nice a woman as ever stepped. Been there thirty years, and nursed the old gentleman to the end. And a blessing for Mr. Grant Hathaway to have such a dependable person in the house, with Miss Cicely running home the way she done. And to be hoped it would all come right—young people like that with their life before them. Mrs. Barton didn’t speak about it of course, but you could tell how it troubled her. That girl Agnes Ripley, the house-parlourmaid, she wasn’t Mary’s sort either. Come to think of it, she wasn’t much anyone’s sort. Good at her work-—Mrs. Barton hadn’t a word to say about that. One of those moody girls, if you could call her a girl, which she must be up in her thirties, and plain at that. No notion of making anything of herself either. Not that she held with all the stuff girls put on their faces these days, but you got used to it, and there was no getting from it, it did brighten them up. That Agnes now, she’d a good figure and good hair—if you liked it as straight as a horse’s tail. But that sallow skin and those dark eyes, and the way she stared at you—well, Mrs. Barton could have her. She would rather a dozen times put up with Mary, airs and tempers and all.
    Frank Abbott took an early train from Lenton. “Business” was all he told Monica Abbott. To Miss Silver he was more communicative.
    “I want to know if they’ve routed out anything more about Louise Rogers, and I want to see the Chief. So far I haven’t been able to raise anything this end. If she came to Lenton by train, nobody noticed her there. It’s a busy station, and of course she may have just passed in a crowd, especially if it was getting on towards dusk. But how did she get out to Deeping? It’s all of four miles. Do you suppose for a moment that she walked it in the dark?”
    “She would not do that.”
    “And how would she know the way? No, that’s out. And she certainly didn’t come by bus. Everyone in Deeping has heard Mary’s story by now—they’d be tumbling over one another if any of them had come out from Lenton in the same bus as a mysterious stranger with diamond earrings. No, if she ever came at all she must have come by car. And where is the car? You see, whichever way you look at it, it all goes up in smoke. I’ve got an advertisement in the county paper and the little Lenton rag today. I can’t do anything more down here till I get those results