“Through the window. Being an old friend of the family, if you follow me.”
“Old friend of the family, are you?”
“Oh, very. Very. Very old. Oh, a very old friend of the family.”
“I’ve never seen him before,” said the parlourmaid.
I looked at the girl with positive loathing. How she could have inspired affection in anyone, even a French cook, beat me. Not that she was a bad looking girl, mind you. Not at all. On another and happier occasion I might even have thought her rather pretty. But now she seemed one of the most unpleasant females I had ever encountered.
“No,” I said. “You have never seen me before. But I’m an old friend of the family.”
“Then why didn’t you ring at the front door?”
“I didn’t want to give any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble answering front doors, that being what you’re paid for,” said the parlourmaid, virtuously. “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she added, perfectly gratuitously. A horrid girl.
“Well, look here,” I said, with an inspiration, “the undertaker knows me.”
“What undertaker?”
“The cove who was waiting at table when I dined here the night before last.”
“Did the undertaker wait at table on the sixteenth instant?” asked the policeman.