On the sofa beside Griselda, conversing animatedly sat Miss Gladys Cram. Her legs, which were encased in particularly shiny pink stockings, were crossed, and I had every opportunity of observing that she wore pink striped silk knickers.
“Hullo, Len,” said Griselda.
“Good morning, Mr. Clement,” said Miss Cram. “Isn’t the news about the colonel really too awful? Poor old gentleman.”
“Miss Cram,” said my wife, “very kindly came in to offer to help us with the Guides. We asked for helpers last Sunday, you remember.”
I did remember, and I was convinced, and so, I knew from her tone, was Griselda, that the idea of enrolling herself among them would never have occurred to Miss Cram but for the exciting incident which had taken place at the Vicarage.
“I was only just saying to Mrs. Clement,” went on Miss Cram, “you could have struck me all of a heap when I heard the news. A murder? I said. In this quiet one-horse village—for quiet it is, you must admit—not so much as a picture house, and as for Talkies! And then when I heard it was Colonel Protheroe—why, I simply couldn’t believe it. He didn’t seem the kind, somehow, to get murdered.”
I don’t know what Miss Cram considers are the necessary qualifications for being murdered. It has never struck me that the murdered belong to a special class, but doubtless she had some idea in her golden shingled head.
“And so,” said Griselda, “Miss Cram came round to find out all about it.”
I feared this plain speaking might offend the lady, but she merely flung her head back and laughed uproariously, showing every tooth she possessed.