It was at this point that Mattie herself turned to Dimity. “You’re tired,” she said. “Do sit down now. And listen! I don’t want you to do anything more tonight in my room.” Wolf had always regarded it as a touching peculiarity of Pond Cottage that the aged servant entered freely into every conversation, as she moved about behind the chairs; but tonight he had a premonition, before the old woman opened her lips to reply, that she would say something unlucky.

“You can’t see no corner of Miss Olwen’s bed, Miss Mattie,” was what she now brought out. “They things what I’ve been ironing be all spread out over’n.”

Her words produced a silence even more disconcerting than Jason’s reference to the police.