Evidence of Things Seen by Elizabeth Daly Read Free Book Online Page A

she’s ever heard the gossip, or ever will before it dies out of its own ineptitude. She’s bought herself a few sticks of new furniture, perhaps, or put in new piping; she probably overvalues her possessions. She’s dizzy with her hundred and six thousand.”
    â€œIf she has heard the story and didn’t poison Mrs. Hickson, all she would have to do would be to dig Mrs. Hickson up.”
    Hunter burst into uncontrollable laughter; Fanny cried: “What a ghastly idea! Clara, how can you?”
    Hunter was, after another paroxysm, able to address his wife: “You forget, Fanny; Clara is married to Henry Gamadge. She sups on horrors; she takes an exhumation in her stride.”
    Clara said stolidly: “If she’s so eccentric that she put up the fence just to protect plumbing and chairs, she may be eccentric enough to come and stare at the cottage.”
    â€œStare at the cottage?” Fanny stared too—at Clara.
    â€œSome woman in a sunbonnet comes out of the woods behind us and stands and looks at the cottage.”
    â€œWell, but, Clara, couldn’t it be just anybody? Country people are so curious about us.”
    â€œI don’t know who she could be, and that trail she comes and goes by doesn’t end anywhere; except,” added Clara lightly, “at the Avebury cemetery.”
    â€œGood Heavens,” said Hunter. “We seem to be getting very funereal. How often has this woman in a sunbonnet come and looked at the premises, Clara?”
    â€œThree times; last Thursday—the day after I came, and Sunday, and yesterday.”
    â€œAt three-day intervals; she seems to be on a schedule,” said Hunter. “Unless she’s come at other times, and you’ve missed her.”
    â€œShe always seems to come at sunset.”
    â€œDear me.” Hunter considered, his eyes vague. “Alvira may be turning into a ‘case,’ one can’t tell; but I should have said that curious or not, she’d be mortally afraid of intruding; just as she, and all her type, are mortally afraid of being intruded upon.”
    â€œI don’t think it is Miss Radford, somehow. She doesn’t seem like Miss Radford. The sunbonnet hides her face, but I don’t think Maggie thinks it’s Miss Radford, either. Maggie’s seen her, too.”
    Fanny said that Clara ought to speak to the state police.
    â€œIt would seem so silly—just on account of a woman in a sunbonnet.”
    â€œAnd that trail is probably a right of way. Still,” said Hunter, “I might mention the thing to Eli, or old Duckett at Avebury.”
    â€œI’ll let you know if she comes again.”
    How, Clara wondered as she rose to go, could she ever explain to these friends, to anybody but Gamadge, that the matter was perhaps to be looked at from a different point of view? She couldn’t face the look that would come into Fanny’s eyes, into Hunter’s eyes, if she began to argue the question of the attic door and the attic itself. She couldn’t ask them to consider whether the woman in the sunbonnet mightn’t have been dead a year.

CHAPTER FOUR
No Flowers
    T HE WALK HOME down the Ladder was invigorating; more invigorating was her encounter with Eli the Indian, who took it entirely for granted that she would stay on with Maggie until the others came. He did not think it wonderful that two women should live alone in a cottage, within sight of other houses, and with a telephone on the premises. Miss Radford had lived there entirely alone for years, until her sister came back after the button man died.
    Maggie greeted her cheerfully from the porch, there was a smell of baking, the waterfall splashed and hummed. This was what she had promised Gamadge—his own place, not a visit in a formal house. This was what he was looking forward to.
    She got out her sketching things, and prepared them for work tomorrow; she meant to paint the sycamore below