The Withdrawing Room by Charlotte MacLeod Read Free Book Online

tell me this is one of those poor old souls who go around fishing through the trash bins on the Common?”
    “The person would appear to fall into that category, madam.”
    “Did this person say what the person wants with me?”
    “The person claims to have information of interest to you.”
    “I can’t imagine what it might be, but I suppose I’d better come. Leave the paper bags in the vestibule and bring the person into the front hall. As soon as I get the potatoes cooking I’ll find out what the person wants. Most likely a handout.”
    Sarah hustled the potatoes into the oven, took off her apron, and went to meet this enigmatic person. When she caught sight of the visitor perched on the tip-edge of a hall chair, she understood Charles’s unwonted confusion about sex. Her uninvited caller was bundled into such an assortment of outerwear, including khaki army pants, rubber boots, a sailor’s peacoat, and a knitted balaclava helmet that not enough of the presumed human being inside was visible to afford a clue. However, if this was one of those pathetic derelicts who wander the streets and sleep in doorways, its standard of dereliction must be remarkably high. The coat was threadbare but not unclean and had all its buttons firmly sewn on. The pants showed signs of having been pressed in the not too distant past. The navy blue balaclava was expertly darned in wool that almost matched, and the boots were wiped free of slush.
    “Good afternoon,” she said to the helmet. “I am Mrs. Kelling. I understand you have something to tell me?”
    A hand in a much-mended cotton glove pulled the knitted mask away from the mouth, revealing a somewhat wrinkled but well-washed and by no means, unattractive woman’s face. “How do you do, Mrs. Kelling. I’m Mary Smith. Miss Mary Smith, I suppose I should say. I didn’t give my name to your man there because he’d have thought it was an alias, which it isn’t. My dad was a Smith and my mother a Mary and I can show you my birth certificate with more years’ on it than I care to count. You must think I’m a real crackpot butting in on you like this, but I’ve got to find somebody who’ll listen to me and you’re the only one I haven’t tried. You see, I was there. I saw it happen.”
    “Saw what happen, Miss Smith?”
    “The murder.”
    “Oh, dear!” Sarah repressed a moan. Ever since the remains of a long-vanished ecdysiast had turned up in the family vault on the eve of Great-uncle Frederick’s burial, she’d been pestered by a wide assortment of cranks. She’d hoped she’d seen the last of them, but evidently she hadn’t. Yet Miss Mary Smith, in spite of her ragpicker’s getup, didn’t look like a crank.
    “Yes, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” the woman agreed, evidently thinking Sarah was offering sympathy. “I still get the shivers every time I think of it. I was on my way home with my day’s gleanings. Since my retirement I’ve developed sort of a hobby, as you might say, collecting papers and cans to recycle. I can’t take glass because it’s too heavy to carry. Helps the ecology a little, or so I like to think, and gives me something to do. But I’m not here to talk about that.”
    “Please, won’t you take off your things and come into the library?” Sarah still wasn’t sure whether Miss Mary Smith was a nut, a reporter in disguise, or the perfectly sane elderly woman she appeared to be, but she thought she’d better find out.
    “I don’t want to impose on your good nature.” Nevertheless, Miss Smith rolled up her helmet into a neat cap and began struggling with the toggles of her peacoat. “I will just slip off this jacket, though, if you don’t mind. Otherwise I won’t feel the good of it when I go out. I never used to mind the cold, but now it seems to go right through me. That’s why I bundle up in any old thing I can lay my hands on. Anyway, if I’m going to be a ragpicker I might as well look the part,