“Yes, it was dangerous, but we are not put into this world, Mr. Burton, to avoid danger when an innocent fellow-creature’s life is at stake. You understand me?”

I understood.

Chapter Fifteen

Fifteen

I

Morning in the High Street.

Miss Emily Barton comes out of the grocer’s with her shopping bag. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are excited.

“Oh, dear, Mr. Burton, I really am in such a flutter. To think I really am going on a cruise at last!”

“I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

“Oh, I’m sure I shall. I should never have dared to go by myself. It does seem so providential the way everything has turned out. For a long time I’ve felt that I ought to part with Little Furze, that my means were really too straitened but I couldn’t bear the idea of strangers there. But now that you have bought it and are going to live there with Megan—it is quite different. And then dear Aimée, after her terrible ordeal, not quite knowing what to do with herself, and her brother getting married (how nice to think you have both settled down with us!) and agreeing to come with me. We mean to be away quite a long time. We might even”—Miss Emily dropped her voice—“go round the world! And Aimée is so splendid and so practical. I really do think, don’t you, that everything turns out for the best?”

Just for a fleeting moment I thought of Mrs. Symmington and Agnes Woddell in their graves in the churchyard and wondered if they would agree, and then I remembered that Agnes’s boy hadn’t been very fond of her and that Mrs. Symmington hadn’t been very nice to Megan and, what the hell? we’ve all got to die some time! And I agreed with happy Miss Emily that everything was for the best in the best of possible worlds.

I went along the High Street and in at the Symmingtons’ gate and Megan came out to meet me.

It was not a romantic meeting because an out-size Old English sheepdog came out with Megan and nearly knocked me over with his ill-timed exuberance.

“Isn’t he adorable?” said Megan.

“A little overwhelming. Is he ours?”

“Yes, he’s a wedding present from Joanna. We have had nice wedding presents, haven’t we? That fluffy woolly thing that we don’t know what it’s for from Miss Marple, and the lovely Crown Derby tea set from Mr. Pye, and Elsie has sent me a toast-rack—”

“How typical,” I interjected.

“And she’s got a post with a dentist and is very happy. And—where was I?”

“Enumerating wedding presents. Don’t forget if you change your mind you’ll have to send them all back.”

“I shan’t change my mind. What else have we got? Oh, yes, Mrs. Dane Calthrop has sent an Egyptian scarab.”