The Greenstone Griffins-Gladys Mitchell-Bradley 63 by The Greenstone Griffins-3S(v1)(html)

Author:The Greenstone Griffins-3S(v1)(html) [Griffins-3S, The Greenstone]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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10

The Miller’s Widow

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When the caretaker went round the side of the house to return to his own quarters, he found that Mrs Martock was still seated on her teak bench in the water garden.

‘Who was that?’ she asked.

‘A Mrs Bradley, ma’am, come to look over number seventeen.’

‘Is she going to take it? She looked ugly but interesting. That was a marvellous car. I saw it as I came back from my walk. By the look of it, I shouldn’t think that attic flat would suit her, would it?’

‘I think she was disappointed with it, ma’am.’

‘What did she want out here if she wasn’t going to take the flat?’

‘Just poken about, I reckon, ma’am.’

‘Does she know this is where the accident happened?’

‘I shouldn’t hardly think a stranger would be interested, ma’am, and of course I don’t make no mention of it when I has one of the flats to let,’ said the caretaker diplomatically.

‘No, I suppose not. Oh, well, the truth will come out some day, I suppose, although hardly with the help of that snake-headed woman. Is she anybody?’

‘Not as I knows on, ma’am. Got money, though, I reckon.’

‘Well, the car gave that impression, as I said.’

The car in question was proceeding at a decorous rate along a road not much wider than a lane. It came to a bridge, crossed it and turned left down an even narrower road. Here it pulled up at a gate which George got out and opened, and the car stopped in front of the mill house. The figure which approached the Georgian door would not have impressed the miller’s wife, but the large car and the uniformed chauffeur who opened the rear door so respectfully for the passenger, impressed her so much that, when Mrs Bradley knocked, the mistress of the mill said to the little maidservant, ‘I’ll go.’

For her own part, Mrs Bradley had been somewhat surprised, as the car had turned on to the lane which led directly to the mill, to observe a large notice advertising farmhouse teas. It hardly fitted in with Jessica’s account of visits to the mill with her aunt, but there were explanations to come. The welcome at the Georgian front door began them.

‘Oh, please come in, ma’am. It’s only teas I do as a general rule, but it won’t take a minute to get you a pot of tea and a scone. Perhaps the gentleman in uniform would like I should send something out to him when I have you settled and served.’

Accepting the situation on its merits and abandoning the reasons she had prepared to give for calling at the mill, Mrs Bradley followed the miller’s wife along a central passage and into a room which overlooked a small orchard.

The room was well furnished and scrupulously clean, and there was a wood fire in the grate. Given a chair at a gate-legged table on which the miller’s wife spread a spotless, beautifully laundered cloth, Mrs Bradley gazed out of the window at the denuded trees and the grey autumn sky.

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