III

I came upon Mr. Pye by the church. He was talking to Emily Barton, wholooked pink and excited.

Mr. Pye greeted me with every evidence of delight.

“Ah, Burton, good morning, good morning! How is your charming sis-ter?”

I told him that Joanna was well.

“But not joining our village parliament? We’re all agog over the news.

Murder! Real Sunday newspaper murder in our midst! Not the most inter-esting of crimes, I fear. Somewhat sordid. The brutal murder of a littleserving maid. No finer points about the crime, but still undeniably, news.”

Miss Barton said tremulously:

“It is shocking—quite shocking.”

Mr. Pye turned to her.

“But you enjoy it, dear lady, you enjoy it. Confess it now. You disap-prove, you deplore, but there is the thrill. I insist, there is the thrill!”

“Such a nice girl,” said Emily Barton. “She came to me from St. Clotilde’sHome. Quite a raw girl. But most teachable. She turned into such a nicelittle maid. Partridge was very pleased with her.”

I said quickly:

“She was coming to tea with Partridge yesterday afternoon.” I turned toPye. “I expect Aimée Griffith told you.”

My tone was quite casual. Pye responded apparently quite unsuspi-ciously: “She did mention it, yes. She said, I remember, that it was some-thing quite new for servants to ring up on their employers’ telephones.”

“Partridge would never dream of doing such a thing,” said Miss Emily,“and I am really surprised at Agnes doing so.”

“You are behind the times, dear lady,” said Mr. Pye. “My two terrors usethe telephone constantly and smoked all over the house until I objected.

But one daren’t say too much. Prescott is a divine cook, though tempera-mental, and Mrs. Prescott is an admirable house-parlourmaid.”

“Yes, indeed, we all think you’re very lucky.”

I intervened, since I did not want the conversation to become purely do-mestic.

“The news of the murder has got round very quickly,” I said.

“Of course, of course,” said Mr. Pye. “The butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker. Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues! Lymstock, alas! is go-ing to the dogs. Anonymous letters, murders, any amount of criminaltendencies.”

Emily Barton said nervously: “They don’t think—there’s no idea—that—that the two are connected.”

Mr. Pye pounced on the idea.

“An interesting speculation. The girl knew something, therefore she wasmurdered. Yes, yes, most promising. How clever of you to think of it.”

“I— I can’t bear it.”

Emily Barton spoke abruptly and turned away, walking very fast.

Pye looked after her. His cherubic face was pursed up quizzically.

He turned back to me and shook his head gently.

“A sensitive soul. A charming creature, don’t you think? Absolutely aperiod piece. She’s not, you know, of her own generation, she’s of the gen-eration before that. The mother must have been a woman of a very strongcharacter. She kept the family time ticking at about 1870, I should say. Thewhole family preserved under a glass case. I do like to come across thatsort of thing.”

I did not want to talk about period pieces.

“What do you really think about all this business?” I asked.

“Meaning by that?”

“Anonymous letters, murder….”

“Our local crime wave? What do you?”

“I asked you first,” I said pleasantly.

Mr. Pye said gently:

“I’m a student, you know, of abnormalities. They interest me. Such ap-parently unlikely people do the most fantastic things. Take the case of Liz-zie Borden. There’s not really a reasonable explanation of that. In thiscase, my advice to the police would be—study character. Leave your fin-gerprints and your measuring of handwriting and your microscopes. No-tice instead what people do with their hands, and their little tricks of man-ner, and the way they eat their food, and if they laugh sometimes for noapparent reason.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Mad?” I said.

“Quite, quite mad,” said Mr. Pye, and added, “but you’d never know it!”

“Who?”

His eyes met mine. He smiled.

“No, no, Burton, that would be slander. We can’t add slander to all therest of it.”

He fairly skipped off down the street.