Eternity Ring Read Online Free PDF Page B

Deeping. According to one, Mary Stokes had been pulling everybody’s leg. Passion for the limelight. Exhibitionism—only in the country they call it plain showing-off. Quite a tenable theory, and compatible with everything except those running footprints. The other school of thought, which is adhered to by a minority, maintains that Mary was telling the truth, with perhaps some natural enhancing of the horrid details, but that the corpse wasn’t dead and just upped and walked away after Miss Stokes had run screaming down the path.”
    “Pray continue. You mentioned this afternoon—”
    He nodded.
    “I did. Round about half past four we got a report from out Hampstead way. A woman had been in and said her lodger was missing—went out on Friday and never came back. Description of missing person—young woman round about thirty or perhaps less, fair hair shoulder length, hazel eyes, medium height, very slight build. Went out dressed in a black coat and black beret, both very smart. Light stockings, black shoes. And large hoop earrings ‘set all round with little diamonds like those eternity rings.’ ”
    chapter 5
    There was a pause, yet it hardly appeared to be one, so charged was it with Miss Silver’s intelligent interest. When she observed, “A truly strange coincidence,” Frank Abbott laughed and said,
    “Do you believe in coincidences to that extent? I’m afraid I don’t.”
    Miss Silver continued to knit.
    “I have known some strange ones.”
    He laughed again.
    “As strange as this?”
    She made no direct answer, but said,
    “Who is this missing woman? The landlady must have known a little more about her than that she wore a black coat and rather curious earrings.”
    “Well, she doesn’t seem to know very much. I went down to see her, and this is what it amounts to. The missing woman hadn’t been with her very long—not more than a month. Name Mrs. Rogers. Christian name Louise. Slight foreign accent. She told Mrs. Hopper—that’s the landlady—that she was French, but had married an Englishman who was dead. She was nicely spoken, didn’t bring anyone home with her, and paid on the nail. She told Mrs. Hopper once that her family had been very rich, but they had lost everything in the war. Then she looked mysterious and said, ‘Perhaps I shall get some of it back—who knows? That is why I am in England. If a thing is stolen, the law can get it back. That is why I am here.’ She went out some time on Friday morning. Mrs. Hopper doesn’t know when, because she was out shopping for the week-end. Well, it was on Saturday evening that Mary Stokes says she saw a fair-haired corpse with one eternity earring in Dead Man’s Copse, and Louise Rogers has never gone back to Hampstead. I asked Mrs. Hopper whether she’d ever heard of Deeping, and she seemed to think that it was a patent food or a furniture polish.” He leaned forward and stretched his hands to the cheerful glow of Miss Silver’s fire. “Of course, you know, if it weren’t for Mary Stokes, one would simply conclude that Mrs. Rogers was week-ending and hadn’t bothered to let her landlady know.”
    Miss Silver coughed.
    “If she had intended to stay away she would have taken a suit-case. Is anything missing?”
    “Mrs. Hopper says no.”
    Miss Silver inclined her head.
    “She would be well informed. A woman who lets lodgings keeps a very sharp eye upon that sort of thing. People have a way of removing their things by degrees and then going off without paying the rent.”
    “Well, she says there isn’t anything missing. To use her own words, ‘She went off in what she stood up in, her good black coat and beret—very smart and quite the lady, though foreign.’ And the question is, did she go to Deeping and pose as Mary Stokes’ corpse, and if she did, where did she go from there?”
    Miss Silver stopped knitting for a moment and said quite gravely,
    “I do not think you can neglect the possibility that she has met with a