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and I little thought—oh, Frank, I felt I must tell you at once!”
    Colonel Garrett scowled and banged the table.
    â€œYou’re talking nonsense, I tell you! I had a letter from Peter this morning—two letters, one by the first post and one by the second. They were both dated Tuesday.”
    Miss Fanny gulped down another sob.
    â€œThey must have been written before. There is a letter from the doctor—oh, Frank, they didn’t call him in in time—Peter was dead when he got there. They found my last letter in his pocket-book, and he wrote—it was very kind of him, and I can read French quite easily of course, but I don’t know how I’m going to answer it, because that’s much more difficult—perhaps Miss Hollinger—oh, I don’t know what I’d do without her—my dear friend Miss Hollinger, you know—or perhaps you don’t, because I don’t suppose you’ve ever met her—she hasn’t been here so very long, but such an acquisition as a next-door neighbour, and perhaps she can help me with the French—I know she has travelled abroad”—and so very kind about dear Peter, though she didn’t know him—”
    Garrett was staring hard at the wall in front of him. Peter had written him two letters on the Tuesday—two letters.… Not a word about being ill. He wasn’t ill when he wrote those letters. Damned impudent letters. Not the letters of a sick man. Certainly not the letters of a man who is so sick that he is going to die.… Unless—unless—there had been foul play—He turned sharply to the telephone, cutting across Miss Fanny’s flow of words.
    â€œAll right, all right, all right! I’ll be round. I want to see that letter.”

CHAPTER V
    Peter emerged from an unfamiliar Tube station upon the traffic of a main suburban road. A boy who was selling papers informed him that Archmount Street was the third turning on the left. He bought a paper and pursued his way. The poster was a staring WHO KILLED THE BUTLER? Not being interested in butlers as a race, and being without any particular information about this one, the buying of the paper had been a mere quid pro quo for the information about Archmount Street. But by the time he had turned out of the main road his eye had been caught by three other posters, and every one of them mentioned the butler—BUTLER CASE CLUE—BUTLER CASE NO CLUE—BUTLER CASE INQUEST. He began to feel a certain curiosity. Anyhow, if he had got to hang about in Preedo’s Library, it would be just as well to have something to read.
    He reserved the butler, and began to look about him for the library. It was about half way down Archmount Street on the right, between a hat-shop and a cleaner’s. Picture postcards and fancy goods in the window, horrible china book-ends, pseudo-eighteenth-century shepherdesses in pink smirking over their shoulders at imitation shepherds in blue, Scotch terriers very fiercely black and white, gnomes with red noses and long white beards, pink and gold vases, lamp-shades painted like Jezebel, objects in poker-work, objects in fancy leather. Peter was reminded of the bazaars beloved by his Aunt Fanny. He wondered who bought this sort of truck and what they did with it, and why no one started a mission to wean them from the vice. S.P.P.T.—Society for the Prevention of the Production of Truck. Or just S.S.T.—Society for the Suppression of Truck. The whole of the front part of the shop appeared to be given up to it.
    At the back the place widened out and returned to sobriety. Walls covered with books from ceiling to floor. People, mostly women, standing with their backs to the room and gazing with varying degrees of hopefulness at the crowded shelves. In one corner a sort of counter where an elderly woman with a fuzzy grey fringe was trying to listen to two people at once. For the first time it occurred to Peter that