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She approached with a smile, and heaven knows what agitation in her breast at the sight of a handsome well-dressed young man in her lonely nest. "You wished to see me?" she asked. "Mrs. Pursill?" he said interrogatively. She made a negative sign. "I am Miss Pursill. My mother is an invalid." "I am most anxious to see her." "My mother keeps to her bedroom."
"That is Mrs. Pursill," said her daughter. Charles glanced at the old woman in the chair and turned away. She was past anything except waiting for death, and it was impossible to speak to her or question her. She was in the last stage of senile decay. He masked his disappointment with an effort, conscious that the eyes of the younger woman were fixed on his face.
He had deciphered the pencilled scrawl with difficulty. The name was Catherine Pursill, Charleswood, Surrey. It remained in his mind for a special reason. He had told her to picture a cat sitting on a window ledge, and that would fix the name in her mind. "Purr" "Sill" there it was!
Then the door was opened by a pretty slim servant girl. There was nothing funereal in her appearance except her black dress, and that was set off by a coquettish white apron. She looked at the young man with questioning bright eyes, as though surprised at his appearance there. "Does Mrs. Pursill live here?" he asked. "Yes, sir," she replied with a trace of hesitation.
The elegant Miss Pursill had gone to Brighton for change of air, but the pretty maid, who had been left behind to look after the house and the decayed old lady, assured him that there had been nobody to see Mrs. Pursill since his last visit. Miss Pursill went away the very next day after he was down, and there had been no callers or visitors.
But at present the sylvan charm of the spot was unspoiled. Its meadows and fields seemed to lie happily unconscious of the contagion flaming on the billowy hills. The porter who emerged from a kind of wooden kennel and clattered up to Charles to collect his ticket, stared hard when the young man asked if Mrs. Pursill lived at Charleswood.
"If there is anything I can tell you " she simpered, as she met his glance. His face betrayed his anxiety. "I had some reason to think that a young lady of my acquaintance, the daughter of an old friend of your mother's, might be staying with her." "There is no young lady here," said Miss Pursill with a hard look. "I know nothing about it. What is her name?" "I have made a mistake, I am afraid."
Miss Pursill opened a door on the first floor and beckoned Charles to enter. It was a bedroom, furnished on the same scale of antique magnificence as the drawing-room downstairs. In a deep armchair in front of a fire sat an old woman, tucked up in an eiderdown of blue and white satin. She did not look round as they entered, but remained quite still an immobile figure with a nodding head.
The barometer of hope went up several degrees in Charles's breast. "Could I see her?" he eagerly said. "I'll ask, sir. What name, please?" "No name. Mrs. Pursill would not know it. But my business is very important." The maid looked at him doubtfully, and left him standing there while she disappeared within.
I stayed at a private hotel in Euston Road on my first night in London, but did not like it, and next day I went to a boarding-house near Russell Square. I meant to write to Mrs. Pursill from there, telling her my mother was dead. But that night after dinner I heard some of the boarders talking of the murder, and I knew I couldn't go to Charleswood then.
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