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Updated: October 10, 2025
"But I think I shall have something to say to that, Mrs. Carswell. Ask Mr. Joseph Chestermarke to come here a minute." The housekeeper shrunk back. "I daren't, Miss Fosdyke!" she answered. "It would be as much as my place was worth!" "I thought you were my uncle's housekeeper," suggested Betty. "Aren't you? Or are you employed by Mr. Joseph Chestermarke? Come, now?" Mrs. Carswell hesitated.
And there the detective laid down a firm outline of the next immediate procedure. It was of no use to half-do things, he said they must rouse wholesale attention. Once more the press must be made use of the sudden disappearance of Mrs. Carswell must be noised abroad in the next morning's papers. A police notice describing her must be got out and sent all over the kingdom.
"Hide yoursel," said he, "among the bushes." And I den't myself in a nook of the glen, where I overheard what passed. "I thought, Gideon," said the lad to him, "that ye would hae been at the conventicle this afternoon. We hae heard o't a'; and Carswell has sworn that he'll hae baith doited Swinton and Dunrod's leddy at Glasgow afore the morn, or he'll mak a tawnle o' her tower."
"Carswell shouldna crack sae croose," replied Gideon Kemp; "for though his castle stands proud in the green valley, the time may yet come when horses and carts will be driven through his ha', and the foul toad and the cauld snail be the only visitors around the unblest hearth o' Carswell."
Yes we saw her go through the hall door. Of course we thought she'd just slipped out into the town for something." Polke hesitated and meditated. What use was it, at that juncture, to ask for more particular details of this evident flight? Mrs. Carswell was probably well away from Ecclesborough by that time. He turned back to the hall and then looked at the women again.
"No," answered Starmidge after a moment's reflection, "but manage to find out where he goes." He sat and thought a long time after his visitor had left, and his thoughts all centred on one fact: the undoubted fact that Gabriel Chestermarke and Mrs. Carswell had met. The offices of Mr.
Horbury until Saturday afternoon that is, for certain," said Mrs. Carswell. "He'd asked her to go with him to Scotland on this holiday, but it wasn't settled. However, he got a wire from her, about tea-time on Saturday, to say she'd go, and would be down here today. They're to start tomorrow morning." Neale turned to the door. He was distinctly puzzled and uneasy.
And it was suspicious, too, that the housekeeper, Mrs. Carswell, should take herself off after a brief exchange of words with Joseph. It looked very much as if the junior partner had either warned her to go, or had told her to go. Why had she gone then? when she might have gone before. And why in such haste?
Horbury's movements on Saturday afternoon and evening, Mrs. Carswell," he said. "This is a most extraordinary business altogether, and I want to account for it. You say he went out just about dusk." Mrs. Carswell repeated the story which she had told to Neale. The two partners listened; Gabriel keenly attentive; Joseph as if he were no more than mildly interested.
One event, however, can be pointed to as a turning point. On the 25th March, Lieut.-Col. Jeffreys, who had never fully recovered from the wounds received in Sanctuary Wood, was ordered to return to England on account of ill-health, and handed over command to Major W.D. Carswell Hunt, M.C., of the 7th Durham Light Infantry.
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