Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th–17th September—a Thursday. I was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday the 17th. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.

 

It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I opened the front door with my latch-key, and purposely delayed a few moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn morning. To tell the truth, I was considerably¹ upset and worried. I am not going to pretend that at that moment I foresaw the events of the next few weeks. I emphatically did not do so. But my instinct told me that there were stirring times ahead.

 

From the dining-room on my left there came the rattle² of tea-cups and the short, dry cough of my sister Caroline.

 

“Is that you, James?” she called.

 

An unnecessary question, since who else could it be? To tell the truth, it was precisely³ my sister Caroline who was the cause of my few minutes’ delay. The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells us, is: “Go and find out.” If Caroline ever adopts a crest⁴, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant⁵. One2 might omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly⁶ at home. I don’t know how she manages it, but there it is. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence Corps⁷. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert.

 

It was really this last named trait of hers which was causing me these pangs⁸ of indecision. Whatever I told Caroline now concerning the

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