9
Nothing could have been more peaceful than the grounds and building of Melfort Abbey as the two men saw it that afternoon in the September sunshine. Portions of the Abbey were fifteenth century. It had been restored and a new wing added on to it. The new Sanatorium was out of sight of the house, with grounds of its own.
Sir Charles and Mr. Satterthwaite were received by Mrs. Leckie, the cook, a portly lady, decorously gowned in black, who was tearful and voluble. Sir Charles she already knew, and it was to him she addressed most of her conversation.
“You’ll understand, I’m sure, sir, what it’s meant to me. The master’s death and all. Policemen all over the place, poking¹ their noses here and there - would you believe it, even the dustbins they had to have their noses in, and questions! - They wouldn’t have done with asking questions. Oh, that I should have lived to see such a thing - the doctor, such a quiet gentleman as he always was, and made Sir Bartholomew, too, which a proud day it was to all of us, as Beatrice and I well remember, though she’s been here two years less than I have. And such questions as that police fellow (for gentleman I will not call him, having been accustomed to gentlemen and their ways and knowing what’s what) fellow, I say, whether or no he is a superintendent² - ” Mrs. Leckie paused, took breath and extricated³ herself from the somewhat complicated conversational⁴ morass⁵ into which she had fallen. “Questions, that’s what I say, about all the maids in the house, and good girls they are, every one of them - not that I’d say that Doris gets up when she should do in the morning. I have to speak about it at least once a week, and Vickie, she’s inclined to be impertinent, but, there, with the young ones you can’t expect the training - their mothers don’t give it to them nowadays - but good girls they are, and no police superintendent shall make me say otherwise. ‘Yes,’ I said to him,
‘you needn’t think I’m going to say anything against my girls. They’re good girls, they are, and as to having anything to do with murder, why it’s right-down wicked to suggest such a thing.”

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