Twelve
LILY KIMBLE
L ily Kimble spread a couple of old newspapers on the kitchen table in readiness for draining the chipped potatoeswhich were hissing¹ in the pan. Humming tunelessly a popular melody of the day she leaned forward aimlesslystudying the newsprint spread out before her.
Then suddenly she stopped humming and called: “Jim—Jim. Listen here, will you?”
Jim Kimble, an elderly man of few words, was washing at the scullery sink. To answer his wife, he used hisfavourite monosyllable.
“Ar?” said Jim Kimble.
“It’s a piece in the paper. Will anyone with any knowledge of Helen Spenlove Halliday, née Kennedy,communicate with Messrs. Reed and Hardy², Southampton Row! Seems to me they might be meaning Mrs. Halliday asI was in service with at St. Catherine’s. Took it from Mrs. Findeyson, they did, she and ’er ’usband. Her name wasHelen right enough—Yes, and she was sister to Dr. Kennedy, him as always said I ought to have had my adenoidsout.”
There was a momentary³ pause as Mrs. Kimble adjusted the frying chips with an expert touch. Jim Kimble wassnorting into the roller towel as he dried his face.
“Course, it’s an old paper, this,” resumed Mrs. Kimble. She studied its date. “Nigh on a week or more old. Wonderwhat it’s all about? Think as there’s any money in it, Jim?”
Mr. Kimble said, “Ar,” noncommittally.
“Might be a will or something,” speculated his wife. “Powerful lot of time ago.”
“Ar.”
“Eighteen years or more, I shouldn’t wonder … Wonder what they’re raking it all up for now? You don’t think itcould be police, do you, Jim?
“Whatever?” asked Mr. Kimble.
“Well, you know what I always thought,” said Mrs. Kimble mysteriously. “Told you at the time, I did, when wewas walking out. Pretending that she’d gone off with a feller. That’s what they say, husbands, when they do theirwives in. Depend upon it, it was murder. That’s what I said to you and what I said to Edie, but Edie she wouldn’t haveit at any price. Never no imagination, Edie hadn’t. Those clothes she was supposed to have took away with her—well,they weren’t right, if you know what I mean. There was a suitcase gone and a bag, and enough clothes to fill ’em, butthey wasn’t right, those clothes. And that’s when I said to Edie, ‘Depend upon it,’ I said, ‘the master’s murdered herand put her in the cellar.’ Only not really the cellar, because that Layonee, the Swiss nurse, she saw something. Out ofthe window. Come to the cinema along of me, she did, though she wasn’t supposed to leave the nursery—but there, Isaid, the child never wakes up—good as gold she was, always, in her bed at night. ‘And madam never comes up to thenursery in the evening,’ I says. ‘Nobody will know if you slip out with me.’ So she did. And when we got in there wasever such a schemozzle going on. Doctor was there and the master ill and sleeping in the

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