Three
I
“Well, really, Mr. Lejeune, I don’t see what more I can tell you! I told it allbefore to your sergeant¹. I don’t know who Mrs. Davis was, or where shecame from. She’d been with me about six months. She paid her rent regu-lar, and she seemed a nice quiet respectable person, and what more youexpect me to say I’m sure I don’t know.”
Mrs. Coppins paused for breath and looked at Lejeune with some dis-pleasure. He gave her the gentle melancholy² smile which he knew by ex-perience was not without its effect.
“Not that I wouldn’t be willing to help if I could,” she amended³.
“Thank you. That’s what we need—help. Women know—they feel in-stinctively—so much more than a man can know.”
It was a good gambit, and it worked.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Coppins. “I wish Coppins could hear you. So hoity-toityand offhand⁴ he always was. ‘Saying you know things when you haven’tgot anything to go on!’ he’d say and snort. And nine times out of ten I wasright.”
“That’s why I’d like to hear what ideas you have about Mrs. Davis. Wasshe—an unhappy woman, do you think?”
“Now as to that—no, I wouldn’t say so. Businesslike. That’s what she al-ways seemed. Methodical. As though she’d got her life planned and wasacting accordingly. She had a job, I understand, with one of these con-sumer research associations. Going around and asking people what soappowder they used, or flour, and what they spend on their weekly budgetand how it’s divided up. Of course I’ve always felt that sort of thing issnooping really—and why the Government or anyone else wants to knowbeats me! All you hear at the end of it is only what everybody has knownperfectly well all along—but there, there’s a craze for that sort of thingnowadays. And if you’ve got to have it, I should say that poor Mrs. Daviswould do the job very nicely. A pleasant manner, not nosy⁶, just business-like and matter-of-fact.”
“You don’t know the actual name of the firm or association that em-ployed her?”
“No, I don’t, I’m afraid.”

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