‘When are you goin’ to buy me that locket, Bob, to put a bit of your ‘air in?’ she inquired pertinently.

’You just wait, can’t you?  There’s a event coming off next week.  I won’t say nothing, but you just wait.’

‘I’m tired o’ waitin’.  See here; you ain’t goin’ to best me out of it?’

‘Me best you?  Don’t be a bloomin’ fool, Clem!’

He laughed heartily, and in a few minutes allowed himself to be embraced and sent off to his chamber at the top of the house.

Clem summoned her servant from the passage.  At the same moment there entered another lodger, the only one whose arrival Clem still awaited.  His mode of ascending the stairs was singular; one would have imagined that he bore some heavy weight, for he proceeded very slowly, with a great clumping noise, surmounting one step at a time in the manner of a child.  It was Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, and his way of going up to bed was very simply explained by the fact that a daily sixteen hours of sitting on the box left his legs in a numb and practically useless condition.

The house was now quiet.  Clem locked the front-door and returned to the kitchen, eager with anticipation of the jest she was going to carry out.  First of all she had to pick a quarrel with Jane; this was very easily managed.  She pretended to look about the room for a minute, then asked fiercely: 

‘What’s gone with that sixpence I left on the dresser?’

Jane looked up in terror.  She was worn almost to the last point of endurance by her day and night of labour and agitation.  Her face was bloodless, her eyelids were swollen with the need of sleep.

‘Sixpence!’ she faltered, ’I’m sure I haven’t seen no sixpence, miss.’

’You haven’t?  Now, I’ve caught you at last.  There’s been nobody ’ere but you.  Little thief!  We’ll see about this in the mornin’, an’ to-night you shall sleep in the back-kitchen!’

The child gasped for breath.  The terror of sudden death could not have exceeded that which rushed upon her heart when she was told that she must pass her night in the room where lay the coffin.

‘An’ you shan’t have no candle, neither,’ proceeded Clem, delighted with the effect she was producing.  ‘Come along!  I’m off to bed, an’ I’ll see you safe locked in first, so as no one can come an’ hurt you.’

‘Miss! please!—­I can’t, I durstn’t!’

Jane pleaded in inarticulate anguish.  But Clem had caught her by the arm, was dragging her on, on, till she was at the very door of that ghastly death-cellar.  Though thirteen years old, her slight frame was as incapable of resisting Clem Peckover’s muscles as an infant’s would have been.  The door was open, but at that moment Jane uttered a shriek which rang and echoed through the whole house.  Startled, Clem relaxed her grasp.  Jane tore herself away, fled up the kitchen stairs, fled upwards still, flung herself at the feet of someone who had come out on to the landing and held a light.