Free Heaven Knows Who by Christianna Brand Page B

claims against the Argyle Gunpowder Co. should lodge them within eleven days; a quantity of old Hair Bagging was advertised for, also a cast-iron water tank. Alexander Friedlander has always a supply of FINE HEALTHY LEECHES on hand; James Fullerton of Argyle Street has fine Japanned tin Travelling Boxes.…
    And the beautiful, very fast sailing clipper ship Edouard et Julie , newly coppered, is now actively loading and will soon say when she will sail.
    Meanwhile—‘Suspected Murder’. We learn that yesterday afternoon a horrid discovery took place at the residence of Mr John Fleming, No. 17 Sandyford Place.…
    That morning Sarah Adams went round again to the Broomielaw. How she got the time off we don’t know—she was nowadays employed elsewhere and her free day was Saturday; and she had no time due to her, for she had been to see Jessie on the previous Saturday. Nor do we know why she came; but by now ‘the murder had been heard about’ and she and her mother both knew of Mrs M’Lachlan’s close friendship with the dead woman—and knew, moreover, that on the very night of the murder she had been planning a visit to Sandyford Place. So maybe Miss Adams just sneaked a few minutes off and popped round out of curiosity. Or maybe her mother, or even her employer, sent her.
    All she got out of the visit, however, was that she observed on the table a straw bonnet ‘trimmed with a blue or other ribbon’ and a black plaid, neither of which she had ever seen before.
    The dates of Jessie’s movements for the rest of the week are confused and confusing, most of the witnesses being satisfied with ‘it was the Tuesday or the Wednesday or the Thursday, but I can’t be certain.’ But certain it is that on one of those days she took a little trip to Hamilton; and since all agree that it may have been the Tuesday and she herself says that it was the Tuesday, we mayassume that it probably was so. And from that the rest follows. In any case the dates are of no importance’. Without wearisome ifs and ans, therefore, we will assume that they happened in the following sequence.…
    On the Tuesday—that we do know—David Barclay, the clerk at the station who on Saturday had received the trunk from the little girl, Sarah Adams, and sent it on to Hamilton, noticed a woman walking up and down past his office. She came in at last and asked him if the box had been despatched. He told her it had been. So Jessie went to Hamilton.
    A Mrs Chassels, wife of a carter, lived in Almada Street, Hamilton, close by to the station. On the Tuesday afternoon at half-past two a strange woman presented herself at the door and asked if they had a boy to go over to the station and carry a box for her; it wasn’t a heavy one. (It weighed, as we know, twenty-one pounds: Sarah Adams, twelve years old, had staggered with it up the cellar stairs and to the station in Glasgow.) So Master James Chassels, the same age as Sarah, went with the lady to the station and she sent him in to ask for a box addressed to Mrs Bain. The lady came in later and signed for the box, ‘Mrs M’Lachlan’. She asked the child to carry it back to his mother’s house, and she went with him.
    Jessie had presumably gone to the house because the people there were carters, but she was soon, as usual, throwing herself upon the kindness of strangers. Could she come in for a while? And might she have a cup of tea? And could the boy next take the box to a saddler’s shop and get it mended? Oh, and did they know of a tailor of the name of Fraser?
    Mrs Chassels knew no tailor called Fraser but she knew of one called Shaw. She said that James should take the trunk to Mr Cherry’s, and meanwhile to come away in and she would make a pot of tea. While she was out of the room—all unsuspecting that her visitor might have a motive other than tea in wishing her absent a few minutes—the lady must