I had already arranged to go on the following day to Hurstcote Manor,
where several unfinished pictures were waiting for me, and I decided
to take the model with me.
Before, however, I started for the country with her, I had the
curiosity to call next morning upon the woman in Primrose Court,
in order to discover what had been the effect of my stratagem. I
found her sitting in a state of excitement, and evidently in great
alarm, gazing at the mattress. The words I had written on the wall
had been carefully washed out.
'Well, Mrs. Gudgeon,' I said, 'what has become of your daughter?'
'Dead,' she whimpered, 'dead.'
'Yes, I know she's dead,' I said. 'But where is the body?'
'Where's the body? Why, buried, in course,' said the woman.
'Buried? Who buried her?' I said.
'What a question, sure_lie_!' she said, and kept repeating the words
in order, as I saw, to give herself time to invent some story. Then a
look of cunning overspread her face, and she whimpered, 'Who _does_
bury folks in Primrose Court? The parish, to be sure.
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