Pilgrim’s Rest Read Free Page A

someone to hold on to.”
    Judy swished water into the washing-up bowl and stuck her chin in the air.

chapter 3
    Miss Silver was inclined to see the hand of Providence in trifles. Her first contact with the Pilgrim case occurred when she had just finished working out a new and elaborate stitch for the jumper which she intended for her niece Ethel’s birthday. This she regarded as providential, for though she could, and did, knit her way serenely through all the complications which murder produces, she found it difficult to concentrate upon a really elaborate new pattern at the same time. Ethel Burkett’s annual jumper provided sufficient mental exercise without being brought into competition with a criminal case.
    She was considering her good fortune in having obtained this excellent pre-war wool. So soft-such a lovely shade of blue-and no coupons, since it had been produced from a box in the Vicarage attics by Miss Sophy Fell, who had pressed, positively pressed, it on her. And it had been very carefully put away with camphor, so it was as good as on the somewhat distant day when it had been spun.
    She had all her stitches on the needles, and the pattern well fixed in her mind, when her front door bell rang and Emma Meadows announced Major Pilgrim. She saw a slight, dark young man with a sallow complexion and a worried frown.
    On his side Roger Pilgrim was at once reminded of his aunts. Not that Miss Silver resembled any of them in person, but she and her surroundings appeared to be of approximately the same vintage. His Aunt Millicent, who was as a matter of fact a great-aunt, possessed some curly walnut chairs which were the spit and image of those adorning Miss Silver’s flat-waists, and bow legs, and tight upholstery- only the stuff on Aunt Milly’s had once been green, whilst Miss Silver’s were quite freshly covered in rather a bright shade of blue. Both ladies crowded every available inch of mantelshelf and table-top-Miss Silver’s writing-table excluded-with photographs in archaic silver frames. His Aunt Tina had clung for years to very similar flowered wallpaper, and possessed at least two of the pictures which confronted him as he entered-Bubbles and The Black Brunswicker. But the frames of Aunt Tina’s were brown, whilst these were of the shiny yellow maple so dear to the Victorian age.
    Miss Silver herself added to the homely effect. His old Cousin Connie also wore her hair in a curled fringe after the fashion set by Queen Alexandra in the late years of the previous century. Aunt Collie’s stockings were of a similar brand of black ribbed wool. For the rest, Miss Silver was herself-a little governessy person with neat features and a lot of grey-brown hair very strictly controlled by a net. It being three o’clock in the afternoon, she was wearing a pre-war dress of olive-green cashmere with a little boned lace front, very fresh and clean. A pair of pince-nez on a fine gold chain was looped up and fastened on the left side by a bar brooch set with pearls. She also wore a row of bog-oak beads ingeniously carved, and a large brooch of the same material in the shape of a rose, with an Irish pearl at its heart. Nothing could have felt less like a visit to a private detective.
    Miss Silver, having shaken hands and indicated a chair, bestowed upon him the kind, impersonal smile with which she would in earlier days have welcomed a new and nervous pupil. Twenty years as a governess had set their mark upon her. In the most improbable surroundings she conjured up the safe, humdrum atmosphere of the schoolroom. Her voice preserved its note of mild but unquestioned authority. She said,
    “What can I do for you, Major Pilgrim?”
    He was facing the light. Not in uniform. A well-cut suit, not too new. He wore glasses-large round ones with tortoise-shell rims. Behind them his dark eyes had a worried look. Her own went to his hands, and saw them move restlessly on the shiny walnut carving which emerged from the padded