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private detective, are you?”
    “A private detective? Good God, no! Why should I be? Who would employ me, and why, for heaven’s sake?”
    “I just wondered.”
    “Why should I be a private detective?” I persisted.
    She stubbed out her cigarette in the square ashtray, and looked out of the window across the grey Channel.
    She was an ugly, ungracious woman, and difficult to talk to. I felt an appalling pity for her, encased and protected as she was by her impenetrable unattractiveness. I could not understand why she had flushed when I mentioned Bardoni, but I knew that nobody, and certainly not a worldly Italian, was likely to have had a brief whirlwind flirtation with her. She did not reply directly to my question.
    “You are just an author—well, what do you want to know?”
    Before I could pose a question she said:
    “Mrs. Dawson was a very remarkable woman.”
    “I’m sure she was. How long had she been living here?”
    “About seventeen years.”
    “Perhaps you could tell me something of her background?”
    “It is not my business to inquire into the background of a resident.”
    I got up from my chair and walked over to the window. I looked down at the promenade, allowing time for my irritation to die. I wasn’t going to get far with this one.
    “What happened to her husband?” I asked perfunctorily.
    “He died many years ago. There was some tragedy.”
    “What sort of tragedy?”
    “I haven’t the faintest idea. It is not for me to pry into personal tragedies.”
    “Had she any family left?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Had she any close friends in the hotel?”
    She hesitated. I suppose she knew I could find out, anyway. She said:
    “Well, there was Mrs. Gray, who came here at about the same time. And Mrs. Dacey, I suppose, because she has been here almost as long, though she keeps herself to herself.”
    “Had she any hobbies or eccentricities?”
    “Not as far as I know.”
    “Is there anything interesting about her at all which you can tell me?”
    “Nothing.”
    I paused.
    “Then why was she a very remarkable woman, Miss Brett?”
    I stared at her as I spoke, and saw the pink flush start again in her throat and spread painfully upwards.
    “She just was. She was more active than most of our elderly residents.”
    “That’s all?”
    “Yes, that’s all.”
    I thanked her. As I moved towards the door, she said:
    “Why ferret about in the past, Mr. Compton?”
    She had risen to her feet and stood by her desk, sturdy, ugly, and in some odd way defiant. Once again I felt a wave of pity, as one does sometimes for unlovable or unlikable people. It’s not that one wants to love them or even like them. There are only twenty-four hours in the day. You can’t take them all on.
    “It won’t do any good, will it?” she added.
    I repeated my earlier reply:
    “What harm will it do?”
    She walked heavily toward the windows. She was not particularly masculine but she had no feminine appeal. She was a lump of humanity mechanised into the hotel business.
    “Delving into the past—what good will it do?” she said helplessly, without looking round.
    “What harm?” I said yet again. “I don’t understand—what’s the harm?”
    The change from hostility to something akin to a plea had caught me by surprise.
    “None, I suppose,” she muttered, and drew her handkerchief out of her cardigan pocket.
    With a woman of her type it is difficult to know whether such an action is due to hayfever, catarrh, or tears.
    As I closed the door, I could not help thinking of Signor Bardoni’s words, “Let her be, Mr. Compton, let her be!” In his case, the words had been accompanied by a remark about the dead hitting back, a blatant appeal to superstition. Constance Brett’s stumbling appeal had been to the heart.
    Both were directed to the same end.

    The following is a brief record of my interview with Mrs. (Caroline) Gray, as written on the evening of October 8th:
    Interviewed Mrs. (Caroline)