he rest of Tilling, under
promise of secrecy, would know, and even if under further promises of
secrecy they communicated their secret to each other, there would be no
harm done....

After this excursion into Elysian fields, poor Miss Mapp had to get
back to her vulture again, and the hour's rest that she had felt was due
to herself as the heroine of a duel became a period of extraordinary
cerebral activity. Puzzle as she might, she could make nothing whatever
of the portmanteau and the excursion to the early train, and she got up
long before her hour was over, since she found that the more she
thought, the more invincible were the objections to any conclusion that
she drowningly grasped at. Whatever attack she made on this mystery, the
garrison failed to march out and surrender but kept their flag flying,
and her conjectures were woefully blasted by the forces of the most
elementary reasons. But as the agony of suspense, if no fresh topic of
interest intervened, would be frankly unendurable, she determined to
concentrate no more on it, but rather to commit it to the ice-house or
safe of her subconscious mind, from which at will, when she felt
refreshed and reinvigorated, she could unlock it and examine it again.
The whole problem was more superlatively baffling than any that she
could remember having encountered in all these inquisitive years, just
as the subject of it was more majestic than any, for it concerned not
hoarding, nor visits of the Prince of Wales, nor poppy-trimmed gowns,
but life and death and firing of deadly pistols. And should love be
added to this august list? Certainly not by her, though Tilling might do
what it liked. In fact Tilling always did.

She walked across to the bow-window from which she had conducted so many
exciting and successful investigations. But to-day the view seemed as
stale and unprofitable as the world appeared to Hamlet, even though Mrs.
Poppit at that moment went waddling down the street and disappeared
round the corner where the dentist and Mr. Wyse lived. With a sense of
fatigue Miss Mapp recalled the fact that she had seen the housemaid
cleaning Mr. Wyse's windows yesterday--("Children dear, was it
yesterday?")--and had noted her industry, and drawn from it the
irresistible conclusion that Mr. Wyse was probably expected home. He
usually came back about mid-October, and let slip allusions to his
enjoyable visits in Scotland and his _villeggiatura_ (so he was pleased
to exp