e. His parlour-maid had brought it to him,
and had soon afterwards opened the door to Major Flint, who, learning
that his friend had gone to bed, went away. She called her master in the
morning, and found him sitting, still dressed, with his face in the soup
which he had poured out into a deep soup-plate. This was very odd, and
she had called Mrs. Gashly. They settled that he was dead, and rang up
the doctor, who agreed with them. It was clear that Captain Puffin had
had a stroke of some sort, and had fallen forward into the soup which he
had just poured out....

"But he didn't die of his stroke," said Evie in a strangled whisper. "He
was drowned."

"Drowned, dear?" said Miss Mapp.

"Yes. Lungs were full of ox-tail, oh, dear me! A stroke first, and he
fell forward with his face in his soup-plate and got his nose and mouth
quite covered with the soup. He was drowned. All on dry land and in his
bedroom. Too terrible. What dangers we are all in!"

She gave a loud squeak and escaped, to tell her husband.

* * * * *

Diva had finished calling on everybody, and approached rapidly.

"He must have died of a stroke," said Diva. "Very much depressed lately.
That precedes a stroke."

"Oh, then, haven't you heard, dear?" said Miss Mapp. "It is all too
terrible! On Christmas Day, too!"

"Suicide?" asked Diva. "Oh, how shocking!"

"No, dear. It was like this...."

* * * * *

Miss Mapp got back to her house long before she usually left it. Her
cook came up with the proposed bill of fare for the day.

"That will do for lunch," said Miss Mapp. "But not soup in the evening.
A little fish from what was left over yesterday, and some toasted
cheese. That will be plenty. Just a tray."

Miss Mapp went to the garden-room and sat at her window.

"All so sudden," she said to herself.

She sighed.

"I daresay there may have been much that was good in Captain Puffin,"
she thought, "that we knew nothing about."

She wore a wintry smile.

"Major Benjy will feel very lonely," she said.

EPILOGUE

Miss Mapp went to the garden-room and sat at her window....

It was a warm, bright day of February, and a butterfly was enjoying
itself in the pale sunshine on the other window, and perhaps (so Miss
Mapp sympathetically interpreted its feelings) was rather annoyed that
it could not fly away through the pane. It was not a white butterfly,
but a tortoise-shell, v