Jeanne's sulkiness vanished in the delight of her kind at having any
inside information about a violent death or a scandal. Marise remembered
how absorbed and excited Jeanne had been when somebody in the apartment
overhead had taken an over-dose of morphine and how proud she had been
to have everybody in the market stop to ask her details.
"Killed?" said Jeanne with a greedy eagerness, her eyes shining, "how
killed? Drowned? or knocked against the rocks? Man? or woman? Have they
got the body out?"
Marise did not, as a rule, enjoy Jeanne's interest in murders and deaths
and kidnappings, but this time she welcomed it and passed on to the old
woman all she could remember of what Soeur Ste. Lucie had told her.
Jeanne was much disappointed that Marise had not heard the name of the
dead person, but Marise promised to tell her as soon as the paper was
out, the next morning, since it would probably be printed. And with the
mention, there came back to her, with one of those sickening lurches,
the recollection of the girls putting their heads together over the
newspaper at school, and then looking at her so oddly and hiding it
away. "It was probably in this morning's paper," she said to Jeanne. "If
you'll get it, I'll read it to you."
But Jeanne came back in a moment with an astonished face, saying that
Isabelle reported that, of all queer things, Mlle. Hasparren, the
music-teacher had stopped in that morning and asked to borrow the paper.
Jeanne's astonishment never on any occasion remained more than an
instant untinged with suspicion, and Marise, who knew the old face so
well, saw the suspicious expression begin slowly to color the surprise.
"What in the name of God did the Hasparren want with our newspaper?" she
asked herself aloud, obviously snuffing around a new scent. Marise hated
Jeanne's face when it looked like that,--crafty and zestful, as though
she were licking her chops over a nasty smell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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