In the grey daylight, for there was no sun to graciously soften crudities, the room looked forlorn and chill and lonely. Cannington stepped at my heels with a nervous shiver, for he was somewhat impressionable. I now noticed that there were two windows in the outer wall, which looked on to a kind of fenced clearing, sown with cabbages, potatoes and leeks. These jostled each other in a disorderly fashion, and the paths between the beds were so grass-grown that it was apparent but little interest had been taken in her garden by the late owner of the corner shop. The paling fence, unpainted and broken, which surrounded the oblong of the cultivated ground, seemed to push back the encircling elms, forming a small untidy wood behind. There was no gate in the fence, so the sole means of egress was through the shop. Between the windows was a door, leading into this dismal garden, standing cheek by jowl with a cumbersome chimney. The back door was locked. "We found it like that last night," exclaimed Dredge, now more communicative and less grim. "The odd thing is that the key is missing." "Perhaps Mrs. Caldershaw never went into her garden," I remarked. "It does not look inviting." "Oh, she must have gone out of that door sometimes," insisted the Inspector. "For there is a small shed filled with coals and wood outside; she must have replenished her fire occasionally, you know, Mr. Vance." "Well then, she probably had locked the door for the night, when she was murdered by this white-cloaked woman." "I daresay; but why should the key be missing?" Cannington made a suggestion. "The woman locked it when she escaped." "She escaped through the shop, after locking Mr. Vance in," retorted Dredge, "so why should she have troubled to steal the back-door key, which, on the face of it, she did not require?" "Huh," said the boy, "she seems to have a weakness for taking queer things, Mr. Inspector. Witness the glass eye." Dredge nodded. "I hear Miss Destiny knows something about that." At this moment, as if in answer to her name, the little old lady stepped daintily into the back room. She looked as shabby and frail as ever, but she undoubtedly was a gentlewoman, and her eyes still revealed a strong vitality. With a curtsey to me and to Cannington, she addressed herself graciously to Inspector Dredge. "My trap is at the door, sir, and I am anxious to return to my home at Burwain, since this poor woman I came to see is unfortunately dead." "Murdered," said Dredge laconically. Miss Destiny blinked with her wonderfully youthful eyes, and recoiled with a nervous gesture of her hand. "Murdered," she whispered, half to herself. "They did not tell me that." "Who did not tell you, ma'am?" demanded the Inspector brusquely. "Lucinda, my servant, Mr. Giles and his wife," she replied brokenly. "How was she murdered, sir?" "An ordinary hat-pin with a blue glass bead for a head was thrust into her heart, ma'am. She must have died immediately."