Miss Silver smiled.

‘It is extremely simple. I was able to help a friend of hers some years ago. She talked about it, and about me. The other day I came down to a cocktail-party at the house of an old friend who lives at Grove Hill, and there I met Mrs Graham.’

‘Oh, you did, did you?’

‘She was the kind of woman who will talk to a stranger about her private affairs.’

He laughed.

‘People do talk to you, you know! What did the late Mrs Graham talk about?’

‘She talked about herself, and about an undesirable young man who was pestering her daughter, and about going away on a cruise in order to separate them. She pointed her daughter out to me and indicated Mr Carey as the undesirable young man. She appeared agitated at discovering that he was present and said that fortunately it had all come to nothing and he had been away, but that it really would be dreadful if it started all over again. Whilst Mrs Graham was speaking to me Miss Graham was making her way across the crowded room and out at the door. Mr Carey followed her. I was in a position to see this, but Mrs Graham was not. It was, I understand, their first meeting for five years. I saw them go, and I saw them return about half an hour later. It was perfectly plain that they had come to an understanding. Miss Graham looked as if she was in a dream. I was sitting on a sofa in a retired position. She came over to it and sat down. After a little while I spoke to her, mentioning her friend’s name and my own. We talked for a little, chiefly about some rather curious offers that were being made for the purchase of this house.’

‘Curious? In what way?’

‘In this way, Frank. The house was not up for sale, yet two would-be purchasers, each introduced by a different agent, had arrived with an order to view and were competing with offers which were proving a serious temptation to Mrs Graham. I gathered that what made this very awkward for Miss Graham was that the house is hers. From what I had seen of Mrs Graham I could imagine that she would find it convenient to forget this or any other fact which did not suit her. I really have very seldom encountered so self-centred a person. Miss Graham was quite restrained in what she said, but I discerned that the situation was weighing upon her. I was therefore not very much surprised when she rang me up and asked if she could come and see me. Now before we go any further, I should like to suggest an inquiry into the antecedents of these would-be purchasers.’

‘My dear ma’am!’

Her look reproved him.

‘I am sure I need not remind you that anything in the least abnormal should be investigated.’

‘Naturally. But I don’t quite see…’

‘The situation as regards the house was abnormal. You have to remember that it was not being offered for sale. Nevertheless two prospective buyers appear. They bid the property up to a price quite beyond its value. Then two things happen. One of them, Mr Worple, suddenly withdraws. Mrs Graham is murdered. The two events may have nothing to do with one another, or there may be some connexion. Even if remote, this would bear looking into. I have made a few notes on what little is known about Mr Blount and Mr Worple. I think that it would be wise to add to it.’

She passed over a neatly written sheet which contained no more about Mr Blount than his address and the fact that he was married to an invalid wife, but furnished particulars of Mr Worple’s previous connexion with Grove Hill and his relationship to Mr Martin of Martin and Steadman, the house-agents, who were, however, sponsoring, not him, but Mr Blount.

Frank put the sheet away in his pocket-book. He was not much interested in Mr Blount or Mr Worple, whose connexion with the case he regarded as hypothetical, and he was very much interested in Nicholas Carey. He said,

‘Suppose we get back to Carey. Mrs Graham described him as an undesirable young man. Any support for this point of view?’

‘I do not think so. He seems to have spent his holidays here with an aunt. Miss Graham had known him since she was a child. They were companions and friends before they fell in love. He is on the staff of the Janitor, and he has comfortable private means. He seems to have made every possible concession to Mrs Graham, even going to the length of suggesting that he and Althea should take over the top floor of this house, an arrangement which would certainly have proved unsatisfactory in the extreme. If Mrs Graham had had anything against his character she would, I feel sure, have produced it for my benefit. She was prepared to use any weapon to prevent her daughter from marrying. In the end the situation became too much for Mr Carey. Miss Graham was afraid to leave her mother. She feared a heart attack which might prove fatal. Mr Carey could no longer bear the strain. He has been abroad for the last five years, travelling in the wilds and supplying the Janitor with articles which have been a good deal talked about.’

‘He’s not “Rolling Stone”!’

‘I believe that is the name under which he writes.’

Frank whistled.

‘His stuff is good, there’s no doubt about that, but – he has certainly been in the wilds. The question is how much of their manners and customs might he have assimilated – enough to make him take an easy step over on to the wrong side of the law and choke an old woman who was standing between him and the girl he wanted? It’s quite a motive, you know.’

Miss Silver shook her head.

‘I do not think such a motive existed. Miss Graham had consented to marry him. The meeting last night was to arrange the details. They were, in fact, to have been married today.’

Frank Abbott’s eyes took on a bleak expression.

‘Were to have been,’ he said. ‘Do you suppose there was any chance that they would have been, after Mrs Graham had walked in on them and their arrangements? If heart attacks were her long suit, do you suppose she hadn’t got all the cards she wanted up her sleeve, or that she would have hesitated to play them? Motive? I should say Carey had a whale of a motive! And quite a lot of inhibitions could have disappeared after five years amongst people who probably hadn’t got any – at least not the sort that would prevent you from bumping off anyone who stood in your way.’

Miss Silver said with the mildness which did not for a moment deceive him,

‘If, my dear Frank, you are asking me to believe that Miss Graham stood by whilst a murderous attack was being made upon her mother, and that she afterwards made a completely false statement and was prepared to swear to it, I feel obliged to tell you that it would be completely out of her character, and that I am unable to entertain the idea for a moment.’

IN EVERY MURDER case there are a number of scattered threads to be picked up and woven together. Some appear to be more important than others, but none can be neglected. Sometimes a chance word or an accidental happening may lead in the direction of an important clue. In the work of the police there must be a continual search for and sorting and arranging of even the slightest and least significant of these threads.

Nothing could appear to have less connexion with Mrs Graham’s death than the fact that Mrs Sharp, the young wife of Detective Inspector Sharp, chose the following afternoon to visit her aunt Miss Agnes Cotton, the Grove Hill district nurse, yet it was to have a definite bearing on the course of events. Miss Cotton had very little interest in the daily press. Foreign affairs were a long way off and there wasn’t anything you could do about them. And so far as domestic problems were concerned she had her hands quite full enough with confinements, accidents and other local emergencies, without wanting to read about them in the papers. What was the good of being told that a woman had had quads in Japan or that a man had stabbed his wife in Marseilles, when her hands were full enough with the Thomas twins and one of them all set to die only she had no intention of allowing it, or when Bill Jones just round the corner from her had knocked Mrs Jones about to such an extent that it didn’t look as if they were going to get out of it without having a police-court case. When she did have time for reading, what she liked was one of the women’s magazines with a nice love story where everything came right in the end, and some good recipes and knitting patterns. Sooner or later she would certainly have heard about a local murder, but she might not have connected it with Mrs Burford’s false alarm and Mr Burford’s call on Tuesday night. Young married people and jumpy, that’s what they were. A first baby took them that way as often as not. Hilda Burford was a nervous little thing, and John one of those long pale lads for all the world like a piece of string dipped in tallow.