Frank nodded.

‘A good tale, and even a likely one! And not one single solitary shred of evidence to put before a jury! But in Carey’s case – well, I think it would be touch and go for him, depending on who was briefed for the defence and upon just what impression he made in the witness box.’

‘And if you were on such a jury, which way would your vote go?’

He laughed.

‘That would be telling!’

She said demurely,

‘I should very much like to be told.’

‘Very well, strictly between you and me I don’t think Carey did it. From what I have heard I should imagine she would have been an appalling mother-in-law, but I shouldn’t think he would go to the length of murdering her to avoid the relationship – too much awkwardness all round, and not enough incentive. He was marrying the girl anyhow, and as Mrs Graham had already found him in the gazebo once, it really didn’t matter whether she walked into him again.’

He received a look of intelligent commendation.

‘That is precisely the argument I should have put forward myself. But to return to the Blounts. I feel extremely anxious on her account. If he becomes seriously alarmed as to what she may have overheard, I fear for her safety. She is in just that vague shocked condition which would make it comparatively easy to stage an accident. She is, in fact, in a frame of mind conducive either to accident or suicide. And there would be no proof that it was not just a case of another neurotic woman laying down the burden which she feels no longer able to carry. Of course as long as she is here and in a guest house…’

He interrupted her.

‘They have left the guest house. I called in there on my way up, and they had gone. All very sudden and unpremeditated. Miss Madison was put out enough to want to blow off steam, and she told me all about it. It seems two of the guests were alarmed by Mr Blount calling out in his sleep last night. She said she just mentioned it to him when he came in in the early afternoon and he didn’t say anything then, but a little later he came down and said he had been called away in a hurry, upon which he telephoned for a taxi, paid the bill, and departed to catch the four-thirty. She seemed to think that he had taken offence.’

Miss Silver was looking exceedingly grave.

‘Did she say anything about Mrs Blount?’ He nodded.

‘She said she didn’t look as if she was fit to travel.’

THE BLOUNTS TRAVELLED by a slow train. It stopped at a great many stations, and every time it stopped people got in or got out. Sometimes the compartment was so crowded that Mrs Blount felt as if she couldn’t breathe. The morning had been cold, but the sun had come out and the afternoon was muggy. Most of the people who were travelling were far too warmly dressed, but nobody seemed to want to have a window open. The air became heavy with the smell of moth-ball and warm people and tobacco smoke. Mrs Blount shut her eyes, because when she tried to keep them open everything kept slipping out of focus. She couldn’t see how ill she looked – those pale eyelids closed and the dark marks like bruises underlining them. With her head tipped back and her colourless lips fallen apart, it really did seem as if those drooping lids might never rise again. Mr Blount in the opposite seat was stirred to anger. What did she want to go and make a show of herself like that for? Why couldn’t she behave like any of the other women in the compartment? There was one of them reading just the kind of rubbishy paper Millie was so fond of. Another was sucking peppermints, and a thin wiry woman in spectacles had got up quite a brisk argument with the person next to her. He leaned forward and touched Millie on the knee.

‘Here, you’d better not go to sleep, had you? You always say it gives you a headache if you sleep in the train.’

She started, looked at him nervously, and spoke in an undertone.

‘I just felt giddy.’

He began to wish he had left her alone. But perhaps it was all for the best. If anyone was going to remember seeing them, it would be recalled that her behaviour had been odd, and that he had been solicitous for her comfort. He said in his most agreeable voice,

‘Oh, well, you must do just what makes you most comfortable, my dear.’

She knew why he spoke to her like that. He was never sharp or angry with her in front of people. He had been the same with his first wife, the one who fell under a train. There had been some talk about that. He wasn’t there when it happened – or he wasn’t supposed to be there. And no one could say they had ever heard them quarrel. She shut her eyes again and tried not to think about Lucy Blount who had fallen under a train nearly four years ago.

Sid hadn’t told her where they were going yet, but she thought that it would be Cleat. His grandfather was dead, and his Aunt Lizzie lived on in the old thatched cottage which visitors always thought so picturesque. Sid often did quite well out of taking pieces out of stock and putting them into the cottage – a chair, or a table, or some china figures. Visitors used to see them, the table and a chair outside in a casual sort of way, and the figures up in the window close to the glass. They would pay good money and go off as pleased as Punch, thinking they had got a bargain. Lizzie Pardue was very good at selling things like that. She was daily help at the Vicarage, a little bit simple but a good worker. She didn’t know anything about the things Sid brought down for her to sell only what he told her, so that the people who bought them just thought she had no idea of the value which she hadn’t, and that she was a simple soul who had never been out of a village in her life which was perfectly true.

They had to change twice before they got to Cleat. It was only the third time that Millie Blount had been there. A faint reassurance came to her as Lizzie Pardue opened the door of the thatched cottage and made them welcome. Sid must have rung up the Vicarage and said they were coming, because their rooms were all ready, and a nice meal too. He must have done it at the station when he left her in the ladies’ room and they were waiting for their train. The reassurance came from the homely surroundings and from Lizzie Pardue herself. Sid took after his mother’s people. Lizzie had the same florid colouring, the thickset build, the strong arms and hands, but there the resemblance ended. Her features were soft and blurred and her eyes were very kind. Kindness – that was the thing you noticed about her at once, and went on noticing. She had a shy half hesitating look for Sid’s wife who was still a stranger, and a soft almost whispering manner of speech. Mrs Blount didn’t say to herself in so many words that Sid wouldn’t try anything on in front of his Aunt Lizzie, but there was that kind of feeling in her mind. She ate a good supper, and thought that she would sleep.

There were three bedrooms in the cottage. Lizzie had the one which looked to the front. The big double bed was the one in which her parents had slept all through their married life. When old Mr Pardue died she had moved in quite simply and as a matter of course. The cottage belonged to her now and all the furniture, so it was only right she should have the best room. The other two bedrooms were small, with narrow truckle beds.

Millie Blount would rather have slept on the floor than have shared a room with Sid. She didn’t feel as if she could ever share a room with Sid again. Suppose he was to call out in his sleep like he had in Miss Madison’s Pink Room. Suppose he was to say what he had said before. Or words. Everything in her shook at the thought of it. But here she could lie down on a narrow bed and pull the bedclothes right up over her ears and she wouldn’t hear anything at all. The cottage was strongly built, with thick walls, and the thatch all over it to deaden sound. Even if Sid called out she wouldn’t hear what he said.