He shook hands all round and departed with Detective Inspector Sharp. Miss Silver following them out of the room, he had a word with her at the door.

‘You will be giving the bride away?’

A look reproved him.

‘It will naturally be an extremely quiet wedding.’

There was a sparkle in the cool blue eyes.

‘ “The bride wore crape and a mourning wreath”?’

Miss Silver said composedly,

‘No one has worn crape for at least the last forty years.’

‘My dear ma’am, you know everything! I withdraw the crape. I like Carey, but I don’t suppose we shall ever come across each other again. I shouldn’t have cared to have had to arrest him, but you know it very nearly happened. When do you go back to Montague Mansions?’

‘Althea would like me to stay and see her married. I do not feel that she should be here alone.’

‘Will you be back by Sunday? And if you are, may I come to tea?’

Miss Silver smiled indulgently.

‘Hannah tells me we have had a delightful gift of honey in the comb from Mrs Rafe Jerningham. She will make you some of her special scones to eat it with.’

Althea and Nicholas stood together in the drawing-room. Both his arms were round her as he said,

‘When are we going to get married, Allie?’

She answered him in a soft, trembling voice.

‘I don’t know. I think we ought to wait.’

He said grimly,

‘Another five years? You had better think again. I want to take you away and look after you.’

She said,

‘Away?’

He nodded.

‘Somewhere where nobody has ever heard of Grove Hill. Spain if you don’t mind trains and buses that don’t arrive, and plumbing that doesn’t work.’

‘I’m not passionate about them. Did you think I would be?’

He laughed.

‘I thought perhaps a plunge into the Middle Ages would be a complete change. But I tell you what, we can start off in the South of France and just wander. If you know the ropes it can be done very agreeably. And we needn’t make any plans. When we’ve had enough of one place we can go to another. Now that I’m not going to be arrested, I’ll get a car. A chap I know is selling an Austin which has only done four or five thousand miles. He’s going to America, and I can have it any time I like. So what about getting married on Thursday?’

Althea looked up at him. There was something she was going to say, but it didn’t get said. It came over her in a rush of feeling that yesterday was gone – that all the yesterdays of the last five years were gone, and that nothing and nobody could bring them back again. They had been dreary and endless in the living. They had dragged upon their way and halted on their going, and at the end they had gone out in tragedy and terror. There had been enough of them and to spare. They were done, they were over, they were gone, and she and Nicky were free. They were together and they were free. She looked up at him, and she said, ‘Yes – yes – yes.’

Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.

Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.