‘He never said anything about it to me,’ said Jim.

‘Well, there it is. I shall have to see the solicitors. There was quite a lot of money, I believe.’

Miss Silver looked from one to the other. She said, “This Mr Cranston is a relation of yours?’

Anne flushed. She said, ‘Yes, he was the same relation to old William Forest that I was. He has never been-’ she hesitated, and finished very low, ‘satisfactory. I’m afraid he thought that if he could marry me it would be all right-for him. I think they must have known that I would come to the Hood. I think when Anne turned up there that they must have felt desperate. I don’t know what she said to them. If she said she was married, they would want to get her out of the way. You see, if she-wasn’t there-everything came to me. I’m afraid that’s what they thought of. So they made a plan-to kill her.’

Tears were in her eyes. They ran down before she could stop them. Poor Anne-poor, poor Anne-

Miss Silver leaned forward and patted her hand.

‘My dear,’ she said very kindly, ‘I do not think that you have anything to reproach yourself with.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Sit still and rest for a little. Inspector Abbott will be returning, and he will expect to find us ready to go back to town with him… No, I can manage very well, Mr Fancourt. I would rather that you kept Anne company. I do not think that she should be left alone just now.’

Jim threw her a grateful glance. He insisted on carrying out the plates and dishes. Then he returned to Anne.

She had dried her eyes, and she was gazing out of the window at the dark trees which surrounded the house. He came to her and put his arms about her. They stood there together and looked out, not at the dark trees, but at the bright misty future. It was all over, the trouble and the tragedy. They could not see their way clearly, but they would find it together. They stood there and faced it.

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.