“No, I don’t. She just told me Maggie had given her some tablets, and I told her not to take more than one.”

He said in a rough voice, because death always made him angry,

“Well, one wouldn’t have killed her, nor two. I’ll get on to Miss Maggie and find out how many there were in the bottle. You would have thought she would have had more sense than to hand over enough to do any harm. And where did she get them from? That’s what I’d like to know. Not from me.”

Maggie Repton took the call in her bedroom. She found the extension there a great comfort, because she did like to go early to bed, and it was so very trying to have to go down to the study in a dressing-gown if anyone called up and wanted to speak to her. She was only half dressed now. She threw her dressing-gown round her shoulders and pulled the eiderdown across her knees before lifting the receiver. It was much too early to ring up-nobody should ring before nine o’clock-it was almost certain to be for Valentine.

But it was for her. Dr. Taylor speaking.

“That you, Miss Maggie?… What’s this I hear about your giving Connie Brooke sleeping-tablets?”

She began to feel flustered at once.

“Oh dear-I didn’t think there would be any harm in it. She really looked wretched, and she said she hadn’t been sleeping at all well.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have done it. How many were there in the bottle?”

“Oh dear-I’m sure I don’t know. You see, there were a few left from the ones Dr. Porteous gave me when I was staying with my old cousin, Annie Pedlar. And then after Annie died there were some in another bottle-and I put the two together, but I never really counted them.”

Dr. Taylor’s voice came through very sharp and barking.

“You mixed the two!”

“Oh, but they were the same sort, or very nearly-at least I thought they were. Oh dear, I hope there isn’t anything wrong!”

“You haven’t got the other bottle, I suppose?”

“Oh, no. It would have been thrown away when we sorted out poor Annie’s things. At least-no, I remember now, the nurse wouldn’t let me mix them. I was going to, but she said it wouldn’t be at all the thing to do, so I didn’t.”

He said with a sudden alarming quiet,

“Are you sure about that?”

“Oh, I think so. You confused me-but I think the nurse said not to mix them-Oh, I don’t know-”

“Miss Maggie, can you form any idea of how many tablets there were in the bottle when you gave it to Connie Brooke?”

“Oh dear, I don’t know-I really don’t. But you can ask Connie… Yes, why didn’t I think of that before? Of course Connie will know. Why don’t you ask her?”

He said, “Connie is dead,” and rang off.

Jason Leigh came down the stairs at the Parsonage. He was whistling the odd haunting tune of a German folk song. He had heard it last in a very strange place indeed. He whistled it now, and the words went through his mind:

“On Sunday morning I go to the church,

The false tongues stand and talk in the porch,

Then one says this, and another says that,

And so I weep, and my eyes are wet.

Oh, thistles and thorns they prick full sore,

But a false, false tongue hurts a heart far more,

No fire on earth so burns and glows

As a secret love that no man knows.”

There would certainly be a considerable stabbing of tongues over Valentine’s broken marriage. Rough on Gilbert, but any man was a fool who married a girl who had nothing to give him. And if he didn’t know that she had nothing to give him, he was so big a fool that he was bound to get hurt anyway.

He opened the dining-room door and came into a light shabby room full of the comfortable smell of bacon and coffee. But the bacon was cooling on the Reverend Thomas Martin’s plate, the coffee in his cup skimming over, and both plate and cup had been pushed back. Tommy’s chair was pushed back too. He was standing in front of the fireplace at which he had so often scorched his trousers. This morning he could not have told whether there was any heat in the grate or not. He had an open letter in his hand, and he looked across it at Jason with an expression of incredulous horror on his big good-humoured face. What he saw was what he would have given a great deal to see at any time in the past six months- a young man with rather odd dark looks and a quizzical lift of the brows-the nephew who was as dear to him as any son could have been.

Jason shut the door behind him. He said,

“What’s the matter, Tommy-seen a basilisk or something?”

Tommy Martin held out the letter to him. It was written in a big awkward hand upon cheap white paper. Here and there the ink had run, as ink runs on blotting-paper. It began right at the top of the page without any form of address. With a slight intensification of his quizzical expression he read:

“I suppose you know what you are doing marrying Mr. Gilbert Earle to Miss Valentine Grey let alone his driving poor Doris Pell to take her life and leading another pore gurl astray as shall be nameless hadn’t you better find out about the pore gurl he married in Canada Miss Marie Dubois before you go helping him to commit bigamy with Miss Grey.”

Jason read it through to the end and came over to lay it down on the mantelpiece.

“Going to put it in the fire?”

“I can’t. I shall have to think.”

Jason’s mouth twisted.

“Anything in it?”

“No, no, of course not-there can’t be. We’ve had an epidemic of these things. That poor girl Doris Pell drowned herself because she got one. Just filth flung at random- nothing in it at all. But this suggestion of bigamy-that’s awkward. One can’t just ignore it.”

“I imagine not.”

Tommy Martin had a quick frown for that.

“Jason, you’ve known Gilbert Earle for a good long time, haven’t you? Ever come across anything to make you suppose-” He came to a stop.

Jason laughed.

“That there was something in this Marie Dubois business? My dear Tommy!”

“Well, I don’t like asking you, but I’ve got to.”

“Oh, I wasn’t at the wedding, you know.”

“Was there a wedding?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“My dear boy, this is serious. I must ask you to take it seriously.”

“All right then, here you are. I’ve known Gilbert on and off for quite a long time. I know him about as well as you know most of the people you are always running into because you go to the same houses and do the same sort of things. What you don’t know about anyone like that would fill several large volumes-I’ve never felt any urge to wade through them. In case you’re interested, your bacon is getting cold.” He went to the table, uncovered a dish, and helped himself.

Tommy shook his head.

“The bacon can wait.”

Jason looked shocked.

“Not on your life it can’t! Mine is past its best. I should say yours was a total loss.”

He was aware of an impatient movement and a more concentrated frown.

“My dear boy, you don’t realize the position. I shall have to get in touch with Gilbert. And there’s Roger-and Valentine-the wedding is at half past two-”

Jason helped himself to mustard.

“There isn’t going to be any wedding,” he said.

Tommy Martin stared.

“What do you mean?”

“There isn’t going to be a wedding. The question of Gilbert being a bigamist doesn’t arise, because he isn’t going to get married. Valentine isn’t going to marry him. There is no urgency about your seeing anyone. Relax and finish your breakfast.”

Tommy Martin came across and sat down in the chair which he had pushed back after opening the anonymous letter. He sat down, but he did not pull it in to the table. He looked hard at Jason and said,

“What have you been up to?”

“What do you suppose?”

“You’ve seen Valentine?”