March had taken the opposite sofa corner. He said grimly,

“Unless it occurred to her that it could be used to remove an inconvenient husband as well as a wasps’ nest.” Then, with half a laugh, “She is everything you don’t like, but you’ll put the case for her with scrupulous fairness, won’t you?”

She smiled.

“Naturally, my dear Randal.”

“Well, now that you have discharged your conscience, suppose you tell me what you really think.”

She knitted for a while in silence.

“I suppose,” she said, “that you can see what is on the surface as well as I can. Her looks have been cultivated to the utmost, her mind has not been cultivated at all. I do not know what her parentage may have been, but I think she has had to fend for herself from an early age. Miss Maggie tells me that no relations have ever been mentioned, no old friends have ever been asked to stay. She has been a show girl and a mannequin, a precarious and intermittent form of employment and a very bad preparation for life in the country as the wife of an impoverished landowner nearly double her age. She may well have felt that she had made a disastrous mistake, especially if she was attracted by Mr. Gilbert Earle. I do not think that she had any affection for her husband, or for his family. Miss Maggie tells me that Colonel Repton made a settlement on her at the time of the marriage. It amounted to about two hundred a year. She may have felt two hundred a year and her freedom preferable to a continuance of her life at the Manor, where she had no ties either of affection or interest. All this is arguable, but in all of us there are certain factors which set a barrier between what we would prefer and what we are prepared to do in order to obtain that preference. A young woman might wish to be free and independent, and yet be quite incapable of murder as a means to that end.”

He nodded.

“As to the settlement, I’ve been seeing Repton’s solicitors this morning. They are an old Ledlington firm, Morson, Padwick, and Morson. I had an extremely interesting talk with Mr. James Morson, the head of the firm. Scilla Repton would have forfeited her settlement if she had been divorced for adultery. Asked whether she were aware of this fact, Mr. Morson looked down his nose and said he had personally made it his business to explain it to her at the time the settlement was made, pointing out the words dum casta and telling her what they meant. He had been a good deal scandalized by the fact that she had immediately burst out laughing and said in a drawling voice, ‘Oh, then, if I get bored with Roger and run away with somebody else I don’t get a bean. What a shame!’ So you see she was perfectly well aware that she would be left penniless if he divorced her. And he had not only told her that he was going to divorce her, but he had informed his sister and his solicitor. I gather that she had been meeting Earle in the flat of a complaisant friend, of which evidence would probably have been forthcoming. Now so far everything rather adds up against her, but yesterday morning Roger Repton went in to Ledlington and altered his will.”

Miss Silver knitted placidly.

“Indeed, Randal?”

He could not believe her to have missed the implication, but he proceeded to put it into words.

“He altered his will and cut her right out of it. He insisted on doing it then and there in what Mr. Morson had obviously considered a very precipitate manner. Now-point one-it might be argued that this is evidence of an intention to commit suicide. And-point two-when he saw his wife in the study some time within an hour of his death and Florrie heard them quarrelling, did he, or did he not, tell her that he had altered his will? Because if he did, and she knew he had cut her out of it, her interest in his death would be considerably reduced, whereas if she only thought he was going to alter it, it would be very much enhanced.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“There is, of course, no evidence upon either point. But suppose him to have informed her of the change in his will. She would certainly have been extremely angry. It must by then have been after four o’clock. The cyanide was, in all probability, already in the stoppered decanter. If it was added to the contents by Mrs. Repton, this may have been done much earlier in the afternoon, or during that very interview at some moment when Colonel Repton’s attention had been diverted. His death had in either case already been resolved upon, and the means were to hand. Would an angry young woman who had planned her husband’s death be in any state to weigh the alternative advantages of pursuing this plan or changing it? If he lived to divorce her, she would lose her settlement. If he died now, she might, or might not, be able to keep the settlement. That, I suppose, would depend upon the line taken by the family and the amount of evidence as to her infidelity. I think it would probably appear to her that she would keep it, because if he were dead he couldn’t divorce her. As to the will, had he any considerable amount to leave?”

March said,

“Very little. As there is now no male heir, the estate, including the farms from which practically all his income was derived, passes under the entail to Valentine Grey. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for her very generous contributions, the place would have had to be sold long ago. Scilla Repton probably knew all this.”

Miss Silver pulled upon the ball of blue wool. She said,

“It is common knowledge, Randal. I had not been here twenty-four hours before Miss Wayne had told me very much what you have told me now.”

“Then you think she did it?”

“I think we may say that there was a good deal of motive. She was threatened with divorce and with the loss of her settlement. She was also threatened with the loss of her lover. I do not know to what extent her feelings were involved, but Mr. Earle is an attractive young man who is said to have a career before him, and he is the heir to a title. Even nowadays he could not afford to marry a woman about whom there had been a serious scandal. As Roger Repton’s widow she would be in a much more eligible position.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“So much for the motive. As to the opportunity, it would of course have been easier for her than for anyone else to add cyanide to the contents of the decanter. It could have been done in the morning when Colonel Repton was out, or at any time during the afternoon when he was absent from the study for a few minutes. This is also true about anyone else in the house, but nobody else appears to have any motive. Apart from the household, two other people would have had the opportunity required.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Two?”

“Mr. Barton and Miss Eccles.”

He shook his head.

“Well, doesn’t the same thing apply? What motive could either of them have had?”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“The one which we have not touched upon, the one which I believe to have been the real motive for the deaths of both Colonel Repton and Connie Brooke. Each was believed to have identified the author of the poison-pen letters. In the case of Colonel Repton there may have been contributory motives. If it was his wife who poisoned him, there certainly were. He told her he knew who had written the letters, and he said, ‘Perhaps you wrote them yourself. It would be one way out of Valentine’s marriage and of your own.’ This was at the height of a violent quarrel, and may not have been very seriously meant. He did not repeat it to Miss Maggie when he told her that his wife had been unfaithful to him.

In the meanwhile Florrie’s story of the quarrel had gone all round the village, and it was being repeated everywhere that Colonel Repton knew who had written the letters. His death followed, just as Connie Brooke’s death followed upon the rumour that she possessed the same knowledge. I find it difficult to dissociate the two cases. Therefore, unless Mrs. Repton was the writer of the letters, I am disinclined to believe that it was she who poisoned her husband.”