He found himself saying, “No, somehow I don’t. I don’t quite know why. There could be quite a case against her.”

Looking back on it afterwards, that was where a chill discomfort began to invade his mind. It was like sitting in a room with a draught-you didn’t feel it much at first, but you kept on feeling it more and more. It reached the point when he got suddenly to his feet.

“Look here, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back again.”

Valentine hadn’t known him all her life without becoming inured to his being abrupt. She didn’t even say, “Where are you going?” and was rewarded by having the information flung at her as he made for the door.

“I’ll just pick up Miss Silver and walk home with her.”

He ran down the drive, over the bridge from which poor Doris had fallen to her death, and out through the open gates. When he came to the path across the Green he didn’t run but he hurried. It was as he came through the small rustic gate of Willow Cottage that the curtains of Miss Wayne’s sitting-room were run back and the casement window thrown wide. He stepped off the path and looked into the room. Miss Silver, who had opened the window, now had her back to it. Renie Wayne stood in front of the door, her face contorted with fury and her voice shrill. The smell of gas came floating out to meet him. Miss Wayne was saying,

“The gas is turned on in that cupboard and the door is locked. And do you know who I’ve got in there? Do you know who is going to die in there unless you shut that window and draw the curtains and put your hand on the Bible and swear solemnly that you will go away tomorrow and never breathe a word, a single word, about all the stupid, senseless lies you have been making up! It’s no use your looking at me like that, and it’s no use your thinking you can unlock the cupboard and get him out, because I’ve hidden the key, and the door is very strong-you would never get it broken down in time to save him!”

Miss Silver took an almost imperceptible step towards the door. She said in her grave, calm voice,

“To save whom?”

Miss Wayne tittered.

“Why, who should it be except David? Joyce brought him over to see me, and she left him here whilst she went to meet Penny Marsh at the Croft-this stupid idea about taking Connie’s place in the school, when she ought to be grateful to me for a home and doing her best to look after me and make me comfortable! I haven’t been pleased with Joyce for some time and I wanted to punish her, so I turned on the gas and locked David in. But I’ll give you the key to let him out if you’ll promise not to tell about the letters, or Connie, or anything.”

Jason came in through the window on a flying leap. Renie Wayne screamed and went back against the door. When his hands came down upon her shoulders she fought like a cornered rat.

Miss Silver went past them and up the narrow stair. Since Renie Wayne had been alone in the house, what reason would she have to hide the key of any door that she had locked? She hoped and prayed that it would be sticking in the keyhole.

The smell of gas became overpowering as she came up on to the dark landing and switched on the small electric bulb which lighted it. There was a window looking towards Holly Cottage, and she set it wide, her head swimming and her breath catching in her throat. When she had taken a couple of long, deep breaths she turned round with the wind blowing past her. There on the right was the cupboard door, and the key was sticking in the lock. Up to this moment there had been no time to think. She had set herself to come through the gas to the window and to open the cupboard door. She had not let herself think what she might find there.

She opened the door now. It swung outwards.

The cupboard was a deep one, and it was full of shadows. Hardly any light came in from the bulb at the end of the passage. There was a water-cistern like a black rock rising up out of the dark and there was something lying up against it, but she couldn’t see what it was. The gas made her head swim. She felt along the wall for the bracket and turned the tap. Then she went right in, holding her breath, and groping for the thing that was on the floor. Her hand touched something rough, and then the leather handles of a large old-fashioned carpet-bag. She pulled upon them with what seemed to be the last of her strength, and with an unwavering determination to get the bag and its contents into the draught by the open window. The air met her and she struggled towards it with a growing sense of thankfulness. The bag was heavy, but it was not heavy enough to contain the body of David Rodney. She struggled with the straps that fastened it and sank down by the sill. The wind blew round her and her head cleared. The open mouth of the bag disclosed the body of a large tabby cat.

Jason Leigh, taking the stairs three at a time, found her trying to lift Abimelech to meet the air.

It was with more than her usual thankfulness that Miss Silver contemplated the familiar comfort of her own sitting-room in Montagu Mansions. Everything so cosy and so peaceful. So many blessings had been bestowed upon her, and she felt as if she could never be sufficiently grateful. The pieces of furniture with which she was surrounded bore mute testimony to the kindly thought of an earlier generation. The chairs had been the bequest of a great-aunt. The bookcase and two small tables had come to her from her grandparents. The silver teapot and milk-jug which Emma kept in such beautiful order had belonged to a godmother. And if the past provided food for affectionate remembrance, how full of kindness and of constantly increasing friendships was the present! She had just endeavoured to put something of this into words as she filled up Frank Abbott’s cup for the second time and handed it to him.

“You will, I fear, accuse me, and with justice, of misquoting Lord Tennyson’s so often quoted words, or at any rate of wresting them from their meaning, when I say that I cannot help being reminded of the line about broadening down ‘from precedent to precedent.’ ”

He helped himself to another of Emma’s excellent sandwiches. His eyes sparkled as he said,

“If anyone has the right to correct the great Alfred’s words, it is a devout admirer like yourself.”

She said soberly,

“No, I do not think that I have the right, but I feel that those words do express something of what is in my mind.”

He looked at her with affection.

“You know, I never felt really happy about Tilling Green. You oughtn’t to have gone there, and that is a fact. It seemed such a good idea to start with, but after that second death I began to get the wind up, and if I had had the least suspicion that Renie Wayne was the poison pen I should have got down there somehow, if I had had to forge a medical certificate to do it.”

“My dear Frank!”

He laughed.

“It is you who turn my thoughts to crime. I can’t think of anyone else who would make me contemplate forgery. All right, ma’am, don’t bring up the big guns-I’m still on the right side of the law. Tell me, what made you pick on Renie as a suspect? Frankly, she never entered my head.”

Miss Silver added a little more milk to her cup. Emma was always inclined to put too much tea in the pot when Frank was expected. Her thought turned back to her first impressions of Tilling Green.

“There was an association with the similar outbreak of anonymous letter writing at Little Poynton five years ago. An old aunt of the Miss Waynes was living there at the time, and they used to go over and see her. The postmistress was under some suspicion-or at least that is what Miss Renie wished to convey. She also took care to tell me that this Mrs. Salt was a sister of Mrs. Gurney who has the post office at Tilling Green, and she used this fact to insinuate that it might be Mrs. Gurney who was responsible for the present crop of letters. When I asked her if there were any grounds for such a suspicion, she became a good deal agitated and said how much she disapproved of gossip, and how much her sister had disapproved of it.”