Gale Brandon stood where the well cover tilted against the table. He was watching Cosmo and Rachel, but she thought they did not see him. They only saw each other.

Caroline watched too. Rachel’s words said themselves over in her mind-“You knew the well was open. You sent her in. You heard her scream. You laughed.” She saw Cosmo as if she was seeing him for the first time. All the easy geniality was gone. There was about him something which even to her dim and exhausted sense spelled danger If a dog looked at you like that, you went warily. But for Cosmo to have that twisted look of hate for Rachel-for Rachel-

Caroline opened her lips to cry out, but no sound came. She was a yard from the step. She tried to move, but she had no power. They spoke in the room-Rachel-Cosmo. Rachel’s words went by her, but she thought she heard Cosmo say, “I’ve always hated you.”

Gale Brandon took a long stride forward. The thing had gone far enough-too far in his opinion. He stood between Rachel and Cosmo Frith and spoke his mind.

“That’s enough of that! You sent that girl to her death, and you’ll have to account for it!”

His voice rang loud where the other voices had been low. He had come out of nowhere with the extreme of suddenness.

Cosmo took the shock with a visible stiffening of every muscle. He straightened up, measured Gale with the eyes which had reminded Caroline of a dangerous dog, and stepped back. The odds were out of all reason, and he was not beyond reason yet. There was still the car. If he could get a start-get away-get over to France. After all, there was no proof-no possible proof. They could never prove that he had uncovered the well. Rachel would keep the police out of it if she could… No, they’d be bound to come in, with Caroline dead-with Caroline dead. But it would be an accident. No one could ever prove that it wasn’t an accident.

All this in the flash between danger and decision. He said aloud,

“I’ve nothing to say to you, and nothing to account for-to you. There’s been an accident, and there’s an end to it.”

With the last word he had turned his back and was skirting the well as he had skirted it before, going right-handed past the larder and the sink, with his head up and his shoulders squared. Miss Silver saw him go. And then he came to the open door and stood there face to face with Caroline. She was a yard away on the flagged path which led up to the step. A glimmer of candle-light showed him her face drowned in the fog. Her eyes were open and empty. They looked at him as drowned eyes look from a dead face. She stood quite still. Everything stood still for a heart-breaking second. It was when she put out her hand with a wavering motion that reason went out of Cosmo Frith. He broke suddenly, dreadfully, screamed some incoherence of horror, and went back from that weak, groping hand-and back-and back.

Gale Brandon tried to reach him, but was too late. It was no more than three steps from the doorway to the well-three steps taken at a rush. And then, hands clutching and balance gone, over the edge and down.

The verse which Rachel had not been able to finish finished itself:

“They have digged a pit and fallen into it themselves.”

The inquest was over, and a verdict returned of death by misadventure, with a recommendation by the jury that the well should be permanently boarded over or furnished with a parapet. There had been terrible moments of strain, but, with so much else that was over, they were over now.

“Will you describe what happened, Miss Treherne?”

The gray-haired coroner was â friend of nearly twenty years’ standing. Thank God for that.

Rachel could hear her own voice now.

“Mr. Brandon and I found the well uncovered. I very nearly fell into it. We warned Miss Silver. Mr. Brandon and Miss Silver stayed in the scullery. I went to answer the telephone. When I came back the door was opening. Miss Ponsonby came in, and Mr. Brandon pulled her out of the way of the well. Mr. Frith followed her. He came round the well and lit a candle.”

“The room was in darkness?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“There was a candle in the kitchen. I spoke to Mr. Frith about the danger of leaving the well uncovered.”

“Was there a quarrel?”

“No-I should not have called it a quarrel. I had had a terrible fright.”

“Was there any quarrel with Mr. Brandon?”

“No. Mr. Brandon told Mr. Frith he was accountable for leaving the well uncovered. Mr. Frith turned away and went round the well to the door. Miss Ponsonby was just outside. I think he did not expect to see her there. He was startled, and he must have forgotten about the well. He stepped back, and before Mr. Brandon could reach him he overbalanced and fell.”

“Mr. Brandon did not touch him?”

“Oh, no.”

“Did anyone touch him?”

“No.”

Gale Brandon’s evidence, on the same lines. Then:

“What did you do after Mr. Frith fell?”

“Miss Silver rang up the police. The chauffeur and I went to try and get a rope. He must have sunk at once. We did what we could.”

“I am sure of it, Mr. Brandon. Oh, there is one thing-can you account for the log of wood which was found floating in the well?”

“I think I can. It was lying near the edge of the well. It got pushed over.”

“You noticed it?”

“Yes, I noticed it.”

Miss Silver’s evidence, very precise and composed:

“Where were you when Mr. Frith fell?”

“I was just inside the larder, sir.”

“And why were you in the larder?”

“I stepped back just inside the door when Mr. Frith came in. I wished to leave him room to pass safely round the well.”

“And from first to last no one touched Mr. Frith?”

“No, sir-no one touched him.”

“He was startled at seeing Miss Ponsonby and stepped back?”

“Yes, sir.”

They had all given their evidence, and it had all been true, only no one had spoken the key-word which would have resolved death by misadventure into something darker and more dreadful. If the coroner had his thoughts, he did not speak them-at least not in that place or at that time. The jury returned their verdict and dispersed.

The talk at the Magpie went that there was something queer about the business:

“What did he want with the girl anyway, taking her off to his place in all that fog? No good, I’ll be bound.”

“Scared to death she was, for fear what they’d ask her.”

“The crowner let her down easy.”

“ ”Funny thing, all of them rolling up like that, one after the other.”

“Well, I’d nothing against Mr. Frith myself, but they do say…”

They said a lot.

The inquest was over. The verdict stood. The nine days’ wonder would pass. Life would go on.

But there was another reckoning, here in the family. A private inquest where something more than the bare truth would have to be spoken if the life that went on was to be worth living.

Richard Treherne had come to Pewitt’s Corner to find Rachel sitting on the step with Caroline unconscious in her arms. Upon that a coming and going-men with a rope, and the rope too short-the police-the whole dreadful business of plumbing the well. He had taken Rachel and Caroline back to Whincliff Edge, and had not seen Caroline again until he saw her, a sight to wring the heart, across the crowded coroner’s court.

He saw her now on the couch in Rachel’s sitting-room, where this second, intimate inquest was to take place. He stood inside the door and, seeing Caroline, saw no one else. A rage against Cosmo took him. She looked so drained of everything. But her eyes met his, and they were clear. He thought of the sky after rain, clear above the sea-only Caroline’s eyes were brown. He came forward, took her hand, kissed it, and sat down.

Rachel was there; Gale Brandon; Miss Silver in a very odd grey dress which looked as if it had been trimmed with black tape; and Louisa Barnet-Louisa stiffly apart, wearing her Sunday black and the expression which she reserved for funerals. Rachel wore black too, but bright at her breast was the oak sprig she had chosen with Gale. And he had said he wanted it for the woman whom he had loved all her life. The diamond leaves and the acorn cups gave out a frosty sparkle. The pearls had their own soft, changing sheen.