Rachel felt rather as if she were out in a high wind. The wind seemed to be blowing quite a lot of things away. And she didn’t care. She let them go down the wind. The rough tweed of Gale’s coat was pleasant and harsh under her cheek. Half her life was gone, but there was another half to come.

Gale tipped up her chin with a strong, gentle hand.

“What you really want is a family of your own,” he said.

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.