“With what motive?”

“Jealousy-”

Miss Silver coughed.

“He had no cause for jealousy until Tuesday night, when he found her in his cousin’s room.”

Lamb stared.

“Oh, you know about that?”

“Yes. He had no cause for jealousy until then.”

Lamb looked at her shrewdly.

“Well, that’s all we know. There may be quite a lot we haven’t heard about. Or it mayn’t have been jealousy at all. Mrs. Latter came in for a large fortune from her first husband. We don’t know how it’s been left-not yet. It may go back to his family, or it may not. Mr. Latter says there was some dispute about the will, and a settlement was made out of court-Mrs. Latter and the relations divided the money. Mr. Latter thinks she got her share unconditionally, but he doesn’t know for certain. He says he never talked to his wife about money, and didn’t even know if she had made a will. Well, that sounded like poppycock to me. I got him to ring up her solicitor. There’s a will all right, and they’re posting a copy-it should be here in the morning. If Latter is down for anything considerable, there might be a motive in that. He might think it a pretty clever piece of work to come to you with a story of someone trying to poison his wife, and go away to play the devoted husband sharing his wife’s coffee so that no one should tamper with it… Well, what do you think of that?”

Miss Silver looked at him very seriously.

“Do you know what is Mr. Latter’s chief concern?” she said.

He gave a short laugh.

“I can’t say I do, but I suppose you are going to tell me.”

She said, “Yes. All he wants is an assurance that she did not commit suicide.”

Lamb pushed his chair back a couple of inches.

“What’s that?”

“He wants to be sure that his wife did not commit suicide. It is weighing on him very much that she may have done so. If she did, he thinks that he would be responsible for her death. After the scene in Mr. Antony’s room there was a complete breach between husband and wife. He let two days go by without speaking to her. He is afraid-I believe quite desperately afraid-that she took the morphia herself.”

Lamb thumped the table.

“He wants us to prove that someone murdered her?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I do not think that he has got as far as that. His mind is fixed upon the dreadful thought that he may have driven her to suicide.”

Lamb leaned forward, a hand on either knee.

“I’d want more than his word before I’d believe that! I’m not saying he’s guilty, but I’m not saying he’s innocent. He’d the strongest motive of anyone, and the best opportunity of making sure that he didn’t get the poisoned cup of coffee himself. Now what you say about his state of mind may be true, in which case he’s an innocent man, and I’m sorry for him. Or he may be the clever criminal I said we might have to look out for, in which case all this about wanting to be sure it wasn’t suicide-don’t you see how it might be just a smoke screen?” He pushed his chair farther back and got up. “Well, I shan’t convert you, and you won’t convert me-not tonight. We’re at the Bull in the village, and if it’s as bad as I think it’s going to be, I shall be glad when the job’s over. One comfort is, Frank’s going to like it a lot less than I do!” He laughed heartily. “If you like, he can step up after supper and let you look through the statements as far as we’ve got. Only mum’s the word.”

Miss Silver beamed.

“That will indeed be kind.”

Lamb shook her warmly by the hand.

“Mind you, there’s an advantage you’ve got over us that’s as good as a running start. We come down, and we see people just about as much on their guard as they can be. In a murder case they’ve most of them got something to hide-if it isn’t about themselves it’s about somebody else. They’re thinking about every word they say, and they don’t say more than they’ve got to-unless they’re like this Gladys Marsh that’s so full of spite she can’t unload it fast enough. But you come in as a friend. You see them when they don’t think anyone’s watching them. They talk natural to you, a thing they don’t do to a police officer. There’s no denying you’ve an advantage over us, and that’s why I’m willing to strain a point and let you know where we stand-as far as we can be said to stand anywhere yet. Well, Frank’ll be up after supper, and I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I very much appreciate your confidence.”

Antony walked out of the house with the feeling that if he didn’t get away from it for a bit he might not be able to resist the temptation to plead business and catch the first train back to town in the morning. He wasn’t very proud of the feeling, but there it was. He considered himself entitled to take half an hour off. He wondered where Julia was. She had gone to help Ellie wash up when supper was over, and he hadn’t seen her since. After a dreadful meal during which he and Miss Silver maintained the conversation, and poor old Jimmy sat staring at an untouched plate, they had all separated. By common consent, Minnie was urged to go to bed. Whether she had done so or not, he didn’t know. She certainly didn’t look fit to be about. Abbott, the police sergeant, had come up to see Miss Silver. They were closeted in the schoolroom, leaving the study to Jimmy, to whom all rooms, all places, were the same, since wherever he was the same prison of misery closed him in. Presently Antony would go back to him. Not that there was anything that he could do except be there. A foul business.

He went down over the lawn and through the rose-garden. Beyond the hedge which screened it there was a seat. He came round the corner, saw that Julia was there, and stood still, watching her. It was still quite light, the sun going down into a haze. A wide prospect of meadowland spread out on a gentle slope which tilted to the banks of a stream. Mist lay on the fields, but overhead the sky was a clear pale blue. Julia sat with her hands open in her lap, her face lifted to the sky. But she was not looking at it or at anything else. Her eyes were shut. He thought how pale she was, and how withdrawn. But there was strength in her pose, not weakness-the strength of control. She was still because everything in her was bent upon some image in her mind.

He stood there watching her, with the silence between them. Time flowed past. At last he moved, going towards her over the grass, and almost at the same moment she turned her head and saw him come. At least he supposed she saw him. Her eyes were open, but they were curiously blank. Then warmth came to them. She put out a hand.

“Come and sit down. It’s nice here.”

That seemed to be all she had to say. There was something restful about being there together, with no need to talk.

After a time he touched her hand lightly, looking down at it. She spoke then.

“I was thinking-”

“Yes?”

“About yesterday-before it happened. We should have said, pretty well all of us, that things were about as bad as they could be. Jimmy and Ellie and Minnie were all desperately unhappy. I don’t know about Lois. It must have been pretty grim for her too. And yet if we could turn the clock back and be where we were then, it would seem like heaven.”

The touch on her hand became a clasp.

“What are you driving at?”

She gave him a look dark with trouble.

“We can’t drive anywhere, we can only drift. That’s what is so horrible. I can bear it when there are things to be done, but there isn’t anything that we can do. It’s like being in a boat without a rudder and hearing something like Niagara pounding down over a horrible drop ahead of you.”

He gripped her hand hard and said,

“Don’t be melodramatic, darling.”

She pulled to free herself, but gave it up as soon as she found that he did not mean to let her go.