He wasn’t really abashed. He let go of her hands, but remained upon his knees.

“Well, it seems to have brought you round.” And then, “Oh, Rietta-won’t you?”

The momentary force went out of her. She spoke the bitter, honest truth.

“I ought to say thank you, but I can’t. I’m fond of you, but I don’t love you. I can’t even feel grateful to you-I can’t feel anything-I’m too tired. Please go away.”

He stared at her, dismayed, obstinate.

“There must be something I can do. Why won’t you let me help you? You must have someone, and there isn’t anyone else. Even if you hate me you might let me help you.”

That “there isn’t anyone else” bit deep. How deep, she didn’t know till afterwards when the sharp hurt of the moment settled into a desolate aching. She caught her breath.

“Please, Henry-”

He got to his feet and stood there looking down on her, bewildered and thwarted.

“Even if you hate me you might let me help you.”

Her mood changed. He did want to help her. Why should she hurt him? She said,

“Oh, Henry, don’t be silly. Of course I don’t hate you- you’re one of my very best friends. And I’m not-not ungrateful-really not. If there’s anything you can do, I’ll let you do it. It’s just that I’m so tired-I’m really too tired to talk. If you would please understand and-and go away-”

He had just enough sense to go.

Miss Silver received a telephone call that evening. Mrs. Voycey, answering the insistent bell, encountered a pleasant masculine voice.

“I wonder if I could speak to Miss Silver. I am an old pupil of hers-Randal March.”

Miss Silver put down her knitting and approached the instrument.

“Good evening, Randal. It is nice to hear your voice. A very distinctive one, if I may say so.”

“Thank you-I will return the compliment. I rang up to say that I have business in Melling tomorrow. I should not like to be there without paying my respects. It is a little difficult for me to fix an exact time, but it would not, I think, be earlier than half past three.”

“I shall be at home. Mrs. Voycey, I believe, has to go to a meeting in the village hall. She would, I know, be very glad if you would have a cup of tea with me.”

He said, “Thank you,” and rang off without giving time for the affectionate enquiries for his mother and sisters with which she had been about to round off the conversation.

Returning to the drawing-room and resuming her knitting, she acquainted Mrs. Voycey with the substance of the call. She was obliged to exercise a good deal of delicate tact. There was nothing that Cecilia Voycey would have liked better than to throw over her meeting, remain at home, and entertain the Chief Constable at tea. She had to be dissuaded from this course without allowing it to appear that Randal March’s visit was anything but a respectful gesture to the preceptress of his childhood’s days.

Knitting briskly and completing the second side of little Josephine’s jacket, Miss Silver condoled with her hostess.

“It is always so difficult when one would like to be in two places at once. You are the chairman of the Women’s Entertainments Committee, I understand. So important, of course, with the Christmas season coming on, and you would be extremely difficult to replace in the chair. Unless perhaps Miss Ainger-”

Cecilia Voycey coloured quite alarmingly.

“My dear Maud!” she exclaimed.

Miss Silver coughed.

“I thought, dear, you mentioned that she was efficient.”

“She is a complete kill-joy,” said Mrs. Voycey in a tone of Christian forbearance. “I have never said that she wasn’t efficient, and I never will, but you can’t entertain people by being efficient, and when we get up a play or an entertainment we like to be able to enjoy ourselves and get some fun out of it. Dagmar Ainger’s idea is to scold everyone till they are sulky, and then organize everything until you might just as well be a lot of chessmen on a board for all the life and go there is left in you. No, no-however much I should like to stay, I can’t risk it. I am the only one who really stands up to her.”

She continued for some little time to discourse upon the fruitful subject of Miss Ainger, finishing up with,

“And how Henry stands it, I can’t imagine. But of course he can always say he has got to write a sermon and lock the study door!”

Miss Silver remarked mildly that interference in other people’s affairs was a sad fault. She then steered the conversation into a channel which led in the most natural manner to Catherine Welby.

“A very pretty woman. She was with Miss Cray when I arrived this morning. Has she been a widow for long?”

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Voycey was full of information. “Of course everyone thought she was settled for life when she married Edward Welby. And then he died and left her with nothing but debts. I really don’t know what she would have done if Mrs. Lessiter hadn’t let her have the Gate House.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I should have thought she might have found Melling dull.”

“My dear Maud, I have no doubt she does, but there is nowhere else where she could live so cheaply. She did go away during the war, and I believe she had a very pleasant job, driving for someone at the War Office. She used to drive Mrs. Lessiter’s car a good deal. Of course we all thought she would marry again, and I believe she was practically engaged. But she had very bad luck-the man went abroad and was killed- at least that’s the story. And then her job petered out and she came back here. Doris Grover tells Bessie she still gets quite a lot of letters from India, so perhaps something may come of that. And she goes up and down to town quite a lot. It would really be very much better if she were to marry again.”

Miss Silver began to cast off her neat pale blue stitches.

The Chief Constable laid down the papers submitted by Superintendent Drake. He saw before him an unpleasant and harassing day. He found Drake zealous, efficient, and extremely uncongenial. He allowed none of these things to show in face or manner.

Drake, always ready to break a silence, took up his tale.

“As you see, the medical report puts the time of death anywhere between nine and eleven. Well, we know he was alive at nine, because Mrs. Mayhew heard him speak about then. If we knew when he had his last meal we could narrow it down a bit, but with a cold supper left, we can’t do better than that. They think it couldn’t have been later than eleven. Well now, Mrs. Mayhew saw that raincoat with the blood on it at a quarter to ten. That means he was dead within half an hour of the time at which Miss Cray admits she was there. If he was dead then, Miss Moore’s statement gives Mr. Robertson an alibi-he was with her until nine-fifty. But I’ve seen Mrs. Mayhew again, and I don’t make out from what she says that there was all that blood on the sleeve when she saw it. She says it was stained round the cuff and she saw the stain. But when I put it to her, was it soaked, she said no it wasn’t, it was just stained. And that would tie up with the scratch Miss Cray had on her wrist. The way I see it now is this. Miss Cray goes home, like she says, at a quarter past nine. Miss Bell corroborates this. We don’t know why she left the raincoat, but leave it she did. My guess is, either there was a quarrel and she came away too angry to notice, or maybe he started to make up to her and she got nervous and cleared out. Now to my mind one of two things happened. Either Miss Cray gets thinking about that old will and the half million it would bring her, and then she remembers her raincoat and goes on up to get it back. Mr. Lessiter is sitting there at his table. She puts on her coat, goes over behind him to the fire as if she was going to warm herself, picks up the poker and-well, there you are. Then she comes home and washes the coat. It must have needed it!”