Miss Silver looked at him gravely.

‘Are you suggesting – ’

‘Yes, I am. I’ve been over it and over it, and I don’t think there is any other explanation. I looked in the register, you know, after Candida had gone home, and I saw the names – Miss Olivia Benevent – Miss Cara Benevent. And they passed through the hall whilst I was there. I didn’t know that there was any family connection with Candida, and from first to last they never said anything about it themselves, but when they wrote to my uncle about Underhill I remembered the name, and as soon as I came down here I remembered them. And then Candida turned up, and I found she was their niece. That gave me a jolt, and the whole thing began to come back. And then I found out that Candida’s grandmother and her descendants came in for most of the property after Miss Cara. Cousin Louisa was talking about it the other night, do you remember?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

He went on as if she had not spoken.

‘When I told Candida, she said she knew about that. It seems Miss Cara told her. Now why should she have told her?’

Miss Silver had set down her cup and taken up a half-finished stocking. The hard grey yarn had a very schoolboy look, and for a fleeting moment Stephen wondered whom she could be knitting it for. He brushed the thought aside as she said,

‘I cannot say, Mr. Eversley.’

‘But you can see why I want to get Candida away from Underhill – ’

She was knitting sedately.

‘I can see that the incident which you have described made a deep impression on your mind.’

‘I suppose it did, but it had practically faded out. Then I met her again, and it all came back, and on the top of it that there was all this business about Alan Thompson.’

After a short thoughtful pause she said,

‘Yes, there was some talk about Alan Thompson the night you were here for supper. Louisa had asked you whether he was spoken of at Underhill, and you replied that you had received the impression he was not to be mentioned there. Have you anything to add to that reply?’

He said,

‘Yes, I have. Do you remember Cousin Louisa said there had been gossip about him and Miss Cara – that it had even been said that she might be going to marry him?’

Miss Silver said in a disapproving voice,

‘There is often a great deal of gossip in a Cathedral town. The society is formal and the interests restricted. Where such is the case, there is apt to be an undue emphasis on personal relationships. As Lord Tennyson so truly says:

‘ “And common is the commonplace,

And vacant chaff well meant for grain.” ’

Unaccustomed to her habit of quotation, Stephen felt slightly stunned. After a respectful moment had passed he went on.

‘Do you know, I don’t think it was just gossip. There is something that came my way last night – I think I had better tell you about it.’

‘Yes, Mr. Eversley.’

Her tone made it a statement of fact.

‘Well, it’s like this. I was dining with a Colonel Gatling. He has an enormous barrack of a house at Hilton St. John about two miles the other side of Underhill. The original building was one of those small manor houses, but the Gatlings, who came into it in the 1840s, overbuilt it with one of those frightful Victorian monstrosities which are now quite impossible to run. He wants to get it down to its original proportions, retain a very nice walled garden, and develop the rest of the property as a building estate. Hilton is an expanding place with an aircraft factory, and I think the necessary permits will be forthcoming. Well, that won’t interest you – it’s only to explain how I came to be dining with Colonel Gatling. He’s been very friendly – he’s a sociable, convivial old boy.’ He gave an odd half laugh. ‘Well, there’s the key to what I’ve got for you. He was very friendly and convivial last night. He talked a lot about his neighbours, and after a bit he got round to the Miss Benevents. He told me all about their father, one of the fine crusted Victorian brand, and how he had cut off his daughter Candida because she had married a parson who was probably the only man she had ever met. And then he chuckled and came out with, “I wonder what he’d have said if he’d known that his daughter Cara had come within an ace of marrying a young waster who might almost have been her grandson!” I said, “Did she do that?” and he poured himself out another glass of port and told me the whole story.’

‘He told you that Miss Cara had actually contemplated marrying Alan Thompson?“

Stephen frowned.

‘He put up an extremely circumstantial story. It seems that his brother Cyril was the Rector of the old parish church of Hilton, and that for some reason Underhill falls within that parish.’

Miss Silver exclaimed.

‘Dear me! They surely did not put up the banns there!’

‘Oh, no. But Alan Thompson came to the Rector about getting a licence – in the strictest confidence.’

Miss Silver looked shocked.

‘Then surely he did not tell his brother! It would be a very serious breach!’

‘Oh, no, he didn’t tell anyone. But he seems to have been a good deal troubled at the idea of such a marriage, and he wrote about it in his diary.’

Miss Silver’s disapproval deepened.

‘Colonel Gatling should have regarded such a diary as sacred.’

Stephen was inclined to agree with her, but he said,

‘Well, he was his brother’s executor, and he wasn’t just rummaging in the diary. There was some question about rents that had been remitted, and he went to the diary to see whether it backed up what the tenants said. The date was a matter of three years ago, and he stumbled on the Reverend Cyril’s heart-searchings over what he called “this most unnatural marriage”. He appears to have made strong representations to Thompson, and to have entirely failed to impress him. Colonel Gatling quoted him as saying that the young man admitted that the marriage would be a business arrangement, and defended it on the grounds that Miss Cara had always had a bad time and been bullied by her sister, and that if he was her husband he would be in a position to see that she got better treatment. Cyril Gatling seems to have been very unhappy about the whole thing, but both parties being of age and compos mentis, he didn’t feel justified in refusing his services. And – this is what will interest you particularly – the licence was actually in his possession when he heard that Alan Thompson had gone off into the blue.’

Miss Silver turned the stocking on her needles.

‘Did Colonel Gatling say whether a date had been fixed for the marriage?’

‘Yes, he did. Alan went off on the fourth of March three years ago. The marriage was to have taken place on the tenth.’

‘And what conclusions did he draw?’

‘He seems to have been quite bewildered, saying again and again that he couldn’t understand it. Colonel Gatling repeated phrases like “I simply cannot understand it. He seemed so determined, so set upon this marriage, so lacking in any response to any attempts to deter him.” Colonel Gatling, of course, found the whole thing quite easy of explanation. He just said, “The fellow got cold feet and bolted.” And that was that.’

Miss Silver knitted in silence for a while. Roger’s stocking, the second of the pair, was almost finished. Another half inch and she would have to begin to think about turning the heel. She said,

‘That would be a natural but superficial explanation. It is possible that it is the true one, but it does not seem to me to agree with what I have heard of Alan Thompson’s character. In all the accounts of him he appears as a good-looking young man with one settled aim in life, to use his good looks and his charms as a substitute for application and industry. He had been two years at Underhill when he disappeared, and from what I have learned from Louisa and others he was during that time steadily increasing his influence over the Miss Benevents, and particularly over Miss Cara. When he found that she could be persuaded into a marriage, and that she would have the power to leave him a life interest in her property – ’