Miss Silver’s busy needles stopped. She laid down her hands upon the pale blue shawl and said,

“My dear Mrs. Scott, you interest me extremely. Just why should Mr. Bellingdon have been furious?”

“Because Lily simply hadn’t any right to go behind his back and adopt a baby whilst he was over in the States on business. And I really don’t know how she dared!”

“Mrs. Herne is an adopted daughter?”

Annabel’s eyes widened.

“You didn’t know?”

“I had no idea.” She picked up her knitting again. “But surely-I did not think that an adoption could take place without the husband’s consent.”

“No, Lily couldn’t do it legally, but she had taken the child and she made a great play about Lucius being away so much and how lonely her life was, and in the end he gave in. If Moira had been different, he would have got fond of her-I’m sure he would. But it wasn’t a good start.”

Miss Silver said, “No.”

Chapter 15

SALLY FOSTER and David Moray arrived at Merefields next day in time for lunch. They travelled down together, David having discovered more or less by accident that Sally was to be a fellow guest.

“And why you didn’t tell me before, I can’t imagine.”

Sally smiled brightly.

“We can’t all have a lot of imagination. I daresay you do very well without it.”

He frowned.

“As if an artist could get on at all without imagination! I would have you know that I’ve as much as I want and a bit over!”

She laughed.

“Isn’t that nice, darling! No, consider that retracted-it just slipped out. I’m not to call you darling and you don’t like it and it means nothing. And we’re back where we were before I said it.” He went on frowning.

“And still I don’t know why you didn’t tell me you were going to Merefields. I told you I was going there as soon as I knew, and you never said a word.”

“Because I didn’t know. Moira only asked me yesterday.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

“Perhaps I wanted it to burst on you as a lovely surprise.”

He said angrily, “We might actually have gone by different trains if I hadn’t happened to come down the stairs just as you were telling Mrs. Mount that you were going into the country near Ledlington, and that you didn’t want any letters forwarded because you would be back on Sunday night!”

Sally had a flash-back in which she saw herself standing in the hall explaining to Mrs. Mount, who was an old fuss and always had to be told everything, and who felt herself quite intolerably responsible since Paulina’s death. She herself had been perfectly well aware of David coming down the stairs, and if she had taken pains to speak with extra clarity, there was always the excuse that Mrs. Mount was hard of hearing. Anyhow there had been no need for David to look like a thunderstorm and to take the first opportunity of scolding her up hill and down dale.

It was quite idiotic of her to feel warmed and heartened by the scolding.

His voice cut in severely upon these reflections.

“It might have led to our each having a taxi from Ledlington. Did you think of that?”

Sally gazed at him, her eyes very bright, the lashes round them very dark. Nothing would have induced him to say so, but it is a fact that he was reminded of peat-water with the sun shining on it.

“The taxi? Oh, I didn’t! Frightful of me, wasn’t it? I expect I shall come to want some day. I just don’t think of things like that. You’ve saved me from myself this time though. We’ll share one!”

“If there isn’t a bus,” said David.

There wasn’t a bus. The taxi ran out past the really old houses with their modern fronts, past the Victorian villas now divided into flats, past the bungalows called Kosi-Kot and Maryzone and Cassino out on to the open road, from which they presently turned into Cranberry Lane. There was nothing to show that this was the way Arthur Hughes had come a few days ago with a Queen’s necklace in his pocket.

The first person they saw at Merefields was Lucius Bellingdon. He took them through to the drawing-room where Hilton was bringing in the tea.

“But they would like to take off their things! Miss Foster, I am sure you would like to go up to your room and take off your things!” Miss Bray was instant in hospitality. “Moira will take you up. She is a friend of yours, isn’t she? Moira, I am sure Miss Foster would like to go to her room!”

Sally had seldom felt so little convinced of being regarded as a friend of Moira Herne’s. The slow light eyes had slid over her without the faintest welcome. They rested now upon David Moray, and it was to David that she spoke.

“You are Lucy’s latest discovery, aren’t you? He’s always finding them, and then-he finds them out.”

The words turned to insolence, but just as they did so she began to smile. Sally remembered the trick of it from their schooldays-some outrageous remark, and then the smile which changed everything. It beckoned, it promised, and it was gone again, but you couldn’t forget that it had been there.

Sally went upstairs with Moira and was shown her room. She was wondering why she had been asked to Merefields. Nothing could be more apparent than the fact that Moira didn’t want her here. There had been a smile for David Moray, but none for Sally Foster. She was shown her room and abandoned.

Standing in front of the mirror, Sally discovered that it seemed to think that she was in a blazing temper. If she went down looking like this, everyone else would discover it too. You can subdue a brilliant colour with cream and powder, but how did you put out the angry fire in your eyes? Rather a pity to have to try, because it was all extremely becoming. And it wouldn’t do, it simply wouldn’t do. She had got to be the normal school friend who was no longer an intimate. There could be a cool allround friendliness, with just a hint of having outgrown what had been pleasant enough in its time-nothing more than that. If Moira Herne didn’t know how to behave herself, Sally Foster did. Even if Moira made an absolutely dead set at David, it had nothing to do with Sally, and no one must think it had. She remembered with pleasure that Wilfrid would be there. If the worst came to the worst, she could always flirt with him.

Chapter 16

DETECTIVE Inspector Abbott came out from Ledlington in the early afternoon next day and was closeted with Lucius Bellingdon. When they had talked for a time he interviewed members of the family party and of the household. It was not until the last of them was disposed of that he expressed a desire to see Miss Silver.

She came into the small writing-room which had been placed at his disposal, greeted him, and settled herself in an armless chair of the type which she preferred. Looking at her, Frank had the thought that she was a fixed point in a changing world. Wars came and went, political changes like vast landslides swept the habitable globe, monarchies dissolved and new tyrannies took their place, but here she was, not changed at all as far as he could see from the time when he had first encountered her, not changed indeed from a very much earlier time than that-wise and sedate, with her Edwardian hair-do, her old-fashioned clothes, her beaded slippers, and the large gold locket with her parents’ initials entwined upon it in high relief. With her wisdom, her intelligence, her moralities, she was a continual delight to him. He looked across at her now, cocked an impudent eyebrow, and said,

“Well, ma’am, who did it?”

She extracted the blue shawl from her knitting-bag and took up the needles. She said,

“I have really no idea.”

He laughed.

“No? You surprise me! Anyhow that makes us two hearts that beat as one. Or to be quite accurate, a number of hearts. The Yard haven’t any idea either, nor have the Ledlington police, and nor have I. Do you know, I quite hoped that you would have had the murderer all taped and packaged and ready for me to take away.”