Yours affectionately,

Ruth Ball”

Miss Silver laid the letter down on her lap. She thought, “Ruth would never be unkind.”

And then the door opened and Emma came in with the tea-tray. A calm, ample person with a rosy country face and grey hair neatly brushed back from an open brow.

“Now here’s your tea, and you’ll drink it up whilst it’s hot. I don’t suppose you had any lunch to speak of, so I’ve cut you a sandwich or two, and there’s honey to go with the scones. And here’s the evening paper. I’m in a couple of minds whether to let you have it, because you want to get that tea down inside you whilst it’s hot, but I suppose you’d be asking for it if I didn’t bring it along.”

Miss Silver put out her hand for the paper. She began to say, “Emma, you spoil me,” but her eye was caught by a headline and the last word was never said. She straightened the paper out and read:

GIRL DROWNED IN WATERSPLASH-STRANGE COINCIDENCE

CHAPTER XVII

The body of Clarice Dean was discovered by Edward Random. It was striking ten by the church clock when he came down to the watersplash and turned the ray of his torch upon the nearest of the stepping-stones. It showed more than he had bargained for-a woman’s hand lying palm downwards on the dark glistening stone. Just a hand, in the circle of the ray. That at the first glance. Then as he slanted the torch, the light picked up the line of the wrist, the drenched sleeve of a coat, the vague darkness of a body half covered by the water. She lay in the pool which had drowned William Jackson. The flow of the water had drifted her hand onto the sloped edge of the stone and kept it there, moving it a little, so that it looked as if it still had some feeble life in it. There was a moment when Edward had no certainty as to who the woman might be. She lay face downwards in the water, and it covered her. She lay still, but the hand moved slowly.

He set his torch on the bank and went down into the pool. She was in the deepest part of it, but the deepest part did not reach his knee. It was a mere narrow pot-hole. If she had put her foot in it and fallen she would have come down in the shallows. She would hardly have drowned.

She had drowned.

He got her out-no such easy matter, with the bank slimy under foot-and when she was clear of the water he turned the torch upon her. He saw that it was Clarice Dean. He also saw that there really was no chance that she wasn’t dead. He felt her wrist, but there was no pulse. He had known that there would be none, but he had to make sure.

In all the talk that followed, it was not to be denied that having got her out of the water, Edward could have done no more than he did, which was to lay the body face downwards on the slope so that the water might drain out of it, and then run to the Vicarage for help.

But Clarice Dean was dead. Dr. Croft found Edward and the Vicar doing the best they knew with artificial respiration, but it was all to no end. The ambulance from Embank made its sinister journey once again, and before the village knew that there had been a second death Clarice Dean was gone from Greenings.

Dr. Croft had to break the news to the Miss Blakes. At his knock on the door Miss Mildred came down to him in her old coat over a cheap flannelette night-dress with a candle in her hand.

“What has happened, Dr. Croft? Why have you come?”

The candlelight flickered between them. She peered at him through it.

“Did you know that Miss Dean was out?”

“No, of course not. She went to bed early-she said she had a headache. What makes you think she would be out? She never goes out so late as this-why should she? It is eleven o’clock!”

“Very nearly. But that is beside the point. She did go out- I’m afraid there is no doubt about that.”

“You are afraid? What do you mean? Has anything happened?”

He said, almost with impatience,

“Yes, it has. It will be a shock to you, and you had better keep it from your sister until the morning. Miss Dean has met with an accident.”

“An accident? What sort of an accident? What has happened?”

“She has been drowned in the splash.”

Miss Mildred set down the candlestick upon the newel-post of the stair and said,

“Impossible!”

“I’m afraid not.”

The old coat had fallen open, showing how scanty was the garment she wore beneath it. It had been white once but was now a dingy grey. A woman would have wondered how old it might be. How many years was it since anyone could buy flannelette? Dr. Croft, being a man, only thought with distaste that she looked as if she had come out of a slum, and wished his errand done. He said briskly,

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it tonight. The police will be round in the morning. They will want to know whether there were any signs of depression. Don’t touch anything in her room. They will have to go through her things. I’ll look in and see Miss Ora tomorrow. Goodnight!”

Miss Mildred sniffed.

“I don’t know where we’ll get another nurse,” she said in an acid tone.

Dr. Croft shut the door with rather more force than it really required.

CHAPTER XVIII

By nine o’clock next morning everybody in Greenings knew that Clarice Dean had been drowned in the splash. After Dr. Croft’s housekeeper had walked along the street and spent twenty minutes in Mrs. Alexander’s shop a good many people had made up their minds that she had drowned herself for love of Edward Random. Miss Sims, it appeared, had thought she heard the telephone-bell ring last night in the doctor’s surgery.

“It would be about a quarter past eight, and the Doctor still out, so I went down to answer it. But when I took up the receiver all I got was that Miss Dean on the line, talking to Mr. Edward Random. Ever so upset she sounded. I don’t know that I ever heard anyone worse, and her voice not a bit like her usual… Oh, yes, it was her. The telephone is right by the surgery window, and I’d only to push the edge of the curtain to see who it was in the call-box. The light isn’t good there-we all know that-but the surgery was all in the dark for I’d just run in like I was, and I could see that it was her. There was no mistake about that. And it was her voice too if it comes to it, only all upset the same as I said. ‘Edward,’ she says, ‘I must see you-I really must!’ And something about nursing his uncle, only I didn’t rightly get that bit, because I heard the doctor’s key in the door. And just as I was putting the receiver back, there was Mr. Edward on the line, and speaking that sharp you wouldn’t believe it. ‘Edward,’ she says, ‘I must see you!’ And him shutting her up and as angry as you please. Well, it’s my belief the pore girl just took and drowned herself. Stands to reason that’s what she must have done. You couldn’t drown in the splash unless you wanted to, not without you were drunk like William Jackson was.”

But an hour later after old Mrs. Stone had been up to the shop a more sinister rumour began to spread.

“Heard it with my own eyes. Very good hearing I’ve got, I’m thankful to say. Miss Susan had been in with an egg or two for Betsey after the bad turn she had Tuesday. Up all night I was, and never thought she’d live to see the morning. Well, Miss Susan was there, as I was saying, and I’d just got the door open showing her out, when along come Mr. Edward and that Miss Dean. Acourse I didn’t know it was them, not at the first of it-only a man and a girl quarrelling, and her crying. And then there she was, calling out his name for everyone to hear. ‘Edward,’ she says, and calls him ‘darling.’ Holding on to him too. ‘Don’t be so angry!’ she says. ‘I can’t bear it!’ And, ‘Oh, you do frighten me!’ she says.”