… almost midnight and I am in the study with only poor Flossie Rubrick’s portrait for company. I’m afraid, my love, that you would be very much put out by this painting and, indeed, it is a dreadfully slick and glossy piece of work. Yet, with its baleful assistance and the post-mortem on her character I feel as if I had known her very well. In a sense, Fabian Losse was right when he said the secret of her end lay in her own character. Who but Florence Rubrick would have practised a speech in the dark to a handful of sheep during a search for her own diamonds? Who but she, having made up her mind that her nephew was an enemy agent, would have informed her husband, bound him over to secrecy, and decided to tackle the job herself? That it was Douglas Grace she suspected, and not Markins, is clear enough when one remembers that Rubrick clung to Markins after her death, and that after her interview with Grace, her manner towards him altered and she subsequently climbed down over Fabian Losse’s engagement to Ursula Harme. She said nothing of her precise suspicions to anyone else. She played a lone hand and she hadn’t a chance. Down she went, that ugly little woman, with all her obstinacy, arrogance, generosity, shrewdness and energy, down she went before an idea that was too strong for her.

It’s all over. Already the inhabitants of Mount Moon are beginning to readjust themselves. Fabian Losse, who is fast recovering from the whack on his head, is naturally shocked and horrified by the discovery that his partner gave it to him and appalled to think that for years he has been confiding his dearest secret to his country’s enemy. Grace’s death is no more than additional cause for bewilderment. It’s poor consolation for Fabian that the Portuguese journalist was intercepted. He feels he’s been criminally blind and stupid. He doesn’t think Grace managed to get any information away. I’m not so sure, but at all events there’s no sign of the enemy using the Losse aerial magnetic fuse. Fabian will recover. Ursula Harme will make nonsense of his scruples. They will be married and he will become an important but unknown expert, one of the “boys in the back room.” Miss Lynne will composedly follow her neat destiny and will never forgive herself or me for her one outburst. Young Cliff, who, of the entire set-up, would most interest you, will, I hope, grow out of his megrim and return to his music. He was suffering from chronic fear, and psychological constipation. The cause has been removed. His father will doubtless continue to draft sheep and eat fire with perfect virtuosity. I’ve persuaded Losse to get rid of the abominable Albert.

I almost dare to say I may soon come home. I’ve just taken up my pen again after stopping to ruminate and fill my pipe. When you pause at midnight in this house, the landscape comes in through the windows and sends something exciting down your spinal column. Out there are the plateau, the cincture of mountains, the empty sparkling air. To the north, more mountains, a plain, turbulent straits, another island, thirteen thousand miles of sea and at the far end, you.

The case is wound up but as I stretch my cold fingers and look once again at the portrait of Florence Rubrick I regret very much that I didn’t accept her invitation and come, before she was dead, for a week-end at Mount Moon.