Frank lifted a hand and let it fall again.
“As far as you are concerned the race is glass-fronted-you just look through and see what is going on. If I were to let myself think about it, it would terrify me!”
Miss Silver knitted placidly.
“I have cultivated the habit of observation. These things are not really difficult to perceive. In the case of Jacqueline Delauny there was an obvious strong emotion. I did not need Miss Muir to tell me what that emotion was. I was only surprised that it was not the talk of the village.”
Frank said quickly,
“It wasn’t? How do you account for that? I thought villages knew everything.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Miss Delauny was very discreet in her manner. She dressed as if she was in mourning. She devoted herself to her charge and to Mrs. Trent. In these circumstances a certain amount of devotion to Geoffrey Trent would be only suitable and becoming.”
“But you decided that it was more than that?”
Miss Silver said gravely,
“I thought it was one of those passions which bring disaster. As Lord Tennyson puts it, ‘The crime of sense’ becomes ‘the crime of passion.’ When I came to see you I was feeling very anxious indeed. I believed Miss Muir’s life to be in danger, but there was no evidence upon which it would be possible to take effective action. I was indeed thankful when, after Flaxman’s death, a connection with the illicit drug traffic brought Scotland Yard into the case.”
Frank nodded.
“Geoffrey Trent is lucky to have been able to clear himself. Muller and the Delauny woman have tumbled over themselves to give each other away. But they both say Geoffrey didn’t know. He was the ornamental figurehead, and a very useful one he must have been. Something likeable about the fellow in spite of his film star looks. Well, as I say, he’s lucky, though he doesn’t think so at the moment. I never saw anyone so knocked over as he was by the torn-out pages of that girl’s diary. No wonder Delauny was ready to pull the house down to find them. I never saw anything so damning. The girl had watched and spied until there was very little she didn’t know. ‘Jackie has let Allegra have some more of the white powder. I wish she wouldn’t, but if I tell her I know, she’ll let me do anything I want. I shall only have to say I’m going to tell Geoffrey and she’ll eat out of my hand.’ That sort of thing, all in the most frightful scrawl and with every kind of spelling mistake. And at the end, ‘Jackie says Geoffrey told her I could have one of the old ropes out of the potting-shed. I don’t suppose he did, because he jawed me so last night, but it’ll do to tell old Humpy if he’s cross.’ Poor Trent broke down and cried like a child. The girl must have written that sentence the last thing before going out and getting the crazy rope that killed her. And Jacqueline Delauny had told her he said she could have it. Well, as I say, he mightn’t have been able to clear himself, so he’s lucky.”
Miss Silver laid down Roger’s last stocking for a moment.
“And Professor Regulus Mactavish?”
Frank’s lip twisted.
“He may have been born to be hanged, but it won’t be this time. There isn’t as much evidence as you could balance on the point of a needle. Miss Muir heard him say he wouldn’t risk his neck for less than two thousand pounds, and he says he was discussing a dangerous stunt in connection with one of his illusionist tricks. No one saw him push those two girls on the island at Wraydon, but half a dozen people, including yourself, saw him hook his stick round Allegra Trent’s arm and jerk her back when she was almost under the bus. No, he’s lucky too, but like Trent he doesn’t think so just now. Do you know how I found him? Sitting with a bottle of whisky before him and trying to get drunk! He was just back from his daughter’s funeral-the one he used to get the dope for. He’d a black muffler round his neck and the tears running down his face. And he couldn’t get drunk! I came away and left him to it, but just about then he wouldn’t have cared if I’d charged him with murder. The more people you meet, the odder they come, don’t you think?”
After her own manner Miss Silver agreed.
“A study of increasing interest. I must always feel grateful that it has fallen to my lot. If I may quote again from Lord Tennyson:
She laid down the completed stocking and smiled at him.
“There is a warning in an earlier verse. I forget just how it occurs, but it is worth remembering. It is: ‘Not to lose the good of life.’ ”
He could have been moved to laughter. Perhaps he was. Maudie and her Moralities! Three quotations from Lord Tennyson, Roger’s stockings finished, and a number of ends neatly and firmly tied! Deep down beside the laughter there was another spring. He took her hand and kissed it.
“Revered preceptress!” he said.
Patricia Wentworth
Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.
Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.
