‘Yes, I’ve thought.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m going away.’
‘Where are you going to?’
She took as deep a breath as she could.
‘There’s someone who used to work for Aunt Barbara – she has a room that she lets. I thought I’d go there.’
‘It doesn’t sound like a good place to be married from.’
She looked at him in a lost kind of way.
‘Stephen, I don’t think I can marry you.’
‘Is that what you were thinking about?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a waste of time. I don’t love you any more – or you don’t love me any more? Which is it?’
She shook her head.
‘No – it’s not that. It – it’s all the things that have been happening. They are Benevent things – they haven’t got anything to do with you. I don’t think you ought to be dragged into them. I don’t think there ought to be any more Benevents.’
He nodded.
‘A plague-stricken lot. And you propose to go into quarantine for the rest of your life – is that it?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Then it’s about the most morbid thing I ever heard in my life! Do you suppose there is a family on this earth who couldn’t rake up a bad hat or two if they really went to work? Look here, darling, I take it you’ve heard Cousin Louisa talk about the Benevent sisters. Your grandmother broke away, and she was all right. Cara was in Olivia’s pocket. She would always have been in somebody’s pocket – it was just too bad that it happened to be Olivia’s. And look at Olivia herself. All that force and determination and will, and no outlet except to boss Miss Cara! Their father paid their bills, but he never gave them a penny to spend for themselves. Louisa says they had to go to him for money to put in the plate at church. That kind of tyranny does things to people – they either break away, or it breaks them. Or they turn into tyrants themselves as soon as they get a chance, and that’s what happened to Olivia. Our children are not going to be like that, if that is what you were thinking about.’
She said, ‘No – ’ on a long shaken breath. And then, ‘No – they won’t – will they?’
He took her hands, and felt how cold they were.
‘Darling, do come off it! It’s such a waste of time! You’ve had a shock, and we’ve all been through hell, but it’s over. What do you suppose I felt like when I knew you were somewhere under that damned hill and I didn’t know whether you were dead or alive? Do you suppose there is any need for you to rub it in? But it’s over, finished, done with, unless we keep digging it up and making ourselves go through it again. We’ve got our lives before us, and we are going to make a good job of them – together. We’re going to be happy.’
The resistance had gone out of her. She let him put his arms round her and felt the past slip by them and away.
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.
