Mr Benchley made lists of everything. He asked for a cloth and a bowl of soap and water, and stabbed at the stones in a necklace, bracelets, rings.
‘Necklace. Diamonds. Fine stone. Centre one about five carats.’
‘Pendant in the form of a cross. Diamonds and rubies. Probably French.’
‘Five rings…’
The catalogue went on, very dry and precise like Mr Benchley himself. And when it was all done and the floor boards put back again, the police went away and took the plate and the jewellery with them. There would have to be an inquest to decide whether the find was treasure trove or not. Whether it was or whether it wasn’t, it would certainly be a very long time before the matter was finally settled.
Frank Abbott remarked irreverently that you couldn’t hope to hurry a government department, and that when you got a museum mixed up in it at the other end it might quite likely be 1980 before anything got settled, which would make it a round two hundred years since the stuff was buried.
They were in the drawing-room, and he was taking his leave. Nicholas Carey put an arm round Althea.
‘Well, I hope you’re not counting on wearing the diamond necklace, Allie,’ he said.
He was startled to see how pale she turned.
‘Oh, I couldn’t!’ she said with a shudder.
He shook her a little, lightly.
‘Darling you won’t get a chance.’
Frank Abbott had a sardonic gleam in his eye.
‘Well, I suppose you two will be getting married.’
‘If I’m not being haled to prison. Can I take it that the arrest is definitely off?’
‘I think so. You’ll be wanted to give evidence when Blount comes up before the magistrates – both of you. And again at the trial. So don’t take a honeymoon in Timbuctoo or the Gobi desert. I don’t think we want to risk Blount being let loose on society again. The other things won’t be brought up against him at his trial, but between ourselves and strictly off the record, I haven’t the slightest doubt that he contrived the accidents which removed his father and his first wife. And as you know, the attempt upon his present wife came within an ace of succeeding. He used a footrule to push her with, one of those folding ones, and he probably employed the same technique in the first wife’s case. She fell under a train, and he was supposed to be somewhere else at the time so he got away with it. But this time I think we’ve got him. Of course you never can tell with juries. But I can’t see twelve ordinary people having any reasonable doubt that Mrs Graham disturbed him when he was going over the ground with his divining rod. She took him for Carey, which was natural enough, and called out using Carey’s name. He tried to stop her and – succeeded. When Mrs Harrison came on the scene looking for Worple I think she had the world’s narrowest escape. However by that time I expect Blount’s nerve wasn’t so good. He must have heard Mrs Traill run down to the corner. She was frightened when she heard Mrs Graham call out. And she ran for the bus, but he wasn’t to know that. He wasn’t to know how much she had heard, or whether she wouldn’t start to scream and give the alarm. Then he heard the bus and waited to let it go by. And when Mrs Harrison came along all he wanted was to get away, so he blundered past her, knocking her over. Then he tripped at the step coming down into the back yard and lost his divining rod. Definitely his luck was out. And on the top of all that he talks in his sleep and his wife hears what he says. It must have been a bit of a jolt. He has probably been thinking of getting rid of her for some time. Now it’s a case of needs must and the sooner the better. He takes her down to Cleat, ropes in his respectable aunt who can’t say enough about his kindness to his wife, and prepares for another fatal accident. This time there would have been a perfectly good suicide motive. He must have thought the plan completely watertight. But I don’t think he is going to get the chance of murdering anyone else.’
He shook hands all round and departed with Detective Inspector Sharp. Miss Silver following them out of the room, he had a word with her at the door.
‘You will be giving the bride away?’
A look reproved him.
‘It will naturally be an extremely quiet wedding.’
There was a sparkle in the cool blue eyes.
‘ “The bride wore crape and a mourning wreath”?’
Miss Silver said composedly,
‘No one has worn crape for at least the last forty years.’
‘My dear ma’am, you know everything! I withdraw the crape. I like Carey, but I don’t suppose we shall ever come across each other again. I shouldn’t have cared to have had to arrest him, but you know it very nearly happened. When do you go back to Montague Mansions?’
‘Althea would like me to stay and see her married. I do not feel that she should be here alone.’
‘Will you be back by Sunday? And if you are, may I come to tea?’
Miss Silver smiled indulgently.
‘Hannah tells me we have had a delightful gift of honey in the comb from Mrs Rafe Jerningham. She will make you some of her special scones to eat it with.’
Althea and Nicholas stood together in the drawing-room. Both his arms were round her as he said,
‘When are we going to get married, Allie?’
She answered him in a soft, trembling voice.
‘I don’t know. I think we ought to wait.’
He said grimly,
‘Another five years? You had better think again. I want to take you away and look after you.’
She said,
‘Away?’
He nodded.
‘Somewhere where nobody has ever heard of Grove Hill. Spain if you don’t mind trains and buses that don’t arrive, and plumbing that doesn’t work.’
‘I’m not passionate about them. Did you think I would be?’
He laughed.
‘I thought perhaps a plunge into the Middle Ages would be a complete change. But I tell you what, we can start off in the South of France and just wander. If you know the ropes it can be done very agreeably. And we needn’t make any plans. When we’ve had enough of one place we can go to another. Now that I’m not going to be arrested, I’ll get a car. A chap I know is selling an Austin which has only done four or five thousand miles. He’s going to America, and I can have it any time I like. So what about getting married on Thursday?’
Althea looked up at him. There was something she was going to say, but it didn’t get said. It came over her in a rush of feeling that yesterday was gone – that all the yesterdays of the last five years were gone, and that nothing and nobody could bring them back again. They had been dreary and endless in the living. They had dragged upon their way and halted on their going, and at the end they had gone out in tragedy and terror. There had been enough of them and to spare. They were done, they were over, they were gone, and she and Nicky were free. They were together and they were free. She looked up at him, and she said, ‘Yes – yes – yes.’
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.
