Mystery at the Rectory (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

you left it so late to bring the accusation?" Avery asked, his face very grave.

      "I hadn't an idea that Olive could get him," Grace said. "She's in love with Mr. Byrd really. I thought it was just some notion of Doris's."

      "Doris's notions generally have something solid behind them," the rector spoke to gain time. "As for what you tell me about Olive—we must think out the best thing to do. The best thing for Olive as well as for Anthony. And meanwhile, not a word to any one else, Grace!"

      "No one else, of course," she agreed, "though Lucy-May Witson or Mrs. Green would rejoice to know about it. Fortunately Anthony is going away for a fortnight. What is to be done?"

      "No one must be told one word of it," the rector said sternly. "No one!"

      Avery spoke with a sternness he rarely showed. He had great personality under all his sweetness. Where he thought the question one of right or wrong, he could crack the whip, and if need be use it.

      Grace promised to say nothing to any one until they should talk the matter over—before Anthony's return from his holiday.

      "And meanwhile keep your things under lock and key," he said. "Do not be the one 'by whom offence cometh.'"

      She looked shocked.

      "If only she can be cured. It must be kleptomania! I'm really deeply attached to her, but—However, I shall say nothing to her or to any one for the present."

      She left him, and the rector smoked his pipe and tried to see how to combine justice and mercy—that as yet unsolved problem. He had not solved it when next day Doris arrived back at the rectory. She was looking very fagged, and told him that though there was no immediate danger she might be summoned again to her mother's bedside at any time. There could be no question of any permanent improvement.

      "But to talk of something happier," she went on. "I hear that Anthony and Olive have come to an understanding."

      "Who has been indiscreet?" he questioned in his turn.

      "I think it was Miss Jones when I stopped at the post office for some stamps. Or no. I believe it was Harmsworth the tobacconist—I was out of cigarettes."

      The rector laughed at the idea of keeping anything from his villagers.

      "I'm going up to have a word with Olive," Doris went on. "I do hope you will let the marriage take place from here, Jack?"

      He made some non-committal reply at which she opened her eyes a little. Then she was gone and the rector heard her merry laugh overhead, and Olive's rather throaty voice replying.

      Late in the afternoon he had to go some distance to see a sick parishioner.

      He walked back by the oak wood whose last outcrop ran from The Flagstaff past The Causeway. There was there a glade that was none too easy to find, in which he loved to linger when he had the time to spare. Strolling through it he pondered on what could be done about Olive Hill. Her face rose before his mind. Rather pale, heart-shaped, with big black eyes that could look like pieces of jet, or like rounds of velvet. It was not a sly face—exactly. Or was it? Subtle it certainly was. Trying to sum her up, the rector to his dismay realised that he had no fixed ideas at all about her. Yet he could not help her if he could not reach her. And you cannot reach a land whose latitude and longitude are unknown to you.

      He walked on, his light footsteps inaudible on the thick soft turf. Suddenly he stopped. In a natural recess which nearly enclosed them stood two figures. Avery recognised the trim slight figure of Byrd by the erect carriage and the challenging tilt of the square chin, in the same instant he saw that the slighter, shorter figure beside Byrd was Olive Hill. Both had their backs turned to him. From her attitude, she was talking earnestly. Byrd was listening with head bent, poking the earth with the cane that he always carried. Something about his attitude suggested anger, but as he turned his face slightly, the light was on it, and Avery saw Byrd was smiling that saturnine, malicious smile of his. Meeting it, Olive threw back her head and with a quick farewell nod slipped on out of sight. Byrd stood a full minute before he took the same path, one which led on past The Causeway to his own little cottage farther down the road.

      Avery was slightly disturbed. There had been a suggestion of intimacy—of secretiveness—in the place. But at any rate this meeting was no lovers' talk...there had been something very unpleasant in Byrd's smile...Pondering earnestly on the right course to take about his sister's surprising companion, the rector made for his home by a short cut. He finally decided to do nothing for two more days. Then there would have to be a thorough clearing up of the position. But by that time he hoped to have come to some definite decision.

      CHAPTER THREE

       Table of Contents

      NEXT morning, Friday, the rector was in his study before breakfast. The waiting that he had imposed on himself was a strain. It did not seem fair to Olive either. She and Doris were making plans for the wedding—Grace had very sensibly gone away for the time being to stay with a friend who lived nearby, but who was tied to her room as the result of a car accident. She would come back on the Monday when, the rector had told her, he and she could thrash out what had best be done.

      Doris had taken it for granted that Olive was no longer a companion, but was merely staying on at the rectory as a guest. This put the rector in a most uncomfortable position. But he could not alter it at the moment.

      He pulled some papers towards himself, and took up his pen. He was busy bringing out a Life of Saint Paul. In another moment the machine began to work, the wheels to turn, the wings to lift, and then he was up and away; far away from the problems of ordinary life. In short, he was that enviable thing a writer in full swing.

      Fraser, the butler, came into the study, and stood in the door which led into the library. The two rooms opened out of each other.

      "Major Weir-Opie to see you, sir."

      Major Weir-Opie was the Chief Constable of the county. He and the rector were old friends.

      "Put them on the writing table," murmured Avery without looking up, "and I hope they're riper than the last lot."

      "It's not fresh apples, sir, it's Major Weir-Opie to see you, and I've shown him into the study."

      Avery came to earth. Rising, he went into the next room and greeted a short, thick-set, straight-backed, man warmly. Weir-Opie had a red face with keen eyes, and a business-like expression.

      "I've called on very tragic business," he said at once, "but I wanted to let you know immediately, and I hoped to find you alone. Anthony Revell has just been found shot dead at The Causeway. Apparently he had an accident with his revolver. It was lying under his fingers."

      Mr. Avery was profoundly shocked.

      "But I thought—we thought—that he was away in Derbyshire."

      Weir-Opie agreed. "We thought so too. We had entered the name of The Causeway on the list of houses on which to keep an eye during the owner's absence. Well, he evidently returned late last night.

      "One of our constables patrolled all round the house at ten last night and it was shut up then, he says. Yet a milkman, who called there at half-past seven this morning for some bottles that the cook had promised to put out when she left, and which he hadn't had time to fetch before, saw that one of the ground floor windows was standing wide open. He went to the back, to ask if he should leave any milk, and got no reply. He tapped on the open window and got none either. Meeting P.C. Marsh a little later, he spoke about it to him. The constable went to investigate, and found Revell's sports car in the garage, and his dead body stretched out in the drawing-room."

      Avery was astounded. Why had Revell returned home without a word to any one, or had it been without a word?

      The other continued:

      "He lay in the drawing-room beside a table on which was a box of cartridges. Close to one hand was the revolver, beside the