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

helping her sister-in-law to the tart. "What on earth?"

      "What put that idea into your head, Grace?" the rector asked gravely, "or rather what made you say it." He wondered if Grace were developing a tendency to wild statements.

      "Well, it's all so funny," Grace said irritably. "Olive was out last night; no one knows this of course, but it's a fact. I went to her room for some toothache drops I knew were in that wall cupboard in there, and she wasn't there. That was nearly midnight. Her bed hadn't been slept in. She says she was up on the roof watching the stars, as she does at times. But I'm wondering whether she met Anthony and told him that she didn't want to be engaged to him—that she didn't love him—"

      "But she did!" broke in Doris imperiously.

      "You chose to think she did," was the tart reply, "and so engineered that ridiculous engagement, but Olive didn't care for him. That was her charm for Anthony, I think. Such a contrast to most of the women he'd met. No, Doris, you spoilt a girl who was in most ways one of the best companions I shall ever have and all to no purpose. She was quite happy here with me."

      Doris helped her brother-in-law to apple tart, and passed him the cream with an expression that said that she considered Grace's words not worth a reply.

      "What do you say?" he now asked turning to her.

      "Of course she was in love with Anthony!" she said with certainty. "Why, the two were all eyes and sighs for weeks past. Violet-May suspected Anthony of being in love with Grace," she said maliciously—Doris could say very cutting things in her light easy way—"you believed he wanted to flirt with me," she added as Grace's face flushed—"but it was Olive all the time—from first to last."

      "Except when it was Mrs. Green!" Grace said.

      "Mrs. Green!" scoffed Doris. "Mrs. Green is an artist, Grace. She adored Anthony's good looks and she liked him personally as well. But as to the garbage that people talk about her being in love with him—" Doris made a sweep of the sugar sifter do duty for her opinion of that.

      Remembering Anthony's own words about how irksome he had himself found Mrs. Green when Olive came into his life, the rector felt uncomfortable, but the two young women were not looking at him.

      "You're bound to take that view, as you engineered the whole affair," Grace said in a very unconvinced voice.

      "No, Cupid did that," laughed Doris. "I simply arranged with you to let me get Olive to design and engineer those chair covers for me," and Doris, with an excuse to the two, rose from the table with her usual air of swift decision, which suggested the brisk alert mind which she turned to everything. Just as Grace's slow languid way of getting out of her chair suggested the uncertainty that was an integral part of her nature too.

      The inquest was soon over. At no time was it interesting except to the local people who crowded the room. Lady Revell, looking almost indecently cheerful, was there with Gilbert who wore a very sober expression. Near them sat Mrs. Green. Some of those present refused at first to recognise the middle-aged, badly dressed woman with the deep pockets under her eyes.

      "If that really is Mrs. Green and not her mother, she must have made-up well up to now," was the general spoken or unspoken comment.

      First came the evidence of identification, which, as the Coroner was also the Revells' family solicitor, was purely perfunctory. Then came the evidence of the police as to how the body had been found.

      Then came the evidence of Anthony's manservant, who spoke of his master's high spirits before he left and coyly admitted, when pressed, that he had told him, Jamieson, about his coming engagement to Miss Hill. He identified the revolver found on the table as one which Mr. Revell had bought a month or so ago, when there were so many cases of housebreaking around them, saying that as The Causeway was so isolated and so hidden in trees, it might be as well to have one in the house. The revolver was kept in an unlocked drawer in Mr. Revell's bedroom. He had no idea, he said, as to what brought his master home last night. Mr. Revell had apparently touched nothing in the house but some mixed biscuits and the whisky and soda. As to why he should have gone to the drawing-room—Mr. Revell liked that room of an evening. But as to why he should have had his revolver with him, the servant professed to have no idea=beyond the obvious one of Mr. Revell having seen some suspicious person loitering about, or heard footsteps.

      The doctor gave evidence next. He described the wound which had been made by the entry of the bullet in the right ear. The scorch marks showed that the weapon must have been practically touching the head, and the passage of the bullet had been on a dead level; it looked to him as though Revell had had his head turned sidewise down over the revolver, as though to look along the table top at the moment when the fatal shot was fired. Dr. Black did not insist that he shot himself in that position, but the course of the bullet suggested it. Dr. Black went on to say that Revell was a most casual young man, and while holding the revolver in his right hand, might very easily have made some incautious movement with the cloth in his left hand which had sent a bullet through his head. The doctor showed just what he meant. He thought that Anthony had been about eight hours dead when he was found. Which meant that he had been killed around one o'clock in the morning. Black was a young man, also a Cambridge graduate, and he and Revell had been very friendly. He spoke of his certainty that there was no reason whatever for Revell to have taken his own life. He too had been told of the engagement which was to be announced on his return from the climbing holiday. The doctor had happened to pass him on the road as he started off, and Revell had said that he was the happiest man in the world.

      The two friends with whom Anthony had been climbing were called next. They were a brother and sister of the name of Gartside. The latter, a plain-faced, very resolute-looking young woman of around thirty to thirty-five, the former a little older, with a taciturn expression. Both were very short in their replies, but both told how on Thursday morning, two days after they had started their climbs, Revell, who seemed in excellent spirits, came down to breakfast with a very worried look and said he that must go back to London at once to his dentist to have a tooth put right that was worrying him badly. He expected to be back on Friday in the afternoon. Revell had suffered agonies from toothache once before when climbing a rock exposed to the east wind.

      In answer to a question by the foreman, the jury learnt that the dentist to whom Revell usually went, was away on holiday just then, but the secretary said that at least two people—men—had rung up Thursday in the late afternoon, and on hearing that he was away had declined to make any appointment. Revell might have been one of these.

      The police gave further evidence of the undisturbed appearance of the body, the room, the house and the garage, of Revell's fingerprints on the revolver, and, in answer to a question of the Coroner said that they had no reason to think that death was other than due to misadventure.

      The jury brought in a verdict accordingly, and expressed their profound sympathy with the family and friends of the deceased. The inquest was over.

      The funeral would be next day. Gartside and his sister were staying for it.

      The little group from the rectory had listened with the closest attention. Seeing how white Olive looked, the rector told himself that he must be wrong. That she must have loved Anthony, but that her feelings were evidently of the kind that burrow deep. And yet, as he met her eyes on helping her into his car when it was over, he was struck by their expression, so secretive and yet so fierce. Again he felt sure that here there was no grief as he knew it. A strange girl this...

      As Doris put her foot on the step a telegraph boy jumped off his bicycle and handed her a cable.

      "From Las Palmas," Doris murmured as she tore it open. She read a few lines and gave a cry of joy. Without speaking, quite heedless of the others, she turned and set off for the rectory at a pace that suggested a desire to be alone.

      Grace, unlike her brother, had no clue to Las Palmas, but Avery guessed that Richard had already started for home. He had written him that he would probably fly from Ashanti—his nearest town—to Las Palmas, there to wait for a friend with some papers which would need signing before he could proceed to England.

      Lady Revell came out towards her own car. She stopped and