Roger is just home from the Middle East. He was taken prisoner by the Italians, escaped, put in some time in hospital, and is still on sick leave. I’ve just had a spot of leave after ’flu myself. I’ve been staying with my cousins at Holt St. Agnes, and I saw quite a lot of Roger.” He paused and looked at her hard. “You can hold your tongue, can’t you? What I’m telling you is what everyone in the village knows more or less, but I wouldn’t want Roger to think I’d been handing it on. He’s a nice chap, but he’s a bit of a dim bulb, and he’s in the devil of a flap. I wouldn’t be talking about it to anyone else, but you oughtn’t to go there.”

Judy sat opposite him with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wary. She said,

“Why?”

He hesitated, a thing so unusual that it rattled him. The cool self-assurance to which he was accustomed had left him in the lurch. It was like coming into a house and finding the furniture gone. It rattled him. He found nothing better to say than,

“Things keep happening.”

“What kind of things?”

This was the devil. The gap between what he could get into words and what he couldn’t get into words was too wide. And behind that there was the horrid niggling thought that the gap had only become evident when he learned that it was Judy who was going to Pilgrim’s Rest. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have bothered his head.

Judy repeated her question.

“What kind of things?”

He said, “Accidents-or perhaps not-Roger thinks not. The ceiling came down in his room-if he hadn’t gone to sleep over a book downstairs he’d have been killed. Another room was burnt out, with him inside-the door jammed and he very nearly didn’t get out in time.”

Judy kept her eyes on his face.

“Who does the place belong to?”

“Him.”

“Is he the invalid nephew?”

“No-that’s Jerome. He’s a cousin, a good bit older than Roger. Smashed up at Dunkirk. No money. They took him in-have a nurse for him. They’re a very clannish family.”