Her name was Doris Pell, and she neither resided at the Manor nor was employed there. She lived with an aunt, and they carried on a business as dressmakers in a small way. The evidence reported her as having been greatly distressed by the receipt of anonymous letters accusing her of immorality, an accusation for which, the Coroner stated, there was no foundation-she was a perfectly respectable girl. The police were pursuing enquiries as to the authorship of the letters.

Miss Silver laid down the paper. A lamentable waste of a young life. She contrasted, not for the first time, the extreme courage and tenacity of purpose with which trouble is encountered in one case, and the ease with which it is succumbed to in another. Since this dead girl had apparently had the support of innocence, why had she put up no fight? The light that beats upon a village is of course sufficiently unsparing-white is white, and black is black, and a character once lost or even breathed upon will continue to be doubted indefinitely. But youth should possess some spring, some power of recovery, some ability to make a new beginning. Her thoughts remained saddened for some time.

It was not until later in the day when she was dealing with her correspondence that the matter was once more brought to her attention. She was engaged with a letter from her niece Ethel Burkett. Raising, as it did, the question of Ethel’s sister Gladys, whose by no means harmonious relations with her husband Andrew Robinson were a perennial source of anxiety, it was affording her grave reason for thought.

“Dear Auntie,” Ethel wrote, “I do not know whether Gladys has written to you, and I hate to trouble you with her affairs, but I really do think you have more influence with her than anyone else. A separation from Andrew would be fatal. He has been most tolerant and long-suffering and he has a horror of any scandal, but I have a feeling that if she were to go so far as to leave him, he would not readily take her back.”