“Well, she got a job, didn’t she?”

“Aunt Barbara got her one with a Major and Mrs. Dartrey, to look after their child.”

“Unfortunate child.”

“It wasn’t a frightful success, but she went to Germany with them, and stayed for more than two years. She used to write very grumbling letters, but she did stay. And then they went out east and left the little girl in a nursery school near Mrs. Dartrey’s mother, and Anna went to some kind of a cousin of theirs who wanted a companion. But she only stayed a month. The cousin was a rich nervous invalid, and of course they wouldn’t have suited a bit. Anna wrote to me and said she was leaving as soon as the month was up. She said she had got another job and she would write and tell me all about it when she got there. And she never wrote again. You see, I can’t help worrying.”

“I don’t see why.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“The woman she was with, the Dartreys’ cousin, would know.”

“She says she doesn’t. She says Anna never told her anything. She’s the vague, ineffectual sort of person who gets a headache the minute you ask her to remember things like names and addresses. I tried for half an hour, and if she had been a jellyfish she couldn’t have taken less interest in anyone except herself.”

“Do jellyfish think?”

“Mrs. Dugdale doesn’t-she just drifts. Anyhow I couldn’t get anything out of her about Anna. Peter, I really am worried. Anna has written to me at least once a week for years. I mean, she always wrote in the holidays, and all the time she was with the Dartreys.”

“To say what a poisonous time she was having, and how foul everyone was!”

“Well, it was rather like that. I was an outlet. You must have someone you can say that kind of thing to. And then all of a sudden she stops dead. It’s four months since she left Mrs. Dugdale, and she hasn’t written a line. Don’t you see there’s something odd about it?”