Free Poison In The Pen by Patricia Wentworth Page B

light, it would have been easier to face it. She felt as if the day that lay before her was a steep hill which somehow she must climb, only she didn’t know how she was going to do it. There was no firm, hard purpose in her, no resolve. She had come up out of deep belated sleep feeling light and relaxed. Somewhere far down there was a tremulous flutter of joy because Jason had come back, but how they were to cross all the things that lay between them, she had not even begun to think.
    But she would have to think. Florrie went out of the room and shut the door. She was a nice girl, and she was looking forward to the wedding. She was going to be disappointed. A lot of people were going to be disappointed. Maggie had got a new hat. She couldn’t marry Gilbert because Florrie would be disappointed if she didn’t, or because of Maggie’s hat, or the bridesmaids’ dresses, or Mettie Eccles’ new suede gloves. Just for a moment she could hear Mettie’s voice quite distinctly—“I’ve had the others cleaned so often, and I’m sure they must be ten years old, so I’m getting a new pair in your honour.” Mettie would certainly be very much annoyed.
    She drank some of the tea, and found it warm and comforting. What was she going to do? She would have to tell Roger Repton that she couldn’t marry Gilbert. He would want to know why, and she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t go to him and say, “I can’t marry Gilbert, because Jason has come back,” any more than she could go to him and say, “I can’t marry Gilbert, because he is Scilla’s lover.” It was a perfectly good reason, but she couldn’t use it. She couldn’t use it, because it would smash up his marriage. It wasn’t a happy marriage, but to know that Scilla was unfaithful would be a terrible blow. He had been a fool to marry her, and it is a terrible thing to find out that you have been made a fool of. She couldn’t hurt Roger like that.
    And she had heard what she hadn’t been meant to hear. She had stood and listened at a chink of the door in the dark. They might have been saying good-bye, and what they said hadn’t been meant for her to hear. She thought that she could tell Gilbert what she had heard, but she knew she couldn’t use it to break off their marriage, or to give Scilla away.
    She finished the rest of the tea and turned to put down the cup. It was eight o’clock, and everywhere all over the house and in other houses people were either up or getting up and the preparations for her wedding were going on. There was a pile of letters on her tray with the tea things. There would be telegrams and telephone calls, and eleventh-hour presents to add to all the others which would have to be written about and sent back. She picked up the letters that were on the tray and began to go through them.
    Janet Grant, in her characteristic sprawling hand, two words to the line and not more than four lines to the page.
    “Darling—so devastated—Jessica prostrate—can’t leave her—all my love—she sends hers.”
    Lexie Merridew’s mother—Lexie was devastated too.
    The next envelope was the kind you get in a village shop or a very cheap shop anywhere, the kind they sell with the lower priced Christmas cards. Odd writing too, very large and clumsy. She had not to wonder about it—she knew. And then she was opening it and taking out a thin crumpled sheet with the same odd writing on it. It had no beginning, and when she turned the page there was no ending either. It said:
    “You may not mind about his playing fast and loose with Doris Pell and driving her to take her life or about his carrying on with S R and if you don’t know what I mean you are more of a fool than what I took you for but you had better find out about his marrying Marie Dubois under a false name when he was in Canada or you may find yourself in the cart along of the other pore gurls he as led astray.”
    There were no stops, and there was no signature.
    Valentine dropped the