Free Eternity Ring by Patricia Wentworth

that?”
    He gave vent to a slight whistle.
    “You mean it was somewhere she hadn’t any business to be.”
    “Can you explain it in any other way? I cannot.”
    “But—the Forester’s House—”
    “Consider what we know of the girl’s character. She has been staying here not from choice but because she had to. She is a town girl by choice and preference. It is quite obvious that she would find life very dull at Tomlin’s Farm. When that sort of young woman is dull some mischief can usually be found for her idle hands to do, and it is sadly apt to take the form of a man. I think you would do well to enquire whether there has been any gossip of this sort about Mary Stokes.”
    “You think she was meeting someone at the Forester’s House?”
    “I think she may have been. Pray consider how convenient a place of assignation it would be. She could reach it by this path, and if anyone saw her, she would be going through to the Lane and so down into Deeping. The house itself is shunned by the village people.”
    “Wouldn’t she shun it too?”
    “She is a town girl, smart and sophisticated. She would, I think, despise the old village tales, and, as you will have observed, she is neither a sensitive nor an imaginative type. Besides, a young woman who is going to meet a man isn’t thinking about things that happened two hundred years ago. She is thinking about herself—and the man.”
    Frank Abbott nodded.
    “What about the man—is he too much in love to bother about local superstitions, or what?”
    Miss Silver coughed.
    “Two possibilities present themselves. There must, you see, be some reason why he cannot meet her openly. If it were a case of the ordinary village courtship, they could walk out together, and there would be no need for concealment. But the facts require a very strong reason for concealment. The man may be married, or he may belong to such a different class that Mr. and Mrs. Stokes would be scandalized by his association with their niece. Then what could be more convenient for a meeting-place than a deserted house avoided by everyone?”
    Frank Abbott laughed.
    “Well, you’ve explained that Mary didn’t avoid it because (a) she was tough, (b) she didn’t really belong to the neighbourhood, and (c) she was in love.”
    Miss Silver coughed.
    “I do not think that I should call it love, Frank.”
    “Probably not. But putting that on one side, I suppose you would say that we must look for a man who is also tough, and who doesn’t really belong to Deeping?”
    “I am inclined to think so.”
    “Well, there is the Lane in front of us, and here is what looks like a way into the wood.”
    The undergrowth was not very thick at this end of the Copse— a few hazels, a holly-bush or two, an occasional trail of bramble, and a great deal of ivy. It was plain that no forester had kept an eye on the timber for a very long time. Old trees done to death by the ivy had come down in many a winter storm to rot where they lay. Others stood as sheer hulks in a winding-sheet of green, their branches gone, their hollow trunks full of rotting leaves. Presently the bushes thinned away to what was almost a clearing—a most desolate place with a great humped mass of yew on either side of what had perhaps once been a gate. And beyond it, standing amongst rank high grass and nettles, the Forester’s House.
    Frank Abbott whistled.
    “Well, I can think of places where I’d rather meet a girl,” he said.
    Miss Silver’s reply startled him. In all sobriety she enquired,
    “Can you think of a better place for a murder?”
    He whistled again. Before the sound had ceased her hand was on his arm.
    “See, Frank—I was right. Here are her footprints in that damp patch—running footprints.”
    They stood looking at the marks—three or four of them, very clear and distinct, the deeply impressed prints of the fore part of a woman’s shoe. The damp patch of ground which had received and retained them was some dozen