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said this with conviction.
    ‘And, of course, we didn’t cheat about the money. I was still legally entitled to my salary. But Lewis, who was quite well off, thought it wouldn’t be the thing to take it. So I’ve been paying it into a trust fund to found a scholarship.’
    ‘The Lewis Packford Shakespeare Scholarship, no doubt.’ Appleby supposed himself to have said this with marked irony.
    ‘Oh, yes – how clever of you to guess!’ Ruth seemed really pleased. ‘Lewis decided it should be that.’
    ‘Lewis, if you ask me, decided a great deal. The whole outrageous scheme of concealment was clearly his.’
    ‘It wasn’t outrageous!’ Ruth was indignant. ‘I’ve explained to you how we played entirely fair.’
    ‘There was certainly one person who didn’t get fair play – and that is yourself. And it wasn’t long before you had ceased to think it fun, and were acknowledging to yourself that it was very foolish and rather humiliating.’ Appleby had decided to smack out at Ruth. ‘For instance, your husband going off to a bachelor life on Lake Garda – where I happened, by the way, to visit him – while you were doing some learned dreary useless thing at home – lecturing, I shouldn’t be surprised, on the decay of metaphysical poetry to a Summer School for Patagonians.’
    ‘I’ve never in my life done anything of the kind!’ Ruth was extremely indignant. ‘You are being quite idiotic and – and improperly flippant and familiar.’
    ‘So I am.’ Appleby smiled at her inoffensively. ‘But I’m old enough to be your father, and I think I’ll put things to you after my own fashion. Packford was a fascinating chap. I liked him very much, or I wouldn’t be here now. But he had a mania for secrets and surprises. And he must have got you right under his thumb.’
    ‘Lewis didn’t get me under his thumb!’ Ruth’s indignation grew.
    ‘He must positively have hypnotized you, my dear young lady, or you would never have agreed to so absurd a course of conduct. And you really knew it – although you were repressing the knowledge and persuading yourself that, for a time at least, it was all a great lark. I’m very sorry to speak in this way about your relations with a man you were certainly much in love with, and who is only just dead. It’s not very decent. Unfortunately it’s my business to go ahead – and rather rapidly, because there are a good many calls upon my time. So what I’m saying is this: you were already in a state of some disillusion and some dissatisfaction when you got this incredible news. One secret marriage had so ticked his irresponsible fancy that he’d promptly gone off and contracted a second with someone called Alice. Unless, of course, Alice really came first. I just haven’t heard any evidence bearing on that as yet. But it’s not, perhaps, a point of the first importance. What is significant is that you were in a raging fury.’
    Ruth lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. She did it with difficulty, since her hands trembled and she was holding Appleby in a fixed terrified glance. ‘What are you saying?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand you.’
    ‘Somebody sent you an anonymous letter, containing what you must have supposed or hoped was a stupid and cruel joke. You hurried to Urchins – and the thing proved to be true. There was this other woman, brought there by a similar message. No doubt she was in a raging fury too. And what happened? Packford couldn’t take it. The situation was beyond him, and he shot himself. There oughtn’t, really, to be much difficulty in believing that. Am I right?’
    ‘It sounds reasonable.’ She spoke cautiously, doubtingly. It might have been because she was unconvinced, or because she felt obscurely that Appleby was baiting a trap.
    ‘Have you nothing more to say than that? What was in your mind when you seized the initiative, so to speak, this morning – grabbing this car to come and meet me with? Why did