Patricia Wentworth - She Came Back

Frank Abbott had been listening with respectful attention. If there was a moment during which the irreverent phrase, “Moralizings of Maudie,” flickered across his mind-if his rather light eyes never entirely lost a faintly cynical spark, he still felt, as he always did, an affectionate respect which had only ceased to surprise him because it was now of quite long standing. As she rose to her feet, he straightened up.

“I see Jocelyn has a notice of his wife’s death in all the papers-with the date.” He picked up the Times from the table behind him and ran his eye down the column. “Here we are-‘On June 26, 1941, by enemy action, Anne, wife of Sir Philip Jocelyn-’ Well, I suppose we shall be seeing his name in the Marriages next.”

Miss Silver coughed, a thought reprovingly. She said, “I hope so.”

Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.

Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.