Patricia Wentworth: Grey Mask

She turned to him with outstretched hands, and Archie Millar turned away.

Charles Moray put his arm about her.

“Better tell her,” he said in a low voice-he spoke to Miss Silver. Then, “Margaret-”

Miss Silver spoke in her colourless tones:

“Miss Langton, your mother is quite safe. Mr. Pelham has been-arrested.”

Margaret leaned against Charles. She felt weak and cold. Miss Silver took her hand and patted it. Her touch was kind.

“I bought a paper on my way here. Mr. Pelham was arrested in his flight. His aeroplane crashed in the fog. The pilot was picked up by a Channel boat. Mr. Pelham was drowned. Your mother, my dear, is quite safe.”

Margaret tried to say “Thank you.” She knew Miss Silver was kind. She knew that there had been deliverance. But she had come to the end of her strength.

She turned and hid her face on Charles Moray’s dusty coat.

Part of a letter from Miss Margot Standing to her friend Stephanie:

… I’ll tell you all about it at Christmas. We’ll have a lovely time. And you shall see Archie. We’re not engaged, because Papa says I’m not old enough to be engaged, and Archie says so too. Archie’s frightfully in love with me-at least he won’t say he is, but I’m sure he is. And Papa likes him most frightfully. I think I shall have a sapphire ring. But I don’t want to be married for simply ages.

Margaret and Charles are going to be married next week. I would love to be Margaret’s bridesmaid, but she isn’t going to have any because of her stepfather. He was a nice little man, and I expect she’s frightfully sorry about it. He was drowned in an aeroplane, so she and Charles aren’t really going to have a wedding-they’re just going to be married. I call it frightfully dull…

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.