Patricia Wentworth: Wicked Uncle

Justin Leigh said, “That’s very interesting, Miss Silver. But if Carroll thought Masterman was the murderer, why didn’t he blackmail him instead of going for Oakley?”

Miss Silver shook her head. There was some suggestion that a pupil was not being quite as bright as she expected.

“Did Mr. Carroll strike you as a courageous person? He did not make at all that impression upon me.”

Justin gave a half laugh.

“Oh, no.”

“I do not think that he would have approached anyone whom he knew to be a murderer directly. He would certainly not have gone to meet Mr. Masterman in that deserted courtyard but Mr. Oakley was a different matter. Like everyone else, Mr. Carroll had seen Mrs. Oakley on her knees beside the dead man and heard her call him Glen. He could hardly fail to guess at Mr. Oakley’s state of mind, or to suspect that he might be terribly afraid of his wife having some part in the crime. He was prepared to play upon those fears. He rang up, dropped his malicious hint, and rang off again. When Mr. Oakley rang, him up and said he was coming over, Mr. Carroll must have felt confident of success. That his purpose was blackmail is certain from the words overheard by Mrs. Tote when Masterman, pretending to be Oakley, said, ‘It might be worth your while to keep a still tongue. Come down and talk it over.’ Mr. Carroll laughed and came. That was his moment of triumph. But the triumphing of the wicked is short.”

Justin said, “Yes, you’re right-it would have been like that. Very satisfying. It all fits in. Well, we’re all off tomorrow, but I hope it isn’t goodbye. You’ll come and see us when we’re married?”

She smiled graciously.

“It will be a pleasure to which I shall look forward. It is always delightful to look forward. As Lord Tennyson says,

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!”

There was a slightly awed silence. Dorinda produced rather a shy smile, but Frank Abbott rose to the occasion. There was laughter in his voice, but it was the laughter of real affection. He leaned over and kissed Miss Silver’s hand, knitting-needles and all.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Pure gold doesn’t rust.”

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.