Patricia Wentworth - The Alington Inheritance

The click of the receiver sounded. Miss Silver was gone. One moment she was there, so much herself, so kind, so efficient, and so helpful, and the next she was gone. She was quite gone. It gave Jenny a curious feeling of unreality.

She hung up the receiver and turned to Richard. He put an arm about her.

“Yes, I heard,” he said. “Mottingley has had a hard time.”

Jenny was crying. She didn’t know why. Everything was all right as far as it could be all right. She said, “Oh, Richard-” and they stood together for a moment or two. Then she drew herself away and dried her eyes.

“That’s silly,” she said. “And there’s a letter from Alan. I didn’t open it because-well, because I wanted you to be here. I didn’t feel as if I wanted to read it alone.”

“Well, I’m here, darling. Go on-open it.”

The letter was in a foreign envelope. Jenny opened it and read:

“Dear Jenny,

I don’t know what to say. I feel quite bewildered with it all. Anyhow I don’t see much good in my coming back until the unpleasantness has died away. The chaps that I am with say the same. I think I had better find a job. As a matter of fact I’ve practically got one. It’s with a young Austrian. He’s got to travel for his health. I’ve made great friends with him, and his people are very well off. His mother was Spanish, and the money comes from that side of the family. He is going to pay all the expenses, and I think we shall go to India first of all. He is supposed to be in a warm climate.

Yours affectionately,

Alan Forbes.”

As Jenny read on her colour rose. When she had finished it she put the letter into Richard’s hand and said in a curious voice,

“He’s going to India, and he doesn’t leave us any address.”

Richard read the letter.

“It’s pretty calm,” he said. “Nothing about the little girls, I see.”

“There’s nothing about anyone except himself,” said Jenny. “But there’s one thing-it does give me a free hand with Meg and Joyce.”

“Oh, yes, it gives you a free hand,” said Richard. “They are his sisters, and your second-or is it third cousins? But he gives you a perfectly free hand with them. You can pay their school bills, and have them in the holidays, and have all the burden and sweat of bringing them up, whilst he goes off into the blue and enjoys himself!”

But Jenny was laughing.

“Oh, Richard, I’ll love it-I really will.”

He said, “I’m angry,” and he looked it.

“Oh, don’t be, darling! Don’t you see it’ll be just perfect? Caroline was saying only this morning that she’d hate to give them up. And there would be room for them in her house-she said that too.”

“Here, what have you been planning?”

“We’re going to be a family,” said Jenny. “Caroline agreed with me about it. The little girls can go to school, and we’ll be all together in the holidays. At least-”

“And what happens to us?”

“I suppose we get married,” said Jenny.

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.