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  ‘Society. Civilization. Or something,’ Fox said. ‘I mustn’t keep him waiting. So long.’

  III

  ‘Darling, darling Rose,’ Mark said. ‘We’re in for a pretty ghastly time, I know. But we’re in for it together, my dearest love, and I’ll watch over you and be with you, and when it’s all done with we’ll have each other and love each other more than ever before. Won’t we? Won’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose said, clinging to him. ‘We will, won’t we?’

  ‘So that something rather wonderful will come out of it all,’ Mark said. ‘I promise it will. You’ll see.’

  ‘As long as we’re together.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Mark said. ‘Being together is everything.’

  And with one of those tricks that memory sometimes plays upon us, Colonel Cartarette’s face as Mark had last seen it in life, rose up clearly in his mind. It wore a singularly compassionate smile.

  Together, they drove back to Nunspardon.

  IV

  Nurse Kettle drove in bottom gear to the top of Watt’s Hill and there paused. On an impulse or perhaps inspired by some unacknowledged bit of wishful thinking, she got out and looked down on the village of Swevenings. Dusk had begun to seep discreetly into the valley. Smoke rose in cosy plumes from one or two chimneys; roofs cuddled into their surrounding greenery. It was a circumspect landscape. Nurse Kettle revived her old fancy. ‘As pretty as a picture,’ she thought, wistfully and was again reminded of an illustrated map. With a sigh, she turned back to her faintly trembling car. She was about to seat herself when she heard a kind of strangulated hail. She looked back and there, limping through the dusk came Commander Syce. The nearer he got to Nurse Kettle, the redder in the face they both became. She lost her head slightly, clambered into her car, turned her engine off and turned it on again. ‘Pull yourself together, Kettle,’ she said, and leaning out, shouted in an unnatural voice: ‘The top of the evening to you.’

  Commander Syce came up with her. He stood by the open driving window and even in her flurry, she noticed that he no longer smelt of stale spirits.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ he said, laughing hollowly. Sensing perhaps that this was a strange beginning he began again: ‘Look here!’ he shouted. ‘Good lord! Only just heard. Sickening for you. Are you all right? Not too upset and all that? What a thing!’

  Nurse Kettle was greatly comforted. She had feared an entirely different reaction to Kitty Cartarette’s arrest in Commander Syce.

  ‘What about yourself?’ she countered. ‘It must be a bit of a shock to you, after all.’

  He made a peculiar dismissive gesture with the white object he carried.

  ‘Never mind me. Or rather,’ Commander Syce amended, dragging feverishly at his collar, ‘if you can bear it for a moment …’

  She now saw that the object was a rolled paper. He thrust it at her. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing, whatever. Don’t say a word.’

  She unrolled it, peering at it in the dusk. ‘Oh,’ she cried in an ecstasy, ‘how lovely! How lovely! It’s my picture-map! Oh, look! There’s Lady Lacklander, sketching in Bottom Meadow. And the doctor with a stork over his head. Aren’t you a trick? And there’s me – only, you’ve been much too kind about me. ‘She leant out of the window turning her lovely map towards the fading light. This brought her closish to Commander Syce, who made a singular little ejaculation and was motionless. Nurse Kettle traced the lively figures through the map – the landlord, the parson, various rustic celebrities. When she came to Hammer Farm, there was the gardener’s cottage and his child, and there was Rose bending gracefully in the garden. Nearer the house, one could see even in that light, Commander Syce had used thicker paint.

  As if, Nurse Kettle thought with a jolt, there had been an erasure.

  And down in the willow grove, the Colonel’s favourite fishing haunt, there had been made a similar erasure.

  ‘I started it,’ he said, ‘some time ago – after your – after your first visit.’

  She looked up, and between this oddly-assorted pair a silence fell.

  ‘Give me six months,’ Commander Syce said. ‘To make sure. It’ll be all right. Will you?’

  Nurse Kettle assured him that she would.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My most grateful thanks to Michael Godby M.A. (Oxon) for his learned advice in the matter of scales, to Eileen Mackay, to Eskdale Moloney and, as ever, to Vladimir and Anita Muling without whom …

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marsh’s real passion was the theatre. She was both actress and producer and almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand public’s interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her ‘damery’ in 1966.

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  A Man Lay Dead

  Enter a Murderer

  The Nursing Home Murder

  Death in Ecstasy

  Vintage Murder

  Artists in Crime

  Death in a White Tie

  Overture to Death

  Death at the Bar

  Surfeit of Lampreys

  Death and the Dancing Footman

  Colour Scheme

  Died in the Wool

  Final Curtain

  Swing, Brother, Swing

  Opening Night

  Spinsters in Jeopardy

  Scales of Justice

  Off With His Head

  Singing in the Shrouds

  False Scent

  Hand in Glove

  Dead Water

  Death at the Dolphin

  Clutch of Constables

  When in Rome

  Tied up in Tinsel

  Black As He’s Painted

  Last Ditch

  Grave Mistake

  Photo-Finish

  Light Thickens

  Death on the Air and Other Stories

  Black Beech and Honeydew (autobiography)

  COPYRIGHT

  HARPER

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1955

  Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1955

  Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  Source ISBN: 9780006512424

  Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344703

  Version: 2013–10–14

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