"Oh good. Shall I get the bags down?"

Aunt Patty embraced us with affectionate delight.

"We're going to Epping the day after tomorrow," she said. "I thought you'd want a little time at Moldenbury to get things ready."

"It'll be such fun," said Teresa. "I wish the snow had stayed."

"Not so easy for getting about, my dear. It might have been so bad that we couldn't have travelled," Aunt Patty reminded her.

"Well, I'm glad it's gone."

"Mind you," went on Aunt Patty, "the forest would have looked very pretty."

Violet greeted us with gruff affection and the statement that we must all be gasping for tea.

"There's hot toast over a basin of water so that the butter soaks well in, and keeps it hot at the same time," she explained. "And there's lardy cakes to follow because a little bird whispered to me that they were Teresa's favourites."

The same cosy homeliness. It was hard to believe that it could exist side by side with horrible death.


The next day the letter came. As soon as I saw the Austrian stamp I began to tremble and for a few seconds I was afraid to open it.

It was in a strange hand and it informed me that there had been an accident. Sir Jason Verringer was unable to travel and he was asking for me. His condition was such that I should lose no time.

It was signed with a name I could not decipher but it had the word Doctor underneath it.

Aunt Patty came in. She stared at me and then took the letter from my hand.

I said: "Something terrible has happened. I know it."

She understood at once because the previous night I had told her everything. Now she looked at me steadily.

"You'll go," she said.

I nodded.

"You can't go alone."

"I must go," I insisted.

"All right," she replied. "I'll come with you."


It was a long and tedious journey across Europe and seemed longer than it actually was, because I was impatient to arrive.

It had not been easy getting away from Moldenbury. Violet was nonplussed and said we were mad - and on the eve of Christmas too! Teresa was angry and sullen.

We tried to explain but it was not easy until Violet grudgingly said that she supposed if Patty thought it was right then it must be. Aunt Patty said that Teresa and Violet should go to Epping without us. There was a great deal of argument, but finally it was agreed that that was what they should do.

Aunt Patty was wonderful during that journey. She said little because that was how she knew I wanted it. She left me with my thoughts and they were all for Jason Verringer.

I learned a great deal during that journey, for all the time I was thinking that I might arrive too late and never see him alive again. I knew that he was in danger: the wording of the doctor's letter had told me that, and while I was looking out of the train windows at hills, rivers and majestic mountains I was trying to imagine what life would be like without him. I had avoided him, but what would it be like if he were not there to avoid?

If he were not there I should never want to go back to the Abbey. There would be a deep sadness in my life and memories which I should strive to forget and never be able to.

"I don't think," said Aunt Patty suddenly, "that the doctor would have suggested you make this long journey if there had not been some hope."

She knew how to comfort me. I could not have borne probing questions, condolences, expressions of sympathy. I might have known that Aunt Patty would understand what was going on in my mind and not attempt to divert my thoughts to subjects which I had no wish to think of.

And so at length we came to Trentnitz.

It was a small hotel, halfway up a mountain-one of the lesser-known resorts for winter sports. We were taken from the station halt to the Gasthof in a kind of sleigh. As soon as we entered the wooden chalet-like building and said who we were, we were told that the doctor was with Sir Jason now and he would certainly see us at once. He had taken the precaution of reserving a room for us, which Aunt Patty and I could share.

The doctor came to us. He spoke fair English and there was no doubt that he was pleased to see us.

"This is what our patient needs," he said. "He wants you with him. You are his fiancée, I believe. I am sure that will help."

"How bad is he?"

"Very bad. The crash was ..." He lifted his shoulder searching for words. "It was a great mercy he was not killed with the other. The police will be here. They will wish to see you. But first ... the patient."

I went to him immediately. He was in a room with a window open to the mountain. Everything was very white and clean looking. He himself seemed drained of colour and for a few seconds I hardly recognized him.

"Cordelia," he said.

I went to the bed and knelt down.

"You came," he whispered.

"As soon as I heard. Aunt Patty is with me."

"It must be Christmas," he said.

"Yes."

"You ought to be at Epping."

"I think I ought to be here."

"I'm pretty well smashed up."

"I haven't talked much to the doctor. We've just arrived and he brought me straight to you."

He nodded. "I have to learn to walk again."

"You will."

"I got him though. Fiona's here. You'll have to look after her. She's in a bad state. She's in bed here. We've turned the place into a regular hospital between us."

"What happened?"

"I found him. It wasn't difficult when I knew where. I just came here. Carl and Fiona ... That was all I needed. I saw them together. It made me feel I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands. You see, it was the way he behaved to her, so loving and tender and she ... she was looking at him as though he were some god. I saw them well before they saw me. They were going out skiing and the thought hit me. He could be going to do it then. He might be going to take her out there and stage an accident. The other girl died that way ... now it was Fiona's turn. So I went after them. When Fiona saw me she cried out in dismay. Then he swung round. It was amazing to see his face. She had called out Uncle Jason ... and he knew. I said `You murdering swine ...' and I went for him. We grappled there. I knew what he was. after. He was going to send me hurtling down the slope. He knew the place. He was experienced in the snow. He had the advantage. But I was determined to get him. He had me on the edge ... and I thought, if I'm going over I'm taking him with me. He'll not have a chance to go on with his game of murder. And... together we went ..."

"You should have waited," I said. "The police would have got him. They were on the trail. They've arrested Elsa."

"When would they have got him? After he had murdered Fiona? No. We were dealing with a practised murderer, a man whose business was murder. I knew they would have come in time, but I had to be there ... right away ... as soon as I knew. I couldn't let it be too late."

"What happened to him?"

"The best thing. He was lucky. He broke his neck. I broke lots of things but my neck was intact. I landed in a heap of snow ... I was buried in it. He went onto hard rock."

"Does it upset you to talk of it?" I asked.

"No. It does me good. It's Fiona who worries me." "I'll see what I can do."

"Try to explain to her. She won't believe you, but you have to make her. I know it's hard but she can't go on shutting her eyes to the truth. Cordelia... it was wonderful of you to come. I suppose I kept asking for you when I didn't know what I was saying."

"Would you have only asked for me when you didn't know you were?"

"I knew about Epping. Eugenie has kept me well informed. I guessed the rest."

"Well, I came here instead."

"Foolish of you."

"I think it was rather wise. Do you remember you once asked me to marry you?"

He smiled faintly. "A bit of a braggart, wasn't I?"

"Is the offer still open?"

He did not answer and I went on: "Because, if it is, I've decided to accept."

"You're carried away by the emotion of the moment. Pity for the man who will never again be what he was. That is not how it should be between us. There's that paragon awaiting you. He will give you all that a woman could want."

I laughed.

"What's amusing?" he asked.

"I have been telling you for a long time that I never wanted to see you again and you were insisting that I must. Now, I'm saying I will and you are pointing out the reasons why I should marry someone else."

"What a perverse pair we are. We've changed. It's been a complete turnabout. You have left the practical schoolmistress in England and I have left the swaggering scoundrel halfway down a mountain. How can people change so much?"

"They don't. It is just little facets of their characters being revealed. Do you really love me?"

"Do I have to answer?"

"I want a clear answer."

"Oh? The schoolmistress is not far away. If it isn't the right answer, take a hundred lines. Of course I love you."

"Then the matter is settled. You may be the wicked villain with a trace of the devil in him, but haven't I always known how to cope with him?"

"Even in the Devil's Den."

We were silent. We dared not look at each other for fear of betraying the depth of our emotion. I took his hand and laid it against my cheek.

I said: "Ever since this happened I have been doing a lot of thinking about you and myself, and coming here in the train when I did not know what I was going to find, I understood myself ... my feelings ... and what I wanted. If I had found you dead, I shouldn't have cared very much about living myself. I realized that I had never felt so alive, so much in love with life, as when I was fighting with you. I mean our verbal contests. To whip up my defiance of you, that was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I learned how dull and meaningless life would be without that. I suppose antagonism sometimes conceals attraction."

"You are talking nonsense," he said. "You are carried away by sentimentality. My dear little schoolmistress is doing what she considers the Right Thing."

"If you don't want to hear any more I'll go."

"Stay."

"That sounded like a command."

"You don't like commands. You make your own decisions."

"Yes, and I have decided that I am going to stay as long as I like. You're going to get well. I'm going to see to that, and the only way I can do it efficiently is by marrying you. There is only one thing which will stop me and that is if you tell me you don't want me."

"Listen to me," he said. "You must wait, Cordelia. You must see what has been done to me."

"You've saved Fiona's life. Remember that."

"She won't thank me."

"She will in time. Now what do you say?"

"You'd be better off with the banker."

"Shall I go back then?"

"No," he said. "Stay. Suppose you married me. How do you know I wouldn't give you a dose of laudanum?"

"I'll take the risk."

"And suppose I murdered you and put you in the fishponds, or buried your carcass in the Abbey grounds?"

"I'll take that risk too."

"Imagine the scandal! Mrs. Baddicombe will have a field day."

"I'm feeling rather grateful to Mrs. Baddicombe at the moment. I'd be quite happy to provide her with a few items for her repertoire."

"You won't be serious."

"I'm deadly serious. I'm going to see the doctor. I want to know exactly what state you're in. I'm going to stay here until I take you back with me."

I hid my face because I was afraid he would see my tears, and when I looked at him there was a kind of wonder and immeasurable joy in his face.

Revelation

IT was not until the spring that I married Jason. By that time he was able to walk with the aid of a stick. I had been with him for three months in Austria. Aunt Patty had gone home after three weeks. She said that she thought I could manage without her and she wanted to see what Violet was up to.

She had been a great help with Fiona who would not believe that she had been married to anyone other than the romantic hero whom she had always known. He had been tender and loving. I thought how strange that was and I wondered afresh at the complexities of human nature. I supposed that when he was with her he was all she said he was-and yet all the time he was waiting for the opportunity to kill her. I wondered what sort of man he could be to play two such parts with conviction.