‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Jonathan, influenced already (although against his will) by his wife’s calm reasonableness. ‘You see, if this is just one nasty person’s reaction to one particular incident, and that’s the end of it, all well and good; but if it’s the beginning of a poison-pen campaign, we ought to take strong action and try to nip it in the bud. This letter constitutes grounds for an action for slander, I should say, and, if it does, we’d be well advised, in my opinion, to push it as far as it will go. I suppose we’re strangers here, and therefore, to that extent, resented, and, in somebody’s opinion, vulnerable.’

‘Well, look,’ said Deborah, ‘why not take the thing to the vicar? He’s a sensible old darling, and will probably be able to put his finger on this anonymous Peeping Thomasina without much trouble.’

‘Fine idea,’ said Jonathan, looking grimly happy. ‘I’ll go over there right away.’

‘Oh, wait until tomorrow, at any rate,’ said Deborah. ‘Aunt Adela will want her tea in another hour, and, anyhow, the weather’s so frightful. Apart from anything else, it’s snowing again.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the remorseful host. ‘I’d forgotten Aunt Adela was here. Where’s she got to?’

Mrs Bradley was discovered in the kitchen. She had finished her correspondence, and was now helping in the preparations for dinner and discoursing to an enthralled audience consisting of cook, Jane and Carrie, upon the subject of George Joseph Smith and his brides in the bath. They were preparing the vegetables, washing up her various utensils, and breathlessly hanging upon her words. Mrs Bradley, meanwhile, was engaged with savoury messes which carried their own recommendation.

‘Cooking (vide Captain MacHeath’s views upon women) unbends the mind,’ pronounced Mrs Bradley, upon the advent of her nephew and his wife. ‘And murder makes the whole world kin. There cannot be any doubt about that.’

‘I remember,’ said Mrs Fairleaf, the cook, ‘a funny kind of case when I lived in Gloucester. It was somebody that murdered a grand-nephew because he believed in ghosts. And nobody could ever make out whether the ghosts committed the murder or whether the murder settled the ghosts, for they never had no ghosts after that.’

‘Interesting,’ Mrs Bradley remarked. ‘I shall add it to my memoirs, Mrs Fairleaf.’

‘I say, Aunt Adela,’ said Jonathan, when Mrs Bradley was ready to leave the kitchen, ‘what do you think about this?’ He produced the anonymous letter. Mrs Bradley shook her head over it.

‘I should keep it,’ she said briefly. ‘I suppose you do not recognize the handwriting?’