She Came Back by Patricia Wentworth

discuss the whole matter with Trent. You haven’t met him, have you? He came in as a partner just before the war. Some kind of connection of old Sunderland, who was the senior partner in my father’s time. Rather remote, but it is pleasant to keep up these old ties.” Partly in order to relieve the tension, he continued to talk about Pelham Trent. “A very able fellow—I’m lucky to have him. Not forty yet, but he’s in the Fire Service, so he hasn’t been called up. Of course he is only available every third day—they do forty-eight hours on and twenty-four off— but it’s a good deal better than nothing. I would really be glad if you would let me talk this matter over with him. He has a very good brain, and he is sound—very sound. A pleasant fellow too. Mrs. Armitage and Lyndall saw quite a lot of him when they were in town just before you came home. Lyndall came in for a few hundred pounds from an Armitage cousin, and he handled the business for her.”
    “Oh, tell him anything you like.” Philip’s tone was a weary one. “We shall be lucky if it doesn’t have to go farther than that.”
    Mr. Codrington regarded him with gravity.
    “I was about to draw your attention to that aspect of the case. If this affair can be settled inside the family, a great deal of most undesirable publicity will be avoided. Quite apart from everything else, can you at this moment afford to be involved in a cause célèbre? You are just taking up a new job. Will that particular kind of limelight be acceptable at the War Office?”
    He got an impatient shake of the head. He continued in a manner which had settled into being equable again.
    “I think you may put it this way. The family are going to be a great deal more on the spot than any jury when it comes to the kind of thing that has to be looked out for in a case like this. They’ll know all the ropes, and if she makes a slip, they won’t miss it. If she passes the family, you can be perfectly sure that she would pass with any jury in the world.”
    Philip walked up and down in silence. Presently he came over to the writing-table, leaned on it, and said,
    “I agree to a meeting of the family. Perry’s interests are involved—any doubt as to whether I’ve got a legal wife or not would affect him. He is one of the people who have to be satisfied. He and his wife must come. Then there’s Aunt Milly, and Theresa’s sister Inez—and why on earth Cousin Maude should have given those two aggravating women Spanish names—”
    Mr. Codrington nodded.
    “It used to annoy your father.”
    “Prophetic probably—they’ve always been a damned nuisance in the family. But I suppose Inez had better come.”
    “She will probably be a great deal more troublesome if she doesn’t.”
    “Then of course there is Uncle Thomas—and, I suppose, Aunt Emmeline.”
    Mr. Codrington looked down his nose.
    “Mrs. Jocelyn would certainly wish to be present.”
    Philip gave a short laugh.
    “Wild horses wouldn’t keep her away! Well, that’s about the lot. Archie and Jim are somewhere in Italy, but they’re a long way off on the family tree, and in view of the fact that Perry is married, and that Uncle Thomas has four boys all safely under military age, they don’t really come into it.”
    “No, I hardly think we need take them into consideration.
    And there are no relations of Anne’s on her mother’s side.”
    “And no Joyces?”
    Mr. Codrington shook his head.
    “There was only the one son by the Joyce connection. Roger Joyce’s wife died when Annie was five years old. There were no other children, and he did not marry again. Your father made Mrs. Joyce an allowance, but refused to continue it to Roger. He was a weak, inoffensive creature, rather fond of drawing the long bow about his grand relations.”
    “What did he do?”
    “We got him a job as a clerk in a shipping office. He was the sort of man who gets into a rut and stays there—no initiative, no