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in?” said James Carew.
    â€œI was putting the car away. Russell came round to the garage with me. I had one or two things to see to. It must have been just on seven before we got in.”
    â€œI see.”
    They walked on in silence for perhaps twenty yards. Then James Carew said,
    â€œI suppose—you must forgive me, Oliver—I suppose you can’t in any way account for this?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI mean there hasn’t been any—any quarrel—any difference of opinion between you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œGirls are impulsive,” said James Carew. He was remembering that he and Rosabel had quarrelled quite bitterly on their honeymoon. He remembered the quarrel, but he couldn’t remember what it was about. It seemed quite probable now that it wasn’t about anything at all. Rosabel had walked out of the hotel and stayed away for hours. He had been off his head with anger, anxiety, remorse. And it was all about nothing at all. They had laughed about it happily that very night, and she had been so sweet, so sweet.
    â€œHave you found Rose Anne impulsive?” said Oliver.
    James Carew came back with a start. He had forgotten Rose Anne. He said vaguely,
    â€œGirls do things like that. I thought there might have been something—some quarrel—not serious—”
    â€œThere was no quarrel,” said Oliver.
    The day dragged. The police Inspector came over from Malling. He asked a great many questions, wrote the answers down in a note book, and had some information to give in return. The police had been making their own enquiries.
    The lady in the green hat who had boarded the 7.22 had got out two stations farther up the line at Claypole. The green hat had impressed itself upon the ticket collector. The lady was young—oh yes, quite a young lady, but he couldn’t describe her at all. She kept her head down a bit, and she just pushed the ticket at him and went by. He thought she was in a hurry. She got into a car that was waiting and went off. In a considerable hurry she seemed to be, but he noticed her hat because it was just about the greenest thing he had ever seen—kind of hit you in the eye and made you stare. No, he hadn’t noticed the car at all, only just that it was there and that she got into it. And he couldn’t say which way it went, because there was a bit of a drive up from the station yard, and by the time a car got out on to the London road there’d be too much passing for anyone to tell which way it turned.
    â€œAnd that’s all he knows,” said the Inspector. “We’ve pumped him dry—there isn’t any more to be got from him. He didn’t see her face, and he didn’t notice the car, so there’s only the green hat to go on.”
    It wasn’t much. Green was the fashionable autumn colour, and there was a spate of green hats. Every shop window was full of them, every second girl was wearing one, from rifle green to viridian and jade.
    â€œRose Anne got hers by artificial light,” Elfreda told Oliver. “You know how dark Jackson’s is in Malling. And when she got it home it just shrieked. Too ghastly. And she couldn’t change it, because she’d worn it that first day in a fog, so she gave it to Florrie. And I don’t believe she’d have borrowed it if she’d meant to go away, because she wouldn’t take back a present like that—she wouldn’t . And she would never, never, never have gone away anywhere in a blue coat and skirt and that flaring green hat. It must have been someone else.”
    â€œIt might have been hundreds of people,” said Loveday Ross. “Oliver, I don’t believe she meant to go away. Why should she? She was happy—unless you quarrelled. Did you quarrel?”
    Oliver shook his head. Everyone asked him that. He said wearily,
    â€œNo, we didn’t quarrel.”
    â€œThen she didn’t go away of