Poison In The Pen by Patricia Wentworth

tall chair. She said,
    “I didn’t ask you to come up here to talk about Connie.”
    He stared.
    “But it’s true, isn’t it—she’s dead?”
    “Oh, yes, it’s true. We can make it an excuse if you like. You see, I can’t marry you, Gilbert.”
    “What on earth do you mean?”
    “I mean I can’t marry you.”
    The stare had become a very angry one.
    “What do you mean, you can’t marry me? You’ve left it a bit late in the day, haven’t you?”
    “Yes, it’s late, but it isn’t too late. There are things I could use for an excuse, but I’m not going to use them. I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think it would be fair. I’m going to tell you the truth. I can’t marry you, because Jason has come home.”
    “And what the devil has Jason got to do with your marrying me?”
    She said quite simply,
    “I’ve always loved him. We belong. I oughtn’t ever to have said I would marry you. But he didn’t say anything, and he went away.”
    He came a step nearer.
    “Look here, Valentine, you can’t treat me like this! Do you know what people will say? If you don’t, I can tell you. It will be one of two things. Either you’ve found out something about me, or I have found out something about you. That’s the sort of mud that sticks, you know. And it will be a damned sight worse for you than it is for me, because as far as I’m concerned they’ll probably only credit me with a mistress, but it’s a hundred to one they’ll say it came out that you were going to have a baby, and that I turned you down. Pull yourself together and use some common sense!”
    She shook her head.
    “It’s no use, Gilbert. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or anyone does, I can’t marry anyone but Jason. I ought to have known that all along. I’ve been so unhappy that I didn’t seem to be able to think. We can just say that the wedding is put off. Everyone will think it is because of Connie.”
    Gilbert lost his temper with a crash.
    “Don’t be such a damned nitwit! What everyone will do is try and pin her suicide on to me. And if that doesn’t make me a laughingstock—”
    The colour came suddenly, vividly to her face.
    “Gilbert!”
    “Connie Brooke—that fatuous white rabbit! I see myself!”
    He gave a furious laugh.
    She hadn’t meant to show him the letter, she hadn’t meant to shelter behind it in any way. If she loved him, she wouldn’t have believed it. If she had loved him, she wouldn’t have shown it to him. And if he had left Connie alone, she wouldn’t have shown it to him. But Connie hadn’t ever given him a thought, and Connie was dead. She was going to show it to him now.
    She went over to her writing-table, took out the letter from between the leaves of the account-book where she had laid it for safety, and came back with it in her hand, her mind so concentrated on what she was doing and why she was doing it that it had no knowledge of whether Gilbert had gone on talking or not. When she held it out to him he said angrily, “What’s that?” and she put it into his hand.
    She said, “You had better read it,” and backed away to stand by the tall chair again and rest her hands upon it.
    Gilbert stared at the cheap paper, the big clumsy writing. He read:
    “You may not mind his playing fast and loose with Doris Pell and driving her to take her life or about his carrying on with S R and if you don’t know what I mean you are more of a fool than what I took you for but you had better find out about his marrying Marie Dubois under a false name when he was in Canada or you may find yourself in the cart along of the other pore gurls he as led astray.”
    He read to the end, looked across at her with blazing eyes, and demanded,
    “What the devil is this?”
    Valentine’s colour stood high.
    “I got it this morning. I wasn’t going to show it to you— I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t said those things about Connie.”
    “I never looked the same side of the road as Connie! Who