13It was some time after tea that Lucius Bellingdon found himself showing Miss Silver his collection of pictures. He was a little uncertain as to just how this had come about. It had not really been his intention to show the pictures at all, at any rate not at this moment, and not to Miss Silver. Yet as the party at tea broke up he was aware of Miss Silver putting away her knitting in a flowered chintz bag with green plastic handles and looking up at him in a brightly intelligent manner.
‘So kind of you, and I shall be most interested to see them,’ she was saying. And then, ‘I have some pictures that I am very fond of myself. Only reproductions of course, but in some cases I have been privileged to see the originals.’
After which there was no doubt that he had in some way committed himse
