CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEMiss Silver employed her strongest comment.
“Dear me!”
Adriana Ford regarded her with a touch of impatience.
“When I walked down on them they all got the fright of their lives. Sam went the colour of melted tallow.”
“Pray, what made him think the drowned person was yourself?”
“She was wearing my coat.”
“But if it was dark—I gather it must have been, since your guests had left——”
Adriana said impatiently,
“He had a torch, a wretched weak little thing, but enough to show up the pattern of the coat. I have had it for some time, and it is—pretty noticeable—big squares of black and white with an emerald strip running across them. Quite unmistakable, and everyone knows it. Sam will have seen me in it for years.”
“And how did Miss Preston come to be wearing it?”
“It wa
