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Parrish. Could you go to his office for me.?"
    "Of course! What d'you want me to do there.? Shoot him.?"
    Sally smiled. "Not yet. But if you could make up some plausible story—^some commission for him—^and see what you can find out about his business. . . . Anything at all. I don't know what to look for, because I don't know anything about him. Whatever you find out will help."
    Sally*s train took her to Portsmouth by midday, and a hansom cab took her to the rectory of St. Thomas's in the parish of Southam. The area was an undistinguished suburb of Portsmouth: dull terraces of small brick houses, a row of dingy shops, an area of scrubland by the railway line awaiting development. The church was no more than fifty years old: old enough to be dirty, not old enough to be interesting. The rectory looked the same.
    The rector, a Mr. Murray, was having luncheon, so the maidservant told her. Would she care to come back in half an hour.? Sally agreed and wandered into the church to pass the time. It was a conventional Gothic revival building of no beauty at all, and the only point of interest was the list of incumbents on the wall. There had been five previous rectors of Southam. The current one, the Reverend Mr. Murray, had only been in office since the year before; he hadn't been

    here when the supposed marriage took place. The rector then had been called Beech.
    When she judged that Mr. Murray had finished his luncheon, she went back to the rectory. The maid showed her into a study, and Mr. Murray rose to shake her hand. He was tall, thin, middle-aged, and severe.
    "I wonder if I might look at your parish records.'"' she said.
    "You're aware we only go back to eighteen thirty-two?" said Mr. Murray. "If you're hunting ancestors, there will not be many here."
    "The register of marriages is all I want," said Sally. "For eighteen seventy-nine. Mr. Murray, what sort of parish is this.^ Is it a settled kind of place.'"'
    "Very mixed. There is a small congregation—too small. There's a lot of movement in and out. People are restless these days; they don't stay in the place where they were bom. In my last parish—in the country—I could walk through the village and name everyone I saw, and all their family, and tell you everything there was to know about them. I can walk the streets of this parish all day and hardly see a face I know."
    "Your predecessor, Mr. Beech—did he retire.'*"
    There was a silence. "Why do you ask.?" he said.
    "I wanted to ask about a marriage that took place here in eighteen seventy-nine. If it's in the register, I wanted to ask him if he remembered it."
    "I see. Well, yes, he is retired now. I'm afraid I can't give you his address."
    "Can't.?"
    "I don't know it," he said shortly. "If you wish to see the register, you'd better come into the church."
    He stood up and opened the door. She followed him out of the rectory and through a rank, dusty garden to the side door of the church.
    In the gray afternoon light of the vestry, he took a pile of books out of a musty-smelling cupboard and put them on a table for her.
    J

    "Here is the book you want," he said, showing her a wide green volume. "This has been in use here since eighteen thirty-two. Every marriage solemnized in this parish is recorded in here. What was the date you wanted.'"'
    "Eighteen seventy-nine," she said. "January. Are there many marriages taking place here, Mr. Murray.''"
    "Two or three a quarter. Not many, I suppose. Here we are."
    He handed her the open book. There were two printed forms on a page, with space to fill in the details of each marriage. For the first one on that page, she saw, the groom had not been able to write, and had signed with a shaky X. His wife's penmanship was not much firmer.
    She looked at the second: and there was her name.
    On 3 January 1879, Arthur James Parrish had married Veronica Beatrice Lockhart. She caught her breath involuntarily and then controlled herself and read on. The ages of Parrish and herself