The Draycott Murder Mystery by Molly Thynne

The report of Sybil Kean when Fayre rang up at lunch-time was not reassuring. The heart attack had been less violent than either of those that had preceded it, but she had not rallied well. Fayre, remembering the letter she had sent him and the conviction she had expressed in it that the next attack would prove her last, wondered whether the wish to live had not forsaken her. In his heart he knew it would be better, both for her and for Edward, if she died. The connection between the unopened letter in his note-case and the Draycott trial was becoming clear to him at last. There was only one person for whom Kean cared enough to shield at the expense of his professional honour; that was Sybil, and Sybil, as was now evident from her letter to Fayre, had some secret knowledge of the case which she may or may not have been aware that she shared with her husband.

Fayre went over the events of the evening of March 23rd. So far as he could remember, he had parted from Sybil Kean in the drawing-room at Staveley shortly before six o'clock. From then onwards she had been invisible, presumably in her room, and had not appeared again until she joined the party in the drawing-room just before eight. He knew the country round Staveley well enough to realize that this would leave her ample time to reach Leslie's farm by six-thirty, or thereabouts. It seemed incredible that any one in her state of health should have been capable of such an effort and, in Sybil's case, doubly so, for, apart from her delicacy, she had always been indolent and easy-going to a fault, the last person to screw herself up to such a pitch of nervous tension as such an expedition would entail.