Paul Fordingbridge acknowledged the justice of her view with a nod.
“Quite so,” he admitted. “And you had a talk with this fellow, had you?”
Miss Fordingbridge's temper showed unmistakably in her tone as she replied.
“Kindly don't call Derek ‘this fellow,’ if you please. It's Derek himself. He talked to me for quite a long time—all about things that had happened at Foxhills when he was here before the War, and other things that happened at the times he was home on leave. And part of the time he told me about Clausthal and Fort 9, too.”
Her brother's scepticism again made itself evident.
“Plenty of people were in Fort 9 and at Clausthal besides Derek. That proves nothing.”
“Well, then, he mentioned a whole lot of little things as well. He reminded me of how Cressida dropped her bouquet when she was signing the register after her wedding. And he remembered which wedding march they played then.”
“Almost anyone in Lynden Sands could have told him that.”
Miss Fordingbridge reflected for a moment or two, evidently searching her memory for some crucial piece of evidence.
“He remembered that we used to bring up some of the old port from Bin 73 every time he went off to the Front. He said often he wished he could have had some of it just before zero hour.”