Bobby meets and allies with Moira Nicholson

Bobby Jones meets Moira Nicholson in two stages: first in a moonlit clearing near The Grange, where her terror interrupts his attempt to leave, and later at the Anglers' Arms, where she asks him for help. The meeting matters because Moira is not merely the woman in the missing photograph. She identifies herself as the wife of Dr Jasper Nicholson, describes a series of incidents she believes are attempts on her life, and supplies a possible motive involving Sylvia Bassington-ffrench and Henry Bassington-ffrench. Her disclosure joins Bobby’s investigation of Alan Carstairs’s death to a living danger she says she cannot face alone.

The Encounter Near The Grange

Bobby comes upon Moira unexpectedly after following a twisting path through shrubbery. The path turns sharply into an open space close to the house, and he steps into the moonlight before he can stop himself. Moira appears around the corner, moving cautiously and looking about her; she then stops and sways as though she might fall. Bobby goes to her and catches her. The scene establishes an immediate imbalance: she is visibly frightened, while he is a stranger whose sudden appearance might itself seem threatening.

Moira repeats that she is frightened, but when a sound seems to reach her, she springs away from Bobby and tells him to leave. He says he wants to help. Her response is not immediate trust: she studies him in silence before the encounter is interrupted by the approach of another person. Bobby resumes his retreat, believing he can do nothing more that night. Yet the meeting has changed the investigation. He recognizes Moira as the original of the photograph that had mysteriously disappeared, giving the image a living connection to the case rather than leaving it as an unexplained clue.

A Visit and a Plea for Help

On returning to the Anglers' Arms, Bobby learns that a woman is waiting in the innkeeper’s private sitting room. He assumes the visitor must be Frankie Derwent, whose arrival he cannot otherwise explain, and is surprised to find Moira sitting alone. She is dressed in black, her hands tremble, and her frightened expression recalls the previous night’s encounter. Her first difficulty is not the account itself but the question of whether she should have come. Bobby reassures her that she did right and promises to help.

Moira explains that seeing Bobby step into the moonlight gave her hope, though she had not known who he was. She had decided to find him and tell him what was happening. She fears that her story will sound like madness, a fear sharpened by the setting she has left behind and by the possibility that others will dismiss her as mentally unwell. Bobby does not treat her fear as proof that her account is irrational. Instead, he asks who wants to kill her and why. The conversation moves from a frightened appeal to specific claims that Bobby can question and compare with what he already knows.

The Threat and Its Proposed Motive

Moira names her husband, Dr Jasper Nicholson, as the person she believes wants her dead. She makes clear that she is not a patient at The Grange. Her suspicion rests on what she thinks she sees in his expression and on a succession of incidents presented as accidents: Dr Nicholson backed a car without seeing her, and she escaped it only by jumping aside; on another occasion, a substance was in the wrong bottle. She says she has been continually watchful, trying to protect herself from events that other people might regard as harmless mistakes. These are Moira’s allegations, not independently established findings, but they give Bobby a concrete account to investigate.

She proposes a motive connected to Sylvia Bassington-ffrench. Dr Nicholson, she believes, wants to marry Sylvia and is arranging for Henry Bassington-ffrench to be brought to The Grange as a patient. Moira cannot explain exactly what would happen next, but fears that Henry would be placed in danger once there. She also says Dr Nicholson has some hold over him. Bobby supplies a relevant fact: Henry takes Morphia. Moira reasons that the Morphia arriving by post may be connected to Dr Nicholson, who could then appear to treat Henry while keeping his influence concealed. The exchange does not settle whether her theory is correct; it brings together the doctor, Henry’s drug use, the proposed stay at The Grange, and Sylvia in a single suspected plan.

Moira adds that she has been married for just over a year and has nowhere to go, no money, and no account of her danger that she expects others to believe. Her isolation helps explain why Bobby’s willingness to listen matters to the event. He tells her that he believes her, offering not proof of her claims but a point of support from which they can be examined. Her fear is no longer confined to the nighttime appearance near the house; she has now stated it directly and given Bobby the circumstances she thinks explain it.

Alan Carstairs and the Emerging Alliance

Bobby’s questions turn the conversation back to Alan Carstairs. He asks whether Moira knew him and whether she had given him her photograph. Moira confirms that she knew Alan before her marriage and acknowledges that Bobby’s inference about the photograph is correct. She also confirms that Alan came to see her in the district about a month earlier, although she does not know how he discovered where she was living. She had not written to him since marrying Dr Nicholson, and she does not think her husband knew about the visit, while allowing that he might have known without telling her.

The timing gives the photograph and Alan’s visit a more specific context. Moira says she had not yet begun to suspect that Dr Nicholson meant to harm her when Alan visited. She was unhappy in her marriage but had tried not to show it, and she had not told Alan about her fear for her safety. Bobby can therefore connect Moira to Alan without treating her as someone who had already confided in him about the suspected threat. Her account complicates the investigation: she is a former acquaintance of Alan, but her present danger, as she understands it, developed separately from what she disclosed to him.

The alliance begins with a promise rather than a resolved plan. Moira seeks out the stranger who helped her in the moonlight; Bobby recognizes her from the missing photograph, listens to her account, and commits himself to helping. The sequence shifts the photograph from an object of mystery into evidence of a personal history, while Moira’s testimony opens a new line of inquiry around The Grange. It also establishes the limits of what is known at this point: the suspected murder plot is Moira’s account, and the motives she attributes to Dr Nicholson remain allegations for Bobby to test.