Welcome back to my audio serialisation of Jefferson Farjeon's "Christmas crime story" Mystery in White. In tonight's episode, an adventure that began on a snowbound train at Christmas Eve 1937 finds itself, like so much else, caught in the long shadows of the Great War:
"Then," continued Nora, who by this time was acclimatising herself to the old man's methods, "my father returned to the front. I was born while he was away."
"In 1917."
"Yes. I think my mother wrote to my grandfather, but I've never been sure of that, and I don't think father knows, either. It must have been a confusing year for them. Not only because of my coming—and the war—but father got shell-shock. And my grandfather fell ill, too.... Shell-shock can last a long time, you know. I mean, the effects of it."
"Your father has never quite got over the effects of it, Miss Strange, has he?" asked David.
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And do join me tomorrow for the nineteenth episode of Mystery in White.