Sentence in which Past Perfect is not thought of as preceding the action [closed]

I can’t just wrap my head around it...

In which sentence the action denoted by the Past Perfect is not thought of as preceding the action denoted by the Past Indefinite tense:

a) He knew where hilda lived, but he had never been there;

b) They waited quietly till he had finished;

c) She had come before he phoned over

Initially, I thought that the right answer was b, because I applied the same logic to the sentence as it would be in Present Tenses, that is, that part after till denoting some sort of a future action, and in this case, Past Perfect was more for me as a successive thing. Thus, it seemed to me that the correct answer was b. But, my logic wasn’t quite right, was it?

Solution 1:

It is not a "rule" that the past perfect should always be the first/earliest/earlier action. It is guidance only. Do not try to make the language fit "rules".

The guidance applies to main clauses.

In

b) They waited quietly till he had finished;

c) She had come before he phoned over

till he had finished and before he phoned over are adverbial clause modifying "waited". Subordinate clauses need not follow the guidance - and they often do not. The subordinate clauses are there to add to the main clause.

In a) He knew where hilda lived, but he had never been there;, but he had never been there is a main clause and follows the guidance. His never having been there must precede his knowing where she lived.