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admit, in this league!’
    They returned to the car and Markby drove on. They were going downhill now, down into the valley bottom and back into trees. They lost sight of the house. Then they began to climb again. The trees thinned out. They passed a cottage of reddish stone and then came to high gates which had been opened, presumably to let them in. Markby drove through the tall stone gateposts. They were committed to whatever lay ahead.

    The drive had been laid out perhaps two hundred years earlier with the clear intent that visitors arriving in carriages should be impressed. At first only part of the house facade was glimpsed through the straight lines of chestnut trees standing as sentries to either side of the drive. But at the last moment the view was cleared and they had unimpeded sight of a graceful, perfectly proportioned mansion, not overlarge, its long, narrow windows reflecting the spring sunshine.
    ‘I feel,’ Meredith said to Alan, pointing at the porch with its white pillars, ‘that the door should open and the Bennet sisters come out.’
    The semi-circle before the house was gravelled. Markby drew up in a swirl of small stones. As he did, the front door of the house opened and two figures appeared, but both, as it happened, male. The younger of the two, easily recognizable, ran forward and greeted them as they emerged from the car.
    ‘This really is good of you!’ Toby pumped Alan’s hand. ‘We’re just so grateful, the whole family.’
    ‘Alan’s only come to listen!’ Meredith said quickly as she could see the beginnings of exasperation already on Markby’s face.
    ‘That’s what we want, someone to listen!’ declared Toby.
    ‘I’m sure,’ Alan said stiffly, ‘that Inspector Winter at Bamford listened. Nice to see you again,’ he added politely.
    ‘Oh, that chap, Winter,’ Toby dismissed doughty Inspector Winter. ‘Good chap but swallowed the rule book. Let me introduce my cousin, Jeremy.’
    Jenner had arrived during this brief exchange. He was, Meredith was amused to note, rather as she’d imagined he would be. A tall man, he’d kept a trim figure probably by visits to an expensive private health club. His thick grey hair was neatly trimmed and beneath bushy eyebrows deep-set eyes treated them to a sharp scrutiny. His deep voice, however, was affable and his manner smooth.
    ‘I can only repeat what Toby has said. We are extremely grateful to you. This is a wretched business. I want to see it cleared up, as
you’ll understand. I agree, Inspector Winter is a solid sort of chap but I don’t know that he quite appreciates the ramifications which could follow from this.’
    Alan’s right! Meredith thought. Jenner, too, fears this is a prelude to a blackmail demand.
    They were ushered into a spacious hall where they were greeted first by an elderly black Labrador and then by a pretty woman of middle height. Her thick fair hair was streaked with the first signs of grey but they blended well with the rest, and as she grew older she wouldn’t probably change much in appearance. She gave them a ready, if slightly nervous, smile.
    ‘My wife, Alison,’ Jenner said and, as he said it, something, an echo in his tone, a softening in his glance combined with a sudden and brief warm glow in his otherwise hawkish gaze, told Meredith all she needed to know about this relationship. She guessed Jenner loved his wife deeply. She was perhaps more than a partner; she was the centre of his existence. If so, he would be determined nothing would harm her, both because of his love and because, in harming her, the unknown letter-writer had shaken that cherished domestic stability which must mean so much to Jeremy himself.
    On the threshold of marriage herself, there was something both endearing and slightly frightening about this dependency. Agatha Christie, she thought, in one of her Mary Westmacott novels, wrote of the burden of being loved. You were a shrewd woman, Agatha! And then Meredith