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the evening.”
    “I would venture to say so, yes.”
    “Had you ever heard a quarrel between them before this particular evening?”
    “No, sir, they seemed to be on the best of terms.”
    “Had they drunk enough, do you think, to have become quarrelsome for no reason? Or over some petty issue?”
    “With respect, sir,” Johnston said indignantly, “the Colonel was not a man to become argumentative in his cups. He held his liquor like a gentleman, and so, to my knowledge, did the Captain. Besides,” he added, rather spoiling the lofty effect he’d just created, “the level in the decanters showed no more than two drinks had been poured, one each.”
    “Do you feel, having witnessed the Captain’s departure,that this was a disagreement that could have been smoothed over comfortably the next day?”
    “He was very angry at the time. I can’t say how Captain Wilton might have felt the next morning. But I can tell you that the Colonel seemed in no way unsettled when he came down for his morning ride. Very much himself, as far as I could see.”
    “And Miss Wood was in her bedroom throughout the quarrel? She didn’t rejoin the men in the drawing room, to your knowledge?”
    “No, sir. Mary looked in on her before she came down the stairs, to see if she needed anything more, and Miss Wood appeared to be asleep. So she didn’t speak to her.”
    “What did the Colonel do after the Captain left?”
    “I don’t know, sir. I thought it best not to disturb him at that moment, and I came back twenty minutes later. By that time, he had gone up to bed himself, and I went about my nightly duties before turning in at eleven. Would you like to see Mary now, sir?”
    “I’ll talk to Mary and the rest of the staff later,” Rutledge said, and walked to the door. There he turned to look back at the drawing room and then at the staircase. Under ordinary circumstances, Wilton would have noticed Johnston and the maid as soon as he came out of the drawing-room door. But if he had been looking back at Charles Harris instead, he might not have been aware of either servant, silent and unobtrusive behind him.
    With a nod, Rutledge opened the front door before Johnston could reach it to see him out, and with Sergeant Davies hurrying after him, walked down the broad, shallow stone steps and across the drive to the car.
    Hamish, growling irritably, said, “I don’t like yon butler. I don’t hold with the rich anyway, or their toadies.”
    “It’s a better job than you ever held,” Rutledge retorted,and then swore under his breath. But Davies had been getting into the car and heard only the sound of his voice, not his words. He looked up to say, “I beg pardon, sir?”
     
    The heavy drapes of the sitting room upstairs parted a little, and Lettice Wood watched Rutledge climb into the car and start the engine. When it had passed out of sight around the first bend of the drive, she let the velvet fall back into place and wandered aimlessly to the table where the lamp still burned. She flicked it off and stood there in the darkness.
    If only she could think clearly! He would be back, she was certain of that, prying into everything, wanting to know about Charles, asking about Mark. And he wasn’t like the elderly Forrest; there would be no deference or fatherly concern from him, not with those cold eyes. She must have her wits about her then! The problem was, what would Mark tell them? How was she to know ?
    She put her hands to her head, pressing cold fingers into her temples. He looked as if he’d been ill, this inspector from Scotland Yard. And such people were often difficult. Why had Forrest sent for him? Why had it been necessary to drag London into this business, awful enough already without strangers trampling about.
    Why hadn’t they left it to Inspector Forrest?
     
    “Will we speak to Mavers now, sir?”
    “No, Captain Wilton next, I think.”
    “He’s staying with his cousin, Mrs. Davenant. She’s a widow, has a