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speaking to him tête-à-tête, and didn’t know him, I’d probably just say “Inspector”. But in a general way “Mr Denver” will be right.’ Appleby offered this not very important information rather absently. He was wondering whether competence in dealing with a mob of bearded persons intent on creating nasty smells to confuse a pack of fox hounds would effectively exercise itself in face of the present conundrum. Whether the conundrum ought to be described as also having a really nasty smell was yet to appear.
    ‘I’ve told Burrow to show Mr Denver straight in here,’ Dolly Grinton said. Burrow was the Grintons’ butler. ‘Ought I to have said the library?’
    ‘No, not the library.’ Appleby, although resolved to give nobody any instructions about anything, was obliged to say this. ‘As a matter of fact, Charles and I locked it up behind us. It seemed the proper thing. Grinton, here’s the key.’
    Grinton accepted the key almost with reluctance. It symbolized, Appleby reflected, his proprietorship of something of which he strongly disapproved.
    ‘The gentleman from the police.’
    Burrow thus exercised his own judgement as to what was appropriate in this matter of nomenclature as he ushered Denver into the drawing-room. Denver, it appeared, had come out to Grinton on his own. Decidedly he wasn’t a fussy or self-important man. His concern might have been merely a routine matter involving some hitch or inadvertence over a gun licence. He did, however, produce a large notebook as an essential concomitant of whatever proceedings were in view.
    ‘If I might just make a note or two,’ he said, ‘on the household. Quite a large household, I expect, so it will be convenient.’
    ‘You mean who’s at Grinton now?’ The proprietor of Grinton seemed to feel that this put the matter more plainly. ‘My wife and myself, as you can see. My daughter, Magda, and her husband and two kids. They’re all out after rabbits.’
    ‘Rabbits,’ Denver said, with a disconcerting appearance of actually having written down this word. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Half a dozen guests. Or is it eight? My wife will know. I suppose she also knows something about the gentleman in the corner there. Name of Hillam, I believe.’ Grinton contrived this outrage without any effect of insolence. ‘And this is Mr Charles Honeybath, who says he…who found the body. Mr Honeybath is a painter.’
    ‘Artist, or interior decorator?’
    ‘Don’t be a fool, Denver. Mr Honeybath is a most distinguished artist. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here.’
    ‘Distinguished,’ Denver said – without any appearance of displeasure. ‘A friend of long-standing, I take it?’
    ‘Nothing of the kind.’ Grinton perhaps felt that this was a slightly unbecoming expression. ‘But an old friend of Sir John and Lady Appleby. This is Sir John. Lady Appleby has gone for a walk.’
    ‘Sir John and Lady Appleby,’ Denver repeated as he wrote – and in an inexpressive fashion that pleased Appleby very much. ‘And who else? I needn’t have the servants, just at the moment, Mr Grinton.’
    Grinton gave the required names, accompanying several of them with more or less gratuitous comments. Denver wrote them all down, and then closed his notebook. He did this with an air of feeling that to keep it open would be discourteous during the next phase of the enquiry.
    ‘Mr Honeybath,’ he said. ‘You appear to have had a most upsetting experience. Nobody expects to come on a body when he goes to find a book in a library.’
    ‘I didn’t go to find a book.’ Honeybath judged that this misconception must be removed at once. ‘I just went to look at the place. I hadn’t been in it before.’
    ‘Ah! Quite natural, of course. And you mustn’t let my questions worry you.’
    ‘I have no such disposition, Mr Denver.’ Honeybath said this a trifle disingenuously. Worry was of course the precise word for the whole thing. ‘So go ahead.’
    Denver went ahead, and the