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sure you will.”
    The constable, who had followed them into the kitchen, was not prepared for a round tour of the house. “The Inspector’s seen to it already,” he said. “Everything locked all right.” He gave a rather dreadful sniff.
    “Thank you,” said Penfold, but he did not feel very thankful; for if the house had been securely locked all night, how had the maniac got in? And supposing he had got in, what had he originally come for? Not for the hat, for, apart from himself and his guests, nobody knew about that.
    Evidently Fran was following the same train of thought, for she said suddenly: “Bunsen: about my hat? You didn’t mention it to anybody this evening? To the servants, or to anyone in Tenfold?”
    “No indeed, Miss Fran. What would I mention it for?”
    “Well, I know it seems silly, Bunsen, but did you? To amuse your sister perhaps…”
    “I never said a word about it, Miss,” said Bunsen positively. “Not even in the ’all, and I’m perfectly certain of it. I don’t know that I might not have done so, if you’ll excuse me, Miss, for indeed you did look a picture in that ’at. Miss Fran put it on her head in front of the mirror in the hall, sir,” he explained to Pendock, “and, ‘What do you think of it, Bunsen?’ she says to me, and ‘I think it’s a treat, Miss,’ I says; didn’t I, Miss Fran? But when I got back to the kitchen Cook had took a message to say my sister was worse again, and from that moment I didn’t think of nothing else but that, and of course of my work. As soon as I’d taken the coffee into the dining-room, I got on my bicycle and went off to Tenfold, and from then on everything else was drove right out of my head.”
    “Well, all right, Bunsen, off you go to bed. I’m sorry to have worried you; forget about it—it’s nothing. Good-night, and don’t get up in the morning until you’re thoroughly rested. The maids can see to things.”
    “Good-night, Bunsen dear,” said Fran, and put her hand for a moment on the old man’s arm. “Sleep tight, and—try not to think about things.” She smiled at him and went back with Pen up the stairs.
    Most of the rest of the party had gone to bed. Venetia, however, put her head out of her door to say: “I say, Pen, we couldn’t have left the french window open when we let Aziz out for his widdle?”
    “I shut the damn thing myself,” said Pen reluctantly. Fran was looking more and more depressed.
    For how awkward, thought Fran, that she and James should have chosen that one night of all nights to go down and talk in the orchard, leaving the back door open so that they could get in again. Not that it could have anything to do with the murder, of course; but she supposed that the maniac might have come in that way for some unexplained purpose and, seeing the hat in its box on the table, have taken it out and carried it off to decorate the poor dead body in the ditch; unless Miss Morland herself… but how could she have known the back door would be open just for those few short minutes? Why should she have wanted the hat? She thought it was a dreadful hat; she had said that she wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch in it…
    And now she was dead. Dead in a ditch, in the hat. And only six people—she faced it squarely, as she faced everything in life—only six people had heard her say those words: herself and Venetia, her twin, her other half; and Granny, who was father and mother and friend to them both; and Pen—dear Pen, best and kindest and most honourable of men; and Henry, whom Venetia so desperately loved; and James. James, who had held her in his arms in the orchard; had held her crushed against him, until her body ached, and poured out such a torrent of love and longing… lazy, sleepy James who had suddenly woken up. Venetia and Granny and Pen and Henry and James. Nobody else had heard.

Chapter 3
    B REAKFAST NEXT MORNING WAS a rather ghastly affair, for most of them had lain awake as Fran had done,