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toward the stairs, Bowles heard the faint sound and smiled with contentment.

4

    LADY MAUDE GRAY LIVED IN AN IMPOSING HOUSE THAT could be described as palatial. It sat in a vast acreage of park-land that gave it privacy and offered fine views from all its windows. The village of Menton, which lay on the main road a mile and a quarter beyond the massive stone pillars that flanked the long drive, had been moved to its present location in the eighteenth century. Not even its church steeple was visible from the attics of the house. Where the village had once stood, a very fine allée of trees and grassy lawns led to a reflecting pool that mirrored a cloudless sky.
    It had once been, Rutledge thought, glimpsing the sun-washed house in the distance as he made his way up the drive, a fortified abbey in the Middle Ages, but later architects had created a country house in the ruins, with the choir and apse of the abbey church, presumably the family chapel now, comprising one wing. The arched buttresses flowed smoothly upward toward a pinnacled roof, and the gray stone of the house fabric matched them to perfection, giving a sense of great age to the entire dwelling. The west front, the main entrance, boasted a graceful spread of steps rising from the drive; a formal garden set with an ornate fountain gave human dimensions to the spectacular view across the countryside that spread out beyond it. Hamish, regarding the view, grumbled, “A lonely place, this. You can hear the wind and feel the emptiness.”
    To his Calvinist soul, the house itself was ostentatious and unwelcoming. For a man used to the crofts of the Highlands, often a heap of stone in the lee of a hillside, there was no room for display in the struggle for survival.
    As Rutledge climbed the steps, he found himself wondering what his godfather would think of the effect achieved here. David Trevor felt the power of stone and mortar in his blood, a man whose eye and taste were trained but whose natural response to building had made him one of the most successful architects of his day.
    He felt a sudden surge of guilt that he hadn’t replied to the invitation from his godfather, but there was no way to explain why the prospect of leave was anathema. The press of work would have to be his excuse.
    Hamish said, “It’s no’ a lie, is it? Though ye’ve chosen it yoursel’. And I’d no’ care to come home now . . .”
    The knocker, shaped like a pineapple—the symbol of hospitality—fell back on its plate with a heavy
throm
that seemed to echo through the house.
    Eventually, a majestic butler opened the door, staring at Rutledge with cold disdain. His white hair, brushed to silver, and his height would have done honor to the lord of the manor. Lord Evelyn Gray, however, had been a short, stocky man with dark, curling hair and an iron-gray beard. Rutledge had seen him in London on a number of occasions before the war.
    “Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard,” he said briskly into the silence. Hamish bristled in the back of his mind, an angry counterpoint to the icy regard. “I wish to see Lady Maude Gray.”
    “Her ladyship has no business to conduct with the police,” the man replied, preparing to close the door in Rutledge’s face.
    “On the contrary. The police wish to express regret for past misunderstandings, and I have been sent from London to offer this apology in person. It would be rude of her not to hear it.”
    The butler looked Rutledge up and down. Rutledge smiled inwardly. If the intent had been to intimidate, it was a signal failure. Haughty the butler might be, but it was a reflection of his mistress’s importance and not his own. Sergeant-Major MacLaren, on the other hand, had been a different matter. A glance could quell an entire battalion. No one dared question his authority; it came direct from God. It was said that even officers walked in fear of him, and most certainly Rutledge himself had deferred to the man’s wisdom and experience on a