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most of the guests knew the doctor, they would not be under any real suspicion. Suspicion? Rose suddenly realised what she had somehow known all along. Gabrielle Milton’s death was no accident. So what, she thought as she tossed and turned, had the woman done to attract such dislike that someone wanted her dead?
     
    Doreen Clarke’s duties were supposed to end at ten thirty, by which time the guests would have eaten. Any remaining food was to be neatly rearranged and left in the kitchen to be eaten later, if required. Cyril Clarke had been turned away at the gates and told to come back for his wife later.
    When she was finally allowed to leave she had remained silent throughout the drive home, mystifying her husband further. Once at the cottage she had said she felt ill and, after filling a hot water bottle, had gone straight to bed. She was asleep when Cyril joined her half an hour later. Doreen, he realised, coped with things her own way. Major catastrophes not only silenced her tongue but allowed her eight or nine hours’ sleep, three more than she was accustomed to. Anxiety or stress caused some people to eat more or less than was usual, not so his wife, but the extra hours of rest did not make her any more tolerant.
    Cyril rose at seven to another sunny day although the thermometer in his small greenhouse showed it had been chilly in the night and there was an autumnal feeling in the early morning air. Satisfied that no plague of destructive insects had destroyed his plants, Cyril inspected the last of the tomatoes growing against the side of the cottage. They were still green and hard, and he decided they probably wouldn’t ripen now. Doreen might as well have them to make chutney. Cyril Clarke, ex-miner, had taken quite a few years to come to terms with things above the earth’s surface. With the closure of Geever mine came the end of life as he, and his ancestors, had known it. For him, and many others, there was no work to befound. Moving away was not a consideration. He and Doreen were Cornish-born, had never lived anywhere else and could not bear the thought of doing so. It was Doreen who had kept things going by doing other women’s housework. Now he had his pension things were a little easier. Cyril, for want of something to do, had taken to putting things into the ground rather than digging tin out. There was a sense of achievement in being able to hand Doreen a head of lettuce or some peas or potatoes. It was cheaper than buying vegetables and the excess he sold to local shops. His pocket money, he called it.
    He did not hear Doreen get up. She watched her husband from the back door as he peered at the undersides of the leaves on the rose bushes. His grey, grizzled hair was covered with a cap which he wore winter and summer. Doreen reckoned all those years in a miner’s helmet made him feel naked when his head was uncovered.
    ‘Cyril!’
    ‘Dear God, woman. You gave me a fright.’ The secateurs had clattered to the path.
    Doreen, despite the sleep, was pale through her tan, her eyes heavy and her fading blonde hair untidy. ‘Cyril, we’re not supposed to talk about it, but I can’t not tell you. You won’t say anything, will you?’
    ‘Of course not, love. What is it?’ He approached her and smiled gently.
    ‘She’s dead. Mrs Milton. She’s been murdered. Oh, they say she might’ve fallen off the balcony, but I know better. The railing’s waist-high. Besides, she doesn’t drink, not more than the odd glass, so it wasn’t that.’
    ‘Murdered?’ Cyril rubbed his newly shaved chin. It seemed impossible, with the sun shining and birds singing, that such a thing could have happened to mar the peace of the village. Despite his wife’s foibles he loved her and he did not doubt that what she said was true. She had stuck with him through the bad times, put up with less money and his own frustration and occasional bouts of bad temper which were the result of having no job. Once he had reached