Scales of Justice (11 page)

“Ah,” she said, “so you’re not going to respond.”

“Tell me, did Mr. Phinn have a son called Ludovic? Ludovic Danberry-Phinn?”

In the not very bright light he watched her face harden as if, behind its mask of fat, she had set her jaw. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“It could hardly not be, could it, with those names?”

“I wouldn’t mention the boy if I were you. He was in the Foreign Service and blotted his copybook, as I daresay you know. It was quite a tragedy. It’s never mentioned.”

“Is it not? What sort of a man was Colonel Cartarette?”

“Pigheaded, quixotic fellow. Obstinate as a mule. One of those pathetically conscientious people who aim so high they get a permanent crick in their conscience.”

“Are you thinking of any particular incident?”

“No,” Lady Lacklander said firmly, “I am not.”

“Do you mind telling me what you and Colonel Cartarette talked about?”

“We talked,” Lady Lacklander said coolly, “about Occy poaching and about a domestic matter that is for the moment private and can have no bearing whatever on Maurice’s death. Good-night to you, Roderick. I suppose I call you Roderick, don’t I?”

“When we’re alone together.”

“Impudent fellow!” she said and aimed a sort of dab at him. “Go back and bully those poor things in there. And tell George to hurry.”

“Can you remember exactly what Mr. Phinn and Colonel Cartarette said to each other when they had their row?”

She looked hard at him, folded her jewelled hands together and said, “Not word for word. They had a row over the fish. Occy rows with everybody.”

“Did they talk about anything else?”

Lady Lacklander continued to look at him and said, “No,” very coolly indeed.

Alleyn made her a little bow. “Good-night,” he said. “If you remember specifically anything that they said to each other, would you be terribly kind and write it down?”

“Roderick,” Lady Lacklander said, “Occy Phinn is no murderer.”

“Is he not?” Alleyn said, “Well, that’s something to know, isn’t it? Good-night.”

He shut the door. The light in the car went out.

As he turned back to the house, Alleyn met George Lacklander. It struck him that George was remarkably ill at ease in his company and would greatly have preferred to deal exclusively with Fox.

“Oh… ah, hullo,” George said. “I… ah… I wonder, may I have a word with you? I don’t suppose you remember, by the way, but we have met a thousand years ago, ha, ha, when, I think, you were one of my father’s bright young men, weren’t you?”

Alleyn’s twenty-five-year-old recollection of George rested solely on the late Sir Harold Lacklander’s scorching comments on his son’s limitations. “No damn’ use expecting anything of George,” Sir Harold had once confided. “Let him strike attitudes at Nunspardon and in the ripeness of time become a J.P. That is George’s form.” It occurred to Alleyn that this prophecy had probably been fulfilled.

He answered George’s opening question and blandly disregarded its sequel. “Please do,” he said.

“Fact is,” George said, “I’m wondering just what the drill is. I am, by the way, and not that it makes any real difference, a Beak. So I suppose I may be said to fill my humble pigeonhole in the maintenance of the Queen’s peace, what?”

“And why not?” Alleyn infuriatingly replied.

“Yes,” George continued, goggling at him in the dark. “Yes. Well, now, I wanted to ask you what exactly will be the drill about poor Maurice Cartarette’s — ah — about the — ah — the body. I mean, one is concerned for Kitty’s sake. For their sake, I mean. His wife and daughter. One can perhaps help with the arrangements for the funeral and all that. What?”

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn agreed. “Colonel Cartarette’s body will remain where it is under guard until to-morrow morning. It will then be taken to the nearest mortuary and a police surgeon will make an examination and possibly an extensive autopsy. We will, of course, let Mrs. Cartarette know as soon as possible when the funeral may be held. I think we shall probably be ready to hand over in three days, but it doesn’t do to be positive about these things.”

“O, quite!” George said. “Quite. Quite. Quite.”

Alleyn said, “Simply for the record — I shall have to put this sort of question to everybody who was in Colonel Cartarette’s landscape last evening — you and Mrs. Cartarette began your round of golf, I think you said, at seven?”

“I didn’t notice the exact time,” George said in a hurry.

“Perhaps Mrs. Cartarette will remember. Did she meet you on the course?”

“Ah — no. No, I — ah — I called for her in the car. On my way back from Chyning.”

“But you didn’t drive her back?”

“No. Shorter to walk, we thought. From where we were.”

“Yes, I see… And Mrs. Cartarette says she arrived here at about five past eight. Perhaps you played golf, roughly, for an hour. How many holes?”

“We didn’t go round the course. Mrs. Cartarette is learning. It was her first — ah — attempt. She asked me to give her a little coaching. We — ah — we only played a couple of holes. We spent the rest of the time practising some of her shots,” George said, haughtily.

“Ah, yes. And you parted company at about ten to eight. Where?”

“At the top of the river path,” he said and added, “as far as I remember.”

“From there would you see Lady Lacklander coming up towards you? She began her ascent at ten to eight.”

“I didn’t look down. I didn’t notice.”

“Then you won’t have noticed Colonel Cartarette either. Lady Lacklander says he was fishing in the willow grove at the time and that the willow grove is visible from the river path.”

“I didn’t look down. I… ah… I merely saw Mrs. Cartarette to the river path and went on through the Home Spinney to Nunspardon. My mother arrived a few minutes later. And now,” George said, “if you’ll excuse me, I really must drive my mama home. By the way, I do hope you’ll make use of us. I mean, you may need a headquarters and so on. Anything one can do.”

“How very kind,” Alleyn rejoined. “Yes, I think we may let you go now. Afraid I shall have to ask you to stay in Swevenings for the time being.”

He saw George’s jaw drop.

“Of course,” he added, “if you have important business elsewhere, it will be quite in order to come and tell me about it and we’ll see what can be done. I shall be at the Boy and Donkey.”

“Good God, my dear Alleyn…”

“Damn’ nuisance, I know,” Alleyn said, “but there you are. If they
will
turn on homicide in your bottom meadow. Goodnight to you.”

He circumnavigated George and returned to the drawing-room, where he found Rose, Mark and Kitty uneasily silent, Mr. Phinn biting his fingers, and Inspector Fox in brisk conversation with Nurse Kettle on the subject of learning French conversation by means of Gramophone records. “I don’t,” Mr. Fox was saying, “make the headway I’d like to.”

“I picked up more on a cycling tour in Brittany when I
had
to than I ever got out of
my
records.”

“That’s what they all tell me, but in our line what chance do you get?”

“You must get a holiday some time, for Heaven’s sake.”

“True,” Fox said, sighing. “That’s a fact. You do. But somehow I’ve never got round to spending it anywhere but Birchington. Excuse me, Miss Kettle, here’s the Chief.”

Alleyn gave Fox a look that both of them understood very well, and the latter rose blandly to his feet. Alleyn addressed himself to Kitty Cartarette.

“If I may,” he said, “I should like to have a very short talk with Miss Kettle. Is there perhaps another room we may use? I saw one, I think, as I came across the hall. A study perhaps.”

He had the feeling that Mrs. Cartarette was not overanxious for him to use the study. She hesitated, but Rose said, “Yes, of course. I’ll show you.”

Fox had gone to the French window and had made a majestical signal to the sergeant, who now came into the drawing-room.

“You all know Sergeant Oliphant, of course,” Alleyn said. “He will be in charge of the local arrangements, Mrs. Cartarette, and I thought perhaps you would like to have a word with him. I would be grateful if you would give him the names of your husband’s solicitor and bank and also of any relations who should be informed. Mr. Phinn, I will ask you to repeat the substance of your account to Sergeant Oliphant, who will take it down and get you to sign it if it is correct.”

Mr. Phinn blinked at him. “I cannot,” he said, with a show of spirit, “of course, be compelled.”

“Of course not. But I’m afraid we shall have to trouble all of you to give us signed statements, if you are willing to do so. If you do yours first, it will leave you free to go home. I hope,” Alleyn concluded, “that you will not find it too difficult without your glasses. And now, Miss Cartarette, may we indeed use the study?”

Rose led the way across the hall into the room where eight hours ago she had talked to her father about her love for Mark. Alleyn and Fox followed her. She waited for a moment and stared, as it seemed to Alleyn, with a kind of wonder at the familiar chairs and desk. Perhaps she saw a look of compassion in his face. She said, “He seems to be here, you know. The room can’t go on without him, one would think. This was his place more than anywhere else.” She faltered for a moment and then said, “Mr. Alleyn, he was such a darling, my father. He was as much like my child as my father, he depended on me so completely. I don’t know why I’m saying this to you.”

“It’s sometimes a good idea to say things like that to strangers. They make uncomplicated confidants.”

“Yes,” she said and her voice was surprised, “that’s quite true. I’m glad I told you.”

Alleyn saw that she suffered from the kind of nervous ricochet that often follows a severe shock. Under its impetus the guard that people normally set over their lightest remarks is lowered and they speak spontaneously of the most surprising matters, as now when Rose suddenly added, “Mark says he couldn’t have felt anything. I’m sure he’s not just saying that to comfort me, because being a doctor, he wouldn’t. So I suppose in a way it’s what people call a release. From everything.”

Alleyn asked quietly, “Was he worried about anything in particular?”

“Yes,” Rose said sombrely, “he was indeed. But I can’t tell you about that. It’s private, and even if it wasn’t, it couldn’t possibly be of any use.”

“You never know,” he said lightly.

“You do in this case.”

“When did you see him last?”

“This evening. I mean last evening, don’t I? He went out soon after seven. I think it was about ten past seven.”

“Where did he go?”

She hesitated and then said, “I believe to call on Mr. Phinn. He took his rod and told me he would go on down to the Chyne for the evening rise. He said he wouldn’t come in for dinner, and I asked for something to be left out for him.”

“Do you know why he called on Mr. Phinn?”

Rose waited for a long time and then said, “I think it had something to do with… with the publishing business.”

“The
publishing
business?”

She pushed a strand of hair back and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “
I
don’t know who could do such a thing to him,” she said. Her voice was drained of all its colour. “She’s exhausted,” Alleyn thought and, against his inclination, decided to keep her a little longer.

“Can you tell me, very briefly, what sort of pattern his life has taken over the last twenty years?”

Rose sat on the arm of her father’s chair. Her right arm was hooked over its back and she smoothed and re-smoothed the place where his bald head had rested. She was quite calm and told Alleyn in a flat voice of the Colonel’s appointments as military attaché at various embassies, of his job at Whitehall during the war, of his appointment as military secretary to a post-war commission that had been set up in Hong Kong and finally, after his second marriage, of his retirement and absorption in a history he had planned to write of his own regiment. He was a great reader, it seemed, particularly of the Elizabethan dramatists, an interest that his daughter had ardently shared. His only recreation apart from his books had been fishing. Rose’s eyes, fatigued by tears, looked for a moment at a table against the wall where a tray of threads, scraps of feathers and a number of casts was set out.

“I always tied the flies. We made up a fly he nearly always fished with. I tied one this afternoon.”

Her voice trembled and trailed away and she yawned suddenly like a child.

The door opened and Mark Lacklander came in looking angry.

“Ah, there you are!” he said. He walked straight over to her and put his fingers on her wrist. “You’re going to bed at once,” he said. “I’ve asked Nurse Kettle to make a hot drink for you. She’s waiting for you now. I’ll come and see you later and give you a nembutal. I’ll have to run into Chyning for it. You don’t want me again, I imagine?” he said to Alleyn.

“I do for a few minutes, I’m afraid.”

“Oh!” Mark said, and after a pause, “Well, yes, of course, I suppose you do. Stupid of me.”

“I don’t want any dope, Mark, honestly,” Rose said.

“We’ll see about that when you’re tucked up. Go to bed now.” He glared at Alleyn. “Miss Cartarette is my patient,” he said, “and those are my instructions.”

“They sound altogether admirable,” Alleyn rejoined. “Goodnight, Miss Cartarette. We’ll try to worry you as little as possible.”

“You don’t worry me at all,” Rose said politely and gave him her hand.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said to Mark, “if we may see Nurse Kettle as soon as she is free. And you, a little later, if you please, Dr. Lacklander.”

“Certainly, sir,” Mark said stiffly and taking Rose’s arm, led her out of the room.

“And I also wonder, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said, “apart from bloody murder, what it is that’s biting all these people.”

“I’ve got a funny sort of notion,” Fox said, “and mind, it’s only a notion so far, that the whole thing will turn out to hang on that fish.”

“And I’ve got a funny sort of notion you’re right.”

Nurse Kettle sat tidily on an armless chair with her feet crossed at the ankles and her hands at the wrists. Her apron was turned up in the regulation manner under her uniform coat, and her regulation hat was on her head. She had just given Alleyn a neat account of her finding of Colonel Cartarette’s body, and Fox, who had taken the notes, was gazing at her with an expression of the liveliest approval.

“That’s all, really,” she said, “except that I had a jolly strong feeling I was being watched. There now!”

Her statement hitherto had been so positively one of fact that they both stared at her in surprise. “And now,” she said, “you’ll think I’m a silly hysterical female because although I thought once that I heard a twig snap and fancied that when a bird flew out of the thicket it was not me who’d disturbed it, I didn’t
see
anything at all. Not a thing. And yet I thought I was watched. You get it on night duty in a ward. A patient lying awake and staring at you. You always know before you look. Now laugh that away if you like.”

“Who’s laughing?” Alleyn rejoined. “We’re not, are we, Fox?”

“On no account,” Fox said. “I’ve had the same sensation many a time on night beat in the old days, and it always turned out there was a party in a dark doorway having a look at you.”

“Well, fancy!” said the gratified Nurse Kettle.

“I suppose,” Alleyn said, “you know all these people pretty well, don’t you, Miss Kettle? I always think in country districts the Queen’s Nurses are rather like liaison officers.”

Nurse Kettle looked pleased. “Well now,” she said, “we do get to know people. Of course, our duties take us mostly to the ordinary folk, although with the present shortage we find ourselves doing quite a lot for the other sort. They pay the full fee and that helps the Association, so, as long as it’s not depriving the ones who can’t afford it, we take the odd upper-class case. Like me and Lady Lacklander’s toe, for instance.”

“Ah, yes,” Alleyn said, “There’s the toe.” He observed with surprise the expression of enraptured interest in his colleague’s elderly face.

“Septic,” Nurse Kettle said cosily.

“ ’T, ’t, ’t,” said Fox.

“And then again, for example,” Nurse Kettle went on, “I night-nursed the old gentleman. With him when he died, actually. Well, so was the family. And the Colonel, too, as it happens.”

“Colonel Cartarette?” Alleyn asked without laying much stress on it.

“That’s right. Or wait a minute. I’m telling stories. The Colonel didn’t come back into the room. He stayed on the landing with the papers.”

“The papers?”

“The old gentleman’s memoirs they were. The Colonel was to see about publishing them, I fancy, but I don’t really know. The old gentleman was very troubled about them. He couldn’t be content to say goodbye and give up until he’d seen the Colonel. Mind you, Sir Harold was a great man in his day, and his memoirs’ll be very important affairs, no doubt.”

“No doubt. He was a distinguished ambassador.”

“That’s right. Not many of that sort left, I always say. Everything kept up. Quite feudal.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there aren’t many families left who can afford to be feudal. Don’t they call them the Lucky Lacklanders?”

“That’s right. Mind, there are some who think the old gentleman overdid it.”

“Indeed?” Alleyn said, keeping his mental fingers crossed. “How?”

“Well, not leaving the grandson anything. Because of him taking up medicine instead of going into the army. Of course, it’ll all come to him in the end, but in the meantime, he has to make do with what he earns, though of course — but listen to me gossiping. Where was I now. Oh, the old gentleman and the memoirs. Well, no sooner had he handed them over than he took much worse and the Colonel gave the alarm. We all went in. I gave brandy. Doctor Mark gave an injection, but it was all over in a minute. ‘Vic,’ he said, ‘Vic, Vic,’ and that was all.” Alleyn repeated, “Vic?” and then was silent for so long that Nurse Kettle had begun to say, “Well, if that’s all I can do…” when he interrupted her.

“I was going to ask you,” he said, “who lives in the house between this one and Mr. Phinn’s?”

Nurse Kettle smiled all over her good-humoured face. “At Uplands?” she said. “Commander Syce, to be sure. He’s another of my victims,” she added and unaccountably turned rather pink. “Down with a bad go of ’bago, poor chap.”

“Out of the picture, then, from our point of view?”

“Yes, if you’re looking for… oh, my gracious,” Nurse Kettle suddenly ejaculated, “here we are at goodness knows what hour of the morning talking away as pleasant as you please and all the time you’re wondering where you’re going to find a murderer. Isn’t that frightful?”

“Don’t let it worry you,” Fox begged her.

Alleyn stared at him.

“Well, of course I’m worried. Even suppose it turns out to have been a tramp. Tramps are people just like other people,” Nurse Kettle said vigorously.

“Is Mr. Phinn one of your patients?” Alleyn asked.

“Not to say patient. I nursed a carbuncle for him years ago. I wouldn’t be getting ideas about him if I were you.”

“In our job,” Alleyn rejoined, “we have to get ideas about everybody.”

“Not about
me,
I hope and trust.”

Fox made a complicated soothing and scandalized noise in his throat.

Alleyn said, “Miss Kettle, you liked Colonel Cartarette, didn’t you? It was clear from your manner, I thought, that you liked him very much indeed.”

“Well, I did,” she said emphatically. “He was one of the nicest and gentlest souls: a gentleman if ever I saw one. Devoted father. Never said an unkind word about anybody.”

“Not even about Mr. Phinn?”

“Now
look
here,” she began, then caught herself up. “Listen,” she said; “Mr. Phinn’s eccentric. No use my pretending otherwise for you’ve seen him for yourselves and you’ll hear what others say about him. But there’s no malice. No, perhaps I wouldn’t say there’s no
malice
exactly, but there’s no real harm in him. Not a scrap. He’s had this tragedy in his life, poor man, and in my opinion he’s never been the same since it happened. Before the war, it was. His only son did away with himself. Shocking thing.”

“Wasn’t the son in the Foreign Service?”

“That’s right. Ludovic was his name, poor chap. Ludovic! I ask you! Nice boy and very clever. He was in some foreign place when it happened. Broke his mother’s heart, they always say, but she was a cardiac, anyway, poor thing. Mr. Phinn never really got over it. You never know, do you?”

“Never. I remember hearing about it,” Alleyn said vaguely. “Wasn’t he one of Sir Harold Lacklander’s young men?”

“That’s right. The old gentleman was a real squire. You know: the old Swevenings families and all that. I think he asked for young Phinn to be sent out to him, and I know he was very cut up when it happened. I daresay he felt responsible.”

“You never know,” Alleyn repeated. “So the Swevenings families,” he added, “tend to gravitate towards foreign parts?”

Nurse Kettle said that they certainly seemed to do so. Apart from young Viccy Danberry-Phinn getting a job in Sir Harold’s embassy, there was Commander Syce, whose ship had been based on Singapore, and the Colonel himself, who had been attached to a number of missions in the Far East, including one at Singapore. Nurse Kettle added, after a pause, that she believed he had met his second wife there.

“Really?” Alleyn said with no display of interest. “At the time when Syce was out there, do you mean?” It was the merest shot in the dark, but it found its mark. Nurse Kettle became pink in the face and said with excessive brightness that she believed that “the Commander and the second Mrs. C.” had known each other out in the East. She added, with an air of cramming herself over some emotional hurdle, that she had seen a very pretty drawing that the Commander had made of Mrs. Cartarette. “You’d pick it out for her at once,” she said. “Speaking likeness, really, with tropical flowers behind and all.”

“Did you know the first Mrs. Cartarette?”

“Well, not to say
know.
They were only married eighteen months when she died giving birth to Miss Rose. She was an heiress, you know. The whole fortune goes to Miss Rose. It’s well known. The Colonel was quite hard up, but he’s never touched a penny of his first wife’s money. It’s well known,” Nurse Kettle repeated, “so I’m not talking gossip.”

Alleyn skated dexterously on towards Mark Lacklander, and it was obvious that Nurse Kettle was delighted to sing Mark’s praises. Fox, respectfully staring at her, said there was a bit of romance going on there, seemingly, and she at once replied that
that
was as plain as the noses on all their faces and a splendid thing, too. A real Swevenings romance, she added.

Alleyn said, “You
do
like to keep yourselves to yourselves in this district, don’t you?”

“Well,” Nurse Kettle chuckled, “I daresay we do. As I was saying to a gentleman patient of mine, we’re rather like one of those picture-maps. Little world of our own, if you know what I mean. I was suggesting…” Nurse Kettle turned bright pink and primmed up her lips. “Personally,” she added rather obscurely, “I’m all for the old families and the old ways of looking at things.”

“Now, it strikes me,” Fox said, raising his brows in bland surprise, “and mind, I may be wrong, very likely I am, but it strikes
me
that the present Mrs. Cartarette belongs to quite a different world. Much more
mondaine,
if you’ll overlook the faulty accent, Miss Kettle.”

Miss Kettle muttered something that sounded like “demi-mondaine” and hurried on. “Well, I daresay we’re a bit stodgy in our ways in the Vale,” she said, “and she’s been used to lots of gaiety and there you are.” She stood up. “If there’s nothing more,” she said, “I’ll just have a word with the doctor and see if there’s anything I can do for Miss Rose or her stepmother before they settle down.”

“There’s nothing more here. We’ll ask you to sign a statement about finding the body, and, of course, you’ll be called at the inquest.”

“I suppose so.” She got up and the two men also rose. Alleyn opened the door. She looked from one to the other.

“It won’t be a Vale man,” she said. “We’re not a murderous lot in the Vale. You may depend upon it.”

Alleyn and Fox contemplated each other with the absent-minded habit of long association.

“Before we see Dr. Lacklander,” Alleyn said, “let’s take stock, Br’er Fox. What are you thinking about?” he added.

“I was thinking,” Fox said with his customary simplicity, “about Miss Kettle. A very nice woman.”

Alleyn stared at him. “You are not by any chance transfixed by Dan Cupid’s dart?”

“Ah,” Fox said complacently, “that would be the day, wouldn’t it, Mr. Alleyn? I like a nice compact woman,” he added.

“Drag your fancy away from thoughts of Nurse Kettle’s contours, compact or centrifugal, and consider. Colonel Cartarette left this house about ten past seven to call on Octavius Danberry-Phinn. Presumably there was no one at home, because the next we hear of him he’s having a violent row with Phinn down by the bottom bridge. That’s at about half past seven. At twenty to eight he and Phinn part company. The Colonel crosses the bridge and at twenty minutes to eight is having an interview with Lady Lacklander, who is sketching in a hollow on the left bank almost opposite the willow grove on the right bank. Apparently this alfresco meeting was by arrangement. It lasted about ten minutes. At ten to eight Cartarette left Lady Lacklander, re-crossed the bridge, turned left and evidently went straight into the willow grove because she saw him there as she herself panted up the hill to Nunspardon. Soon after eight Mrs. Cartarette said goodbye to that prize ass George Lacklander and came down the hill. At about a quarter past seven she and he had seen old Phinn poaching, and as she tripped down the path, she looked along his fishing to see if she could spot him anywhere. She must have just missed Lady Lacklander, who, one supposes, had by that time plunged into this Nunspardon Home Spinney they talk so much about. Kitty…”

Fox said, “Who?”

“Her’s name’s Kitty, Kitty Cartarette. She came hipping and thighing down the hill with her eye on the upper reaches of the Chyne, where she expected to see Mr. Phinn. She didn’t notice her husband in the willow grove, but that tells us nothing until we get a look at the landscape, and anyway, her attention, she says, was elsewhere. She continued across the bridge and so home. She saw nothing unusual on the bridge. Now Lady Lacklander saw a woundy great trout lying on the bridge where, according to Lady L., Mr. Phinn had furiously chucked it when he had his row, thirty-five minutes earlier, with Colonel Cartarette. The next thing that happens is that Mark Lacklander (who has been engaged in tennis and, one supposes, rather solemn dalliance with that charming girl Rose Cartarette) leaves this house round about the time Mrs. Cartarette returns to it and goes down to the bottom bridge, where he does
not
find a woundy great trout and is certain that there was no trout to find. He does however, find his grandmother’s sketching gear on the left bank of the Chyne and like a kind young bloke carries it back to Nunspardon, thus saving the footman a trip. He disappears into the spinney, and as far as we know, this darkling valley is left to itself until a quarter to nine when Nurse Kettle, who has been slapping Commander Syce’s lumbago next door, descends into Bottom Meadow, turns off to the right, hears the dog howling and discovers the body. Those are the facts, if they are facts, arising out of information received up to date. What emerges?”

Fox dragged his palm across his jaw. “For a secluded district,” he said, “there seems to have been quite a bit of traffic in the valley of the Chyne.”

“Doesn’t there? Down this hill. Over the bridge. Up the other hill and t’other way round. None of them meeting except the murdered man and old Phinn at half past seven and the murdered man and Lady Lacklander ten minutes later. Otherwise it seems to have been a series of near misses on all hands. I can’t remember the layout of the valley with any accuracy, but it appears that from the houses on this side only the upper reaches of the Chyne and a few yards below the bridge on the right bank are visible. We’ll have to do an elaborate check as soon as it’s light, which is hellish soon, by the way. Unless we find signs of angry locals hiding in the underbrush or of mysterious coloured gentlemen from the East lurking in the village, it’s going to look a bit like a small field of suspects.”