‘It’s nothing really,’ said Ann slowly. ‘But one of the gardeners—not Briggs, the young one. I saw him come out of the Sports Pavilion one day, and he had no business to be in there at all. Of course it was probably just curiosity on his part—or perhaps an excuse to slack off a bit from work—he was supposed to be nailing down the wire on the tennis court. I don’t suppose really there’s anything in it.’

‘Still, you remembered it,’ Kelsey pointed out. ‘Now why?’

‘I think—’ she frowned. ‘Yes, because his manner was a little odd. Defiant. And—he sneered at all the money that was spent here on the girls.’

‘That sort of attitude…I see.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s really anything in it.’

‘Probably not—but I’ll make a note of it, all the same.’

‘Round and round the mulberry bush,’ said Bond when Ann Shapland had gone. ‘Same thing over and over again! For goodness’ sake let’s hope we get something out of the servants.’

But they got very little out of the servants.

‘It’s no use asking me anything, young man,’ said Mrs Gibbons, the cook. ‘For one thing I can’t hear what you say, and for another I don’t know a thing. I went to sleep last night and I slept unusually heavy. Never heard anything of all the excitement there was. Nobody woke me up and told me anything about it.’ She sounded injured. ‘It wasn’t until this morning I heard.’

Kelsey shouted a few questions and got a few answers that told him nothing.

Miss Springer had come new this term, and she wasn’t as much liked as Miss Jones who’d held the post before her. Miss Shapland was new, too, but she was a nice young lady, Mademoiselle Blanche was like all the Frenchies—thought the other mistresses were against her and let the young ladies treat her something shocking in class. ‘Not a one for crying, though,’ Mrs Gibbons admitted. ‘Some schools I’ve been in the French mistresses used to cry something awful!’

Most of the domestic staff were dailies. There was only one other maid who slept in the house, and she proved equally uninformative, though able to hear what was said to her. She couldn’t say, she was sure. She didn’t know nothing. Miss Springer was a bit sharp in her manner. She didn’t know nothing about the Sports Pavilion nor what was kept there, and she’d never seen nothing like a pistol nowhere.

This negative spate of information was interrupted by Miss Bulstrode. ‘One of the girls would like to speak to you, Inspector Kelsey,’ she said.

Kelsey looked up sharply. ‘Indeed? She knows something?’

‘As to that I’m rather doubtful,’ said Miss Bulstrode, ‘but you had better talk to her yourself. She is one of our foreign girls. Princess Shaista—niece of the Emir Ibrahim. She is inclined to think, perhaps, that she is of rather more importance than she is. You understand?’

Kelsey nodded comprehendingly. Then Miss Bulstrode went out and a slight dark girl of middle height came in.