Mrs Aceworthy, Arthur Rubrick’s elderly cousin who had come to Mount Moon on the death of his wife, was a large sandy woman with an air of uncertain authority and a tendency to bridle. Her manner towards Alleyn was cautious. He thought that she disapproved of his visit and he wondered how much Fabian Losse had told her. She spoke playfully and in inverted commas of ‘my family,’ and seemed to show a preference for the two New Zealanders, Douglas Grace and Ursula Harme.

The vast landscape outside darkened and the candles on the dining-room table showed ghostly in the uncurtained window panes. When dinner was over they all moved into a comfortable, conglomerate sort of room hung with faded photographs of past cadets and lit cosily by a kerosene lamp. Mrs Aceworthy, with a vague murmur about ‘having to see to things’ left them with their coffee.

Above the fireplace hung the full-dress portrait of a woman.

It was a formal painting. The bare arms executed with machine-like precision, flowed wirily from shoulders to clasped hands. The dress was of mustard-coloured satin, very décolleté, and this hue was repeated in the brassy highlights of Mrs Rubrick’s incredibly golden coiffure. The painter had dealt remorselessly with a formidable display of jewellery. It was an Academy portrait by an experienced painter but his habit of flattery had met its Waterloo in Florence Rubrick’s face. No trick of understatement could soften that large mouth, closed with difficulty over protuberant teeth, or modify the acquisitive glare of the pale goitrous eyes which evidently had been fixed on the artist’s and therefore appeared, as laymen will say, to ‘follow one about the room.’ Upon each of the five persons seated in Arthur Rubrick’s study did his wife Florence seem to fix her arrogant and merciless stare.

There was no other picture in the room. Alleyn looked round for a photograph of Arthur Rubrick but could find none that seemed likely.

The flow of talk, which had run continuously if not quite easily throughout dinner, was now checked. The pauses grew longer and their interruptions more forced. Fabian Losse began to stare expectantly at Alleyn. Douglas Grace sang discordantly under his breath. The two girls fidgeted, caught each other’s eyes, and looked away again.

Alleyn, sitting in shadow, a little removed from the fireside group, said, ‘That’s a portrait of Mrs Rubrick, isn’t it?’

It was as if he had gathered up the reins of a team of nervously expectant horses. He saw by their startled glances at the portrait that custom had made it invisible to them, a mere piece of furniture of which, for all its ghastly associations, they were normally unaware. They stared at it now rather stupidly, gaping a little.