‘I give it up,’ said Douglas loudly. ‘I never was any good at riddles and I’m damned if I know half the time what you’re all getting at. For God’s sake let’s have some air in this room.’

He went to the far end of the study, jerked back the curtains, and pushed open a french window. The night air came in, not as a wind, but stilly, with a tang of extreme cleanliness. The moon was up and, across the plateau, fifty miles away, it shone on the Cloud Piercer and his attendant peaks. Alleyn joined Douglas at the window. ‘If I spoke,’ he thought, ‘my voice would go out towards those mountains and between my moving lips and that distant snow there would be only clear darkness.’ He had noticed, on the drive up to Mount Moon, that the flats in front of the homestead were swampy and studded with a few desultory willows. Now, in the moonlight, he caught a glint of water and he heard the cry of wild duck and the beat of wings. Behind him in the room, someone threw wood upon the fire and Alleyn’s shadow flickered across the terrace.

‘Need we freeze?’ Ursula asked fretfully. Douglas reached out his hand to the french window, but before he shut it or drew the curtain a footfall sounded briskly and a man walked along the terrace towards the north side of the house. As he reached the part of the terrace that was lit from the room he was seen to be wearing a neat black suit and a felt hat. It was Markins, returning from his visit to the manager’s cottage. Douglas slammed the french window and pulled the curtain across it.

‘And there goes the expert,’ he said, ‘who runs about the place, scot-free, while we sit yammering a lot of high-falutin bilge about the character of the woman he may have killed. I’m going to bed.’

‘He’ll bring the drinks in a minute,’ said Fabian. ‘Why not wait and have one.’

‘If he’s got wind of this I wouldn’t put it past him to monkey with the decanter.’

‘Honestly, Douglas!’ Fabian and Ursula said together. ‘You are—!’

‘All right, all right,’ Douglas said angrily. ‘I’m a fool. Say no more.’ He flung himself down on the sofa again, but this time he did not rest his arm along the back behind Terence. Instead he eyed her with an air of discomfort and curiosity.

‘So you prefer to leave Miss Harme’s question unanswered,’ Alleyn said to Terence.

She had picked up her knitting as if hoping by that gesture to recapture something of her lost composure. But her hands turned her work over, rolling the scarlet mesh round the white needles and, as aimlessly, spreading it out again across her knees.