Harry and Becket were summoned to the estate office to face an angry Kerridge.

‘Sit down, both of you,’ said Kerridge heavily. ‘I had a man on the gate last night. You pair drove out past him. He said he didn’t stop you or question you going or returning because the idiot assumed you had my permission. I distinctly told him to let no one past. But, oh, no, he touched his helmet as you go off and then he lets two thieving servants away as well.’

Anxious to divert Kerridge’s attention from themselves, Harry said, ‘There was evidently some fuss last night when the ladies left the drawing-room. Becket here says it was the talk of the servants’ hall. Peregrine Stockton had seduced a kitchen maid. Angela Stockton led her off into a side-room. I would assume she paid her off. She and the pot-boy obviously decided to help themselves to a few trinkets as well while we were all the in the drawing-room.’

But Kerridge was not to be distracted. ‘So where did you go last night?’

‘I motored to London to pick up my letters and came straight back. I did not think I was a suspect.’

‘Everyone’s a suspect, even you,’ said Kerridge nastily. ‘Don’t ever leave here again until this investigation is finished. We have wired all worried parents and relatives to stay away. If I cannot find anything out today, I will need to let them all go.’

To Rose’s distress, Tristram seemed to have come to the conclusion that his proposal had been too abrupt and so he set about courting her. His method of doing this was to praise her fulsomely and throw her languishing glances.

She could only be glad that her parents had decided to stay in London, having been informed by the police that she would only be required to stay at Farthings for, perhaps, another day. Rose felt sure that if they had arrived on the scene and if Tristram had asked their permission to pay his addresses, and if she proved to have turned down another eligible gentleman, they would, she knew, be furious.

What the newspapers were saying about it all, no one knew, Lady Glensheil having stopped the delivery.

No one wanted to chat or socialize or play croquet any more. Suspicion hung like a black cloud over Farthings.

Guests and staff were painstakingly interviewed over and over again. More detectives arrived, discreetly dressed, to search the whole house.

‘They won’t find anything,’ said Daisy to Rose. ‘I bet our murderer, if he took any blackmailing evidence, has got it neatly hidden somewhere in London.’