“So I suggest you stop wasting my time and hightail it back to your schoolroom and let me get on with my work,” the inspector said, no longer in such a friendly fashion. “Go on. Off you go.”

He looked up as I appeared in the doorway. “Ah, Lady Georgiana. Can you take these two scamps off my hands and keep them out of trouble, do you think?”

“Of course,” I said, “but first I thought you might have a word with Mr. Smedley. He’s the architect who came to meet the duke this morning and was with me when we discovered the duke’s body. Naturally, he’s anxious to make his statement and get back to London.”

“Naturally,” the chief inspector reiterated. “Very well. Come on in, Mr. Smedley, and you can make a statement for us while Lady Georgiana rounds up her family members.”

“Very well, although I have absolutely nothing salient to add to your investigation, I am sure,” the little man said, throwing me a nervous glance as I went out.

“I don’t think he’ll ever find out whodunit, do you?” Nick asked. “He doesn’t know the right questions to ask.”

“Should he have asked you any right questions?” I asked with a grin.

“Possibly,” Kat said. “We may have overheard something incriminating sometime that we didn’t realize was important. We do love snooping on grown-up conversations, you know.”

“You’ll get yourselves into trouble one day,” I said, but even as I said it I remembered the lonely time in my own nursery, and how I would creep to the staircase and hide in the shadows, listening to the adults talking down below. It’s what lonely children do to feel that they are part of life.

The twins ran on ahead of me into the Long Gallery. I followed them and found the others still sitting together, not saying anything. Nicholas and Katherine had already grabbed the last sandwiches as if they hadn’t had a meal in months. I passed along the information that the inspector wanted to speak to each of us in turn. Edwina now took charge, bossing everyone and choosing the order in which they should go to be questioned.

“And there is no point in mentioning anything unnecessary to him,” she said. “We have our disagreements like any other family, don’t we? But I can’t see what bearing those would have on my son’s murder. The fact that this crime took place on a footpath that leads directly to the village and the station indicates to me that it has to have been an outsider.” And she gave us a long, hard stare.

She turned to Jack. “John, dear, it is only right that you should go first, as head of the family,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. A mere formality.” And she attempted a bright smile as Jack shot me a worried glance and left the room.