“It was the understanding of their game that led to an entirely practical thought in my Freud-free sailor’s mind, Redfyre,” the master chipped in. “A simple man’s reaction against all this ‘try to understand their thought processes’ guff.” His glance slid unemphatically over his daughter’s head. “Who did the washing up? Hey? What? Sure as eggs they didn’t soil their hands! I had the bedder for the Cromwell wing brought to me. Mrs. Hemple was a fount of information once she got going. A cup of tea and half a dozen custard cream biscuits loosened her stays and her tongue. On these ‘dinner nights,’ she’d been requested to do extra hours and been paid double her usual rates. She and her daughter were paid to turn up at ten and tidy up. They hauled the dirty dishes away in a basket, replacing them in the pantry next morning. With careful questioning, she became quite chatty. She had arrived early one evening with Ruby to find a stranger, the guest for the evening, on his way out. The ladies thought at first there was a fight going on. ‘Some Spanish bloke,’ as Mrs. Hemple called him, was being escorted from Fanshawe’s rooms by two men in dinner jackets. Not so much escorting as ‘strong-arming’ was her impression. The foreign gentleman was loud, singing and shouting both. He seemed angry. He shook off the two Jude men, fell down a few stairs, picked himself up, yelled at them in Spanish and shot off. The Jude men, seeing Mrs. Hemple standing there openmouthed with her mop and bucket, told her to go away and report back in an hour.

“And, this is where it gets interesting, Redfyre—the Jude men followed him down the staircase and out of the building. Like sheepdogs? It’s a tricky place to find your way about. Cromwell wing is a bit of an outlier. If you turn left instead of right as you’re rushing out, you find yourself engaged in a covered way that takes you through to my own territory. To the master’s lodge and garden and eventually on to the back door of the graveyard. They wouldn’t want a drunken, angry Spaniard plunging about the place looking for the exit. But how far did they escort him?

“It was Mrs. Hemple’s parting shot that blew the lid off the jam jar. ‘Could it have been the same man, Master?’ she wondered. The same as the body found on the lion at the museum? It had been in all the papers. Only they said that chap had been an Argentinian. Was that the same as Spanish? Poor gentleman had been found stabbed to death with his own dagger, and set to ride one of the lions like at a Wild West rodeo.