He returned after nearly ten minutes. “Lady Maude will receive you in the library,” he informed Rutledge, and stepped aside to allow him to enter.

Rutledge walked into a columned hall that reminded him of a Greek temple. The floor, paved in marble, was smooth as cold ice, and the staircases—a pair—flaunted their airy grace as they rose like swans’ necks on either side of a niche where an exquisite Roman copy of a Greek Apollo was subtly lit. The stone face, slightly turned and limned by the light, reminded him all at once of Cormac FitzHugh. He buried the memory as swiftly as it had risen.

Hamish said, “Pagan, this is. Like the mistress, no doubt!”

How had the missing Eleanor Gray seen it? Rutledge wondered. Had she played here as a child, sliding across the shining floor, peals of laughter echoing among the columns? Or had it seemed cold to her, forbidding?

A long gallery led off in either direction, with French carpeting, busts on pedestals, and dark paintings of ancestors in massive gold frames.

“There’s space enough here to hold half a regiment,” Hamish said, his voice disparaging. “Aye, and a military band to sit and play on yon stairs.”

The library was a vast room down a passage on the first floor and was undoubtedly chosen to overawe a mere policeman. Its windows rose floor to ceiling, and books filled glass-enclosed shelves. The cream-and-rose carpet on the floor was so old, it had the sheen of antique silk, and the woman waiting for him in the center of it knew that it set her off like a jewel.

Hamish fell silent, in its own way homage.

Lady Maude was a tall woman with silver-gray hair and the carriage of an empress. Her afternoon dress was dark blue, austere in contrast to the handsome double rope of pearls that fell nearly to her waist. In her day she must have been quite beautiful, for the vestiges of beauty were clear in the bones of her face, her violet eyes, and the long, slender hands lightly clasped in front of her. She barely acknowledged the butler’s quiet murmur. “Inspector Rutledge, my lady.” The door closed softly behind him.

“Inspector,” she said as he inclined his head. After a moment, regarding him coolly, she added, “At least this time they’ve had the sense to send me someone who is presentable.”

“I haven’t met Inspector Oliver, my lady. His sense of duty, however, is something I understand, as you must yourself, having been born to it.”

“I will not listen—” she began, but he cut lightly across her words.