Max shook his head again. “No,” he said. “Alice saw to all that.”

“And you didn’t go outside?”

There was perhaps a momentary hesitation. “ No,” Max said. “Why should I have done?”

Ramsay paused, then the focus of his questions became more general. He could sense their relief but was unsure if it was because one of them had been implicated in the murder or because, after all, they felt some shame in having let an old lady wander about alone so late at night.

“Did any strangers come to the house yesterday evening?” he asked.

“Not while we were here,” Judy said. “Olive Kerr was here until we sat down for dinner. Alice asked her to join us, but she said she wanted to go back to her own family. I suppose the letter must have been delivered by someone. And of course that reporter was here in the afternoon.”

“The reporter from the Otterbridge Express? She came to the Tower as well as to the meeting in the hall?”

“I think so.” Judy looked around at the family for confirmation. “Isn’t that what Alice said? That she had a discussion with Mary Raven after the meeting?”

But the others, it seemed, could not remember.

“You didn’t see any strangers at the house?” Ramsay persisted. “There was no-one hanging around the drive or in the churchyard?”

Stella Laidlaw smiled suddenly and spoke for the first time.

“Only those teenagers who hang around the bus stop on the green,” she said. “They were there, I think.”

“Can you see the green from the house?”

“Oh,” she said, “ you can see most of the village from our bedroom window.” She remembered the moonlit figure pacing between the gravestones and smiled again, hugging the information to herself. Ramsay saw the smile and thought how heartless the woman was. She had nothing, after all, to be pleased about. All four Laidlaws would be under suspicion and subject to intrusion and prying questions until the investigation was over. Every family had secrets and he would know most of the Laidlaws’ before the thing was finished. The thought gave him no pleasure.

“Will both Max and James benefit under Mrs. Parry’s will?” he asked, and as he had expected the question provoked righteous indignation.

Could he really think, they asked, that they would hurt Alice? They all loved her.

“You do see why I have to ask?” Ramsay said mildly. “ If you don’t wish to discuss it with me, I can talk to Mrs. Parry’s solicitor.”

“The Tower comes to me with the understanding that it’s to stay in the family,” James said. “I’ll respect her wishes, of course. She hadn’t a lot of capital, but what there is goes to Max. Neither of us stands to make a fortune from her death.”