The Reverend David Mellanby was an ascetic man with a soft voice and deep commitment to his chosen path in life. In becoming a parish priest, he’d willingly renounced all the privileges he’d hitherto enjoyed. When he heard why the visitors had come, he gave them a cordial welcome and invited them into the drawing room. Though Peter settled comfortably into his chair, Hooper sat stiffly on the edge of his with the look of a man who felt that he was trespassing and in imminent danger of ejection. Since Paul Skillen had actually been present at the scene of the murder, David wanted to hear every last detail passed on to his brother. He was touched that Peter and Paul had joined the search for the assassin of a man neither of them knew, even though their involvement could put them in jeopardy.

‘I’m also grateful to you, Mr Hooper,’ said David. ‘My father often spoke of you as being wonderfully supportive to him in his work.’

‘Oh,’ said Hooper, surprised by the praise, ‘it were very kind of him to say so. I worshipped him.’

‘I would question your choice of the word “worship”. Much as I loved my father, I reserve worship solely for our supreme Father in heaven. He is the source of all being. No human can begin to compete with him.’

‘Mr Hooper is a God-fearing Christian,’ said Peter in the man’s defence. ‘When I slept in the bedroom he and his wife so kindly vacated, I did so under a sampler made by Mrs Hooper. It had a text from the Bible. All that he meant to say was that Sir Roger was a beacon of hope to people like himself.’

‘That’s true,’ echoed Hooper.

David smiled. ‘Forgive me for being so pedantic.’

The mood was sober and the conversation, albeit muted, was pleasant and unforced. The tone changed markedly when Barrington Oxley arrived. He was a fleshy man of sixty with a bald head fringed by white curls. He had a scholarly hunch, a sizeable paunch and a pair of dark green eyes that peered intently over the spectacles perched on the end of his nose. Peter felt the full force of the suspicion in his gaze. Oxley dismissed Hooper with a mere glance. It was left to David to introduce the visitors to his father’s closest friend.

‘Did I hear aright, Mr Skillen?’ asked Oxley, eyebrows arched in incredulity. ‘You have taken it upon yourself to undertake a search for Sir Roger’s killer?’

‘It’s true,’ confirmed Peter.

‘May I ask what possible right you have to do so?’

‘I asked him, sir,’ muttered Hooper.

‘Be so good as to remain silent. Mr Skillen can answer for himself.’

‘Oh … beg pardon, sir.’