I motioned for Belinda to stay where she was and crept out of the room to observe. Mrs. Mannering pushed Belinda’s bedroom door open for the policeman, who was a stout older man with the round, red face of a countryman and a fine head of white hair. He was holding his helmet tucked under one arm. I saw him take a deep breath before he went inside, then I heard a gasp of breath. “Oh my Lordy,” he said, quickly stepping back out into the corridor, his face ashen white to match his hair. “Poor young blighter. I’ve never in all my years seen something like this. There was Henry Blakely who fell into the threshing machine that time and that was pretty grizzly. But I’ve never seen an actual murder. In all my years on the force I’ve never seen nobody murdered. Not lying on a bed like that, all naked. There was that time that Tommy Hicks fell down the mine shaft but everybody knew he was up to no good and . . .”

“So what do you plan to do about it, Constable Hood?” Mrs. Mannering asked curtly. “Aren’t you going to start investigating?”

“Me? Investigate? That’s not my job, my lovey. I’m a village constable. I see to drunks and lost dogs, not dead bodies. I’ll have to call the inspector from Wadebridge and he’ll probably have to call the inspector from Truro or maybe from Scotland Yard itself, seeing the serious nature of the crime.” He closed the door behind him. “Nobody is to go in here until the inspector has seen it for himself,” he said. “So do we have any idea who might have committed this terrible crime?” (He pronounced it turrrrible.) “I mean, is there likely to be a dangerous lunatic running around the house at this moment?”

“I think that is highly unlikely,” Mrs. Mannering said coldly. “The servants are checking the premises and the grounds as we speak, but I think you’ll find that it’s an open-and-shut case. A Miss Warburton-Stoke who is staying here, a friend of the late Mr. Summers and his wife, was found standing over the body holding the knife with blood all over her hands. It is her bedroom, and her bed on which he is lying. Quite naked too.” And she gave him a very meaningful glance.

“Oh. Ah,” the policeman said with understanding. “Case of fending off the young gentleman to preserve her honor, do you think? The courts will go lightly with her if that’s how it was. Always go soft on young girls defending their honor.”

“I couldn’t tell you her motive,” Mrs. Mannering said. “She had seemed a perfectly pleasant and stable young person until that moment.”

“Where is she now?” He looked around and saw me, hovering just outside my bedroom door. “Is this the young woman in question?”