“To answer your question about the agency, the nurse Gerald particularly liked at the hospital in Paris was from the south of France. Aix-en-Provence? Gerald said she was especially good.”

“In what way?”

“Attentive without being cloying; smart without being showy; elegant even in her nurse’s uniform. Gerald especially like elegance in a woman.” Lady Summerston sat up even straighter. “He asked her if her training had included some of these attributes—you know, the kind of attention, not plumping pillows every time she was in the room, for instance. She told him yes, it had. So when it came to hiring a nurse, he asked me to interview ones from this agency.”

Jury thought this account so elaborate and contrived it was probably a lie. Why that vast detail to justify using a certain agency?

But he shifted the subject back to Servino.

“Did Gerald have any business dealings with Servino?”

“You keep wanting to tie my husband to Flora’s husband. Why?”

“They’re already tied, Lady Summerston, given the way that Servino visited him.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Yes, she did. He could tell in the way she quickly picked up her cup and just as quickly drank. Lady Summerston was not ordinarily a person who made hasty movements.

“My husband led an exemplary life. And he was the very soul of kindness,” she said again.

Soul of kindness he might have been. But exemplary lives did not require a defense, as in that statement she had just made.

What had gone down in Paris? Jury wondered.

“This nurse in the Paris hospital. Did your husband come to know her?”

“What do you mean?”

Given the way her eyes shifted to the silver pot, which she only just then seemed to contemplate raising again, Jury guessed that she knew very well what he meant.

“Only that she seemed to have impressed him enough that he might have seen her again, outside of the hospital.”

“I hardly think so, or I expect Gerald would have mentioned it.” Pot forgotten, replaced.

Jury tried it on again. “What I was really thinking is that she herself might have tried to see him. You said they were all probably dancing attendance on your husband. He didn’t even need to try—”

That was a little better. “Of course, that’s possible. But again, he would have mentioned it.”

“If Gerald mentioned every woman who was attracted to him, you’d have been talking about hardly anything else, I expect.” Jury tried a winning smile.

It won. “How true.” She laughed.

“Going back to your niece, though—” Had they been there before?

She was relieved to do this. “Ah, yes. Poor Flora. But of course she didn’t kill him, Mr. Jury. You can be sure of that.”

“I’d like to be, Lady Summerston, but as we were saying at Watermeadows, it’s difficult.”