In contrast to the great hall, the room they entered struck her as surprisingly small, comfortable and unpretentious, a book-lined sanctum guarding its silence as it did the shelves of leather-backed books so closely aligned in height that they looked as if none of them had ever been taken down. As always, she assessed the room with a quick surreptitious glance. She had never forgotten a rebuke of AD’s to a detective sergeant when she had first entered the Squad. “We’re here by consent but we’re not welcome. It’s still their home. Don’t gawp at their belongings, Simon, as if you’re assessing them for a car-boot sale.” The shelves, which lined all the walls except the one with the three tall windows, were in a lighter wood than the hall, the carvings simpler and more elegant. Perhaps the library was a later addition. Above the shelves were ranged marble busts, dehumanised by their sightless eyes into mere icons. No doubt AD and Benton would know who they were, would know, too, the approximate date of the wood carving, would feel at home here. She thrust the thought out of her mind. Surely by now she had disciplined a tinge of intellectual inferiority which she knew was as unnecessary as it was tedious. No one she had ever worked with on the Squad had made her feel less intelligent than she knew herself to be, and after their case on Combe Island she thought she had put behind her for ever this demeaning half-paranoia.

Mrs. Skeffington was sitting in a high-backed chair before the fire. She didn’t rise but settled herself more elegantly, the thin legs held side by side. Her face was a pale oval, the skin taut over high cheekbones, the full mouth glossy with scarlet lipstick. Kate thought that if this unlined perfection was the result of Mr. Chandler-Powell’s expertise, he had served her well. But her neck, darker, creped and ringed with the creases of age, and the hands with their purple veins, were not those of a young woman. The hair, glossy black, rose from a peak at the forehead and fell in straight waves to her shoulders. Her hands were busy with it, twisting it and pushing it back behind her ears. Mrs. Frensham, who had been sitting opposite, got up and stood, hands folded, while Chandler-Powell made the introductions. Kate watched with cynical amusement the expected reaction as Mrs. Skeffington’s eyes fixed on Benton, widened into a fleeting but intense look compounded of surprise, interest and calculation. But it was to Chandler-Powell that she spoke, her voice as resentful as a querulous child’s.

“I thought you’d never arrive. I’ve been sitting here for hours waiting for someone to come.”

“But you weren’t left alone at any time, were you? I arranged that you shouldn’t be.”