“Did you enter the Manor at any time after you saw Miss Gradwyn arrive?”

“Why would I do that?”

Dalgliesh said, “I don’t know, I’m asking if you did.”

“I did not. And since we’re talking about me, I like to say things plain. No shilly-shallying. I know what you want to ask, so I’ll save you the trouble. I knew where she was sleeping—on the patients’ floor, where else? And I’ve got keys to the garden door, but I never set eyes on her dead or alive after she went through the front door. I didn’t kill her and I don’t know who did. If I did know, like as not I’d tell you. I don’t hold with murder.”

Miss Cressett said, “Mog, no one is suspecting you.”

“You may not be, Miss Helena, others will. I know how the world wags. Just as well to speak plainly.”

Dalgliesh said, “Thank you, Mr. Mogworthy. You have spoken plainly, and it has been helpful. Is there anything else you can think of that we ought to know, anything you saw or heard after you left? For example, did you see anyone near the Manor, a stranger perhaps, someone acting suspiciously?”

Mog said stoutly, “Any stranger round the Manor after dark is suspicious to me. I never seen nobody last night. But there were a car parked in the lay-by by the stones. Not when I left; later.”

Catching Mog’s quickly disciplined smirk of sly satisfaction, Benton suspected that the timing of the disclosure was less naïve than it sounded. The reception of his news was certainly gratifying. No one spoke, but in the silence Benton detected a soft hiss like the intake of breath. This was news to them all, as no doubt Mogworthy had intended. Benton watched their faces as they glanced at one another. It was a moment of shared relief, quickly concealed but unmistakable.

Dalgliesh asked, “Can you remember anything about the car? The make, colour?”

“Saloon car, darkish. Could be black or blue. The lights were out. Someone sitting in the driver’s seat, but I don’t know whether anyone else was there.”

“You didn’t note the registration number?”

“No, I didn’t. Why would I be noticing car numbers? I were just passing, cycling home from Mrs. Ada Denton’s cottage, where I’d been having my Friday fish and chips, same as I always do. When I’m on the bike I keep my eyes on the road, not like some. All I know is, there were a car there.”

“At what time?”

“Before midnight. Maybe five or ten minutes before. I always reckon to get home by midnight.”

Chandler-Powell said, “This is important evidence, Mog. Why didn’t you speak earlier?”