Benton stopped and looked round, Kate thought in some embarrassment at going down a path which Dalgliesh might not have wanted to open up.

Without commenting Dalgliesh said, “Well, let’s be clear what we’ve learnt so far. We’ll leave motive for the moment. Benton, will you begin?”

Kate knew that her chief always asked the most junior member of the team to initiate the discussion. Benton’s silence on their walk suggested that he had already spent some time deciding how best to proceed. Dalgliesh hadn’t made it clear whether Benton was meant to review the facts or to comment on them or both, but invariably, if he didn’t, Kate would, and she suspected that this interchange, often lively, was what Dalgliesh had in mind.

Benton took a gulp of his wine. He had given thought to what he would say on the walk to the Old Police Cottage. Now he was succinct. He gave an account of Rhoda Gradwyn’s involvement with Chandler-Powell and the Cheverell Manor clinic from her appointment with him in his Harley Street consulting room on the twenty-first of November until the time of her death. She had had a choice of a private bed in St. Angela’s in London or Cheverell Manor. She chose the Manor, at least provisionally, and came for a preliminary visit on the twenty-seventh of November, when the member of staff who saw most of her was Sharon, who showed her the garden. This was a little surprising, since contact with the patients was usually with more senior members of staff or with the two surgeons and Sister Holland.

“On Thursday the thirteenth of December she went straight to her suite after being received on arrival by Mr. Chandler-Powell, Sister Holland and Mrs. Frensham. All say she was perfectly calm, apparently unworried and not very communicative. One of the temporary nonresident staff, Nurse Frazer, took her down to the operating theatre next morning, where she was examined by the anaesthetist and then underwent the operation. Mr. Chandler-Powell says it was complicated but successful. She was in the recovery room until four-thirty, when she was returned to her suite on the patients’ wing. She ate a light supper and was seen by Sister Holland on several occasions, and by Chandler-Powell and Sister Holland at ten o’clock, when Miss Gradwyn said she was ready to sleep. She refused a sedative. Sister Holland said that the last time she looked in on her was at eleven, when she found Miss Gradwyn asleep. She was murdered by manual strangulation, Dr. Glenister estimates between eleven and twelve-thirty.”

Dalgliesh and Kate listened in silence. Benton was seized by the fear that he was taking too much time on the obvious. He glanced at Kate but, getting no response, went on. “We’ve been told of several significant things that happened that night. The only other patient present, Mrs. Skeffington, was wakeful and went to the bathroom. She could have been woken by the sound of the lift which she says she heard at eleven-forty. From the bedroom window she claims she saw a light flickering among the Cheverell Stones. This was just before midnight. It frightened her, and she rang the assistant cook, Kimberley Bostock, and asked for a pot of tea. Probably she wanted company, however briefly, but didn’t like to wake up Sister Holland, who was in the suite next door.”