Looking him full in the face, she said coolly, “The years-heired feature that can / In curve and voice and eye / Despise the human span / Of durance—that is I; / The eternal thing in Man, / That heeds no call to die. It doesn’t take a professional detective to detect that. Do you enjoy Thomas Hardy, Sergeant?”

“As a poet more than a novelist.”

“I agree. I find depressing his determination to make his characters suffer even when a little common sense on both his part and theirs could avoid it. Tess is one of the most irritating young women in Victorian fiction. Won’t you both sit down?”

And here was the hostess, recalling duty but unable or unwilling to control the note of condescending reluctance. She indicated the sofa and seated herself in an armchair facing it. Kate and Benton sat.

Without preliminaries, Kate took over. “Mr. Chandler-Powell described you as the administrator here. What exactly does the job entail?”

“My job here? It’s difficult to describe. I’m a manager, administrator, housekeeper, secretary and part-time accountant. I suppose ‘general manager’ covers it all. But Mr. Chandler-Powell usually describes me as the administrator when speaking to patients.”

“And you’ve been here how long?”

“It will be six years next month.”

Kate said, “It can’t have been easy for you.”

“Not easy in what way, Inspector?”

Miss Cressett’s tone was one of detached interest, but Benton didn’t miss the note of suppressed resentment. He had encountered this reaction before: a suspect, usually one with some authority, more used to putting questions than answering them, unwilling to antagonise the chief investigating officer but venting his or her resentment on a subordinate. Kate wasn’t intimidated.

She said, “To return to a house so beautiful which your family has owned for generations and to see someone else in occupation. Not everyone could cope with that.”

“Not everyone is required to. Perhaps I should explain. My family owned and lived in the Manor for more than four hundred years, but everything comes to an end. Mr. Chandler-Powell is fond of the house, and it is better in his care than in the care of the others who viewed and wanted to buy it. I didn’t murder one of his patients in order to shut down the clinic and pay him back for buying my family home or for getting it cheap. Forgive my frankness, Inspector, but isn’t that what you came to find out?”

It was never wise to rebut an allegation which hadn’t yet been made, particularly with such brutal frankness, and it was obvious that she realised her mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth. So the resentment was there. But against whom or what? Benton wondered. The police, Chandler-Powell’s desecration of the west wing, or Rhoda Gradwyn, who so inconveniently and embarrassingly had brought the vulgarity of a criminal investigation into her ancestral halls?