Lettie couldn’t remember who first named Robin Boyton as an alternative chief suspect, but when raised the idea spread by a kind of osmosis. After all, he had come to Stoke Cheverell to visit Rhoda Gradwyn, had apparently been desperate to see her and had been rebuffed. Probably the killing hadn’t been premeditated. Miss Gradwyn had been perfectly able to walk after the operation. She had let him in, there had been a quarrel and he had lost his temper. Admittedly he wasn’t the owner of the car parked near the stones, but that might well have had nothing to do with the murder. The police would be trying to trace the owner. No one said what they all thought: that it would be convenient if they failed. Even if the motorist proved to be an overtired traveller prudently stopping for a short sleep, the theory of an outside intruder held good.

By dinner time, Lettie sensed that the speculation was dying down. It had been a long and traumatic day, and what they all craved now was a period of peace. They seemed also to need solitude. Chandler-Powell and Flavia told Dean that they would have dinner served in their rooms. The Westhalls departed for Stone Cottage, and Helena invited Lettie to share a meal of a herb omelette and salad which she would cook in her small private kitchen. After the meal, they washed up together, then settled down before the wood fire to listen to a concert on Radio 3 in the subdued light of a single lamp. Neither mentioned Rhoda Gradwyn’s death.

By eleven, the fire was dying. A fragile blue flame licked at the last log as it disintegrated into grey ash. Helena turned off the radio, and they sat in silence. Then she said, “Why did you leave the Manor when I was thirteen? Was it to do with Father? I’ve always thought it was, that you were lovers.”

Lettie replied quietly. “You were always too sophisticated for your age. We were getting too fond of each other, too interdependent. It was right for me to go. And you needed to be with other girls, to have a wider education.”

“I suppose so. That dreadful school. Were you lovers? Did you have sex? Awful expression, but all alternatives are even cruder.”

“Once. That’s why I knew it had to end.”

“Because of Mummy?”

“Because of all of us.”

“So it was Brief Encounter without the railway station?”

“Something like that.”

“Poor Mummy. Years of doctors and nurses. After a time, her failing lungs hardly seemed like an illness, just part of what she was. And when she died, I hardly missed her. She hadn’t really been there. I remember being sent for from school, but too late. I think I was glad not to be there in time. But that empty bedroom, that was horrible. I still hate that room.”