He stood aside to let them enter a room at the end of the corridor. It was a mixture of conference room, study and sitting room. There was a rectangular table set in front of the window with six chairs, bookshelves almost to the ceiling on the left-hand wall and the headmaster’s desk, with his own chair and two before it, to the right. One wall was covered with school photographs: the chess club, a row of smiling faces with the board set up in front of them, the captain holding the small silver trophy; the football and swimming teams; the orchestra; the cast of the Christmas pantomime and a scene from what looked like Macbeth—wasn’t it always Macbeth, short, suitably bloody, not too difficult to learn? An open door gave a glimpse of what was obviously a small kitchen. There was a smell of coffee.

Collinsby pulled out two chairs at the table and said, “I take it that this is a formal visit. Shall we sit here?” He seated himself at the top of the table with Dalgliesh on his right, Kate on his left. And now she could look at him fleetingly but more closely. She saw a good face, sensitive but firm-jawed, a face one saw on television advertisements chosen to inspire confidence in the actor’s spiel about the bank’s superiority over its competition, or to persuade the viewers that that unaffordable car could provoke envy among the neighbours. He looked younger than Kate had expected, perhaps because of the informality of his weekend clothes, and might, she thought, have shown some of the confident insouciance of youth if he hadn’t looked so tired. The grey eyes, which briefly met hers and then turned to Dalgliesh, were dulled with exhaustion. But when he spoke his voice was surprisingly youthful.

Dalgliesh said, “We’re making enquiries into the suspicious death of a woman at a house in Stoke Cheverell in Dorset. A Ford Focus with the number plate W341 UDG was seen parked close to the house between eleven-thirty-five and eleven-forty on the night she died. That was last Friday, December the fourteenth. We are told that you had borrowed the car on that date. Were you driving, and were you there?”

“Yes. I was there.”

“Under what circumstances, Mr. Collinsby?”