Again Lettie was surprised. Lending books to Sharon was a kindness which she hadn’t expected from Candace, whose attitude to the girl had been one of grudging tolerance rather than benevolent interest. But Candace was, after all, a teacher. Perhaps this was a resurgence of her pedagogic vocation. And it was surely a natural impulse in any lover of reading to lend a book to a young person who showed an interest in it. She would have done the same herself. Walking beside Candace, she felt a small stab of pity. They worked together amicably, as both of them did with Helena, but they had never been close and were colleagues rather than friends. But she was useful at the Manor. The three days Candace had spent visiting Toronto had proved that. Perhaps it was because Candace and Marcus lived in Stone Cottage that they sometimes seemed emotionally as well as physically distanced from the life of the Manor. She could only imagine what the last two years had been like for an intelligent woman, her job in jeopardy, and now—so it was rumoured—no longer available, her nights and days spent ministering to a domineering and querulous old man, her brother desperate to get away. Well, there should be no difficulty about that now. The clinic could hardly continue after Miss Gradwyn’s murder. Only patients with a pathologically morbid fascination with death and horror would book in at the Manor now.

It was a drab and sunless morning. There had been heavy showers during the night and now from the sun-drenched earth there rose a pungent miasma of rotting leaves and sodden grass. Autumn had come early this year, but already its mellow refulgence had faded into the bleak almost odourless breath of the dying year. They walked through the damp mist, which struck cold on Lettie’s face and brought with it the first chill touch of unease. Earlier she had entered Rose Cottage without apprehension, half expecting to find Robin Boyton returned, or at least some evidence of where he had gone. Now, as they walked between the winter-scarred rose bushes to the front door, she felt she was being inexorably drawn towards something which was none of her business, which she had no wish to get involved in and which boded ill. The front door was unlocked, as she had found it, but when they entered the kitchen, it seemed to her that the air was now more rancid than the smell of unwashed plates.

Candace approached the table and regarded the debris of the meal with a moue of distaste. She said, “Certainly it looks more like yesterday’s lunch or supper than breakfast, but with Robin who can tell? You said you’d checked upstairs?”

“Yes. The bed wasn’t properly made, just the bedclothes pulled together, but it didn’t look as if he’d slept there last night.”