Sharon opened her mouth to retort, caught a glance from Chandler-Powell and thought better of it, then kicked the door closed after her. No one spoke. Lettie sensed the general feeling that, if Sharon’s comment had been ill judged, Flavia’s hadn’t improved on it. Murder was a contaminating crime, subtly changing relationships which, even if not close, had been easy and without strain, hers with Candace and now with Flavia. It wasn’t a question of active suspicion, more the spread of an atmosphere of unease, a growing awareness that other people, other minds, were unknowable. But she felt a concern for Flavia. With her sitting room in the west wing barred to her, she had taken to walking alone in the garden or down the lime walk to the stones, returning with eyes more red and swollen than could be caused by a keen wind or sudden shower. Perhaps, thought Lettie, it wasn’t surprising that Flavia seemed more affected by Miss Gradwyn’s death than were the others. She and Chandler-Powell had lost a patient. For both of them it was a professional disaster. And then there were the rumours about the relationship with George. When they were together at the Manor it was always one of surgeon and theatre sister, sometimes seeming almost unnecessarily professional. Certainly if they had been sleeping together at the Manor someone would have known. But Lettie wondered if Flavia’s changing moods, the new waspishness, the solitary walks had a cause other than the death of a patient.

As the day wore on it became apparent to Lettie that this death was creating more covert interest than either fear or anxiety. Robin Boyton was hardly known except to his cousins, and not particularly liked by those who did know him. And at least he had had the decency to die outside the Manor. None would have expressed the thought with such callous insensitivity, but the hundred yards or so between the house and Stone Cottage was a psychological as well as a physical separation from a corpse imagined but by the majority not witnessed. They felt more like onlookers than participants in a drama, isolated from the action, beginning indeed to feel unreasonably excluded by Dalgliesh and his team, who asked for information and gave so little in return. Mog, who by virtue of his job in the garden and throughout the grounds had an excuse to loiter at the gate, had fed them nuggets of information. He reported on the return of the scene-of-crime officers, the arrival of the photographer and Dr. Glenister, and finally the lumpy body bag being stretchered down the cottage path to the sinister mortuary van. With that news the company at the Manor braced themselves for the return of Dalgliesh and his team.

Chapter 10

10