“I was just coming down the passage. I’d been in the kitchen, helping Mollie. I generally do when all of us are here. It’s a great deal of work, and finding suitable help from the village isn’t always possible on a Sunday morning.”

“Thank you. Miss Brittingham?”

“I was upstairs. I’d overslept and was late coming down for breakfast.”

“Could you see Captain Teller fall?”

“I was still in my room. Two minutes—less—later, and I’d have been in the passage.”

He turned to Jenny.

“I was outside, I’d taken my tea outside this morning. I—I wanted to walk a little.”

“It was misting here? Raining?”

“A soft mist. I don’t mind that. It was cooler after a string of warm days.” She broke down again.

Rutledge turned to Amy Teller. “I was in the study, looking for a book. I’d finished the one I’d been reading last night. I was the first to reach Peter. They may have told you. He was still alive, and he said my name. And then he died. It was awful. I think I screamed for Susannah.”

“Where was she?”

“I believe she’d already come down and was in the dining room. She appeared from that direction, anyway.”

Her husband looked up at Rutledge, his face grim, his eyes red. “I was in my room. Like Mary, a few seconds more and I’d have been with him. I might have saved him from falling. I can’t seem to get that out of my mind.”

Rutledge waited for Walter Teller to give his whereabouts. He didn’t turn. Finally he said, his voice muffled, “I was in the drawing room. I wanted to be by myself.”

And so no one had been on the scene. Or at least no one admitted to it.

He nodded to Mary Brittingham, and she rose, saying to Jenny, “Come on, love, you’ll be better off lying down.”

Jenny shook her head. “I won’t go up those stairs. I don’t think I ever shall again.”

“Then we’ll use the back stairs,” Mary told her.

Jenny said, rising from her chair, “I’m to blame. I told Walter I wanted to have a party, as I did last year. With everyone here. If I hadn’t, Peter would still be in London this morning, and not dead.”

“Don’t be silly,” her husband said roughly from the window. “Accidents happen. He could have fallen down his own stairs, for that matter. He was drunk enough last night.”

She looked at him, hurt clear in her face. And then without answering him, she turned and walked from the dining room. Mary followed her.