I knew that good breeding did not allow one to ask too many questions, but I was dying of curiosity. “Lady Hawse-Gorzley, you mentioned that the police had been here all day. What exactly have they been doing?”

“Tramping all over the place and upsetting my servants, that’s what. Damned impertinence. All because our stupid neighbor had to go and kill himself in our orchard. Of all the inconsiderate things to do, especially when he knew I had people coming. Still, that was par for the course with him. Didn’t care a hoot about anybody but himself.”

I tried to digest this while she knocked back a second sherry. “Your neighbor killed himself? Committed suicide, you mean?”

“I hardly think so. If you wanted to kill yourself you probably wouldn’t bother to climb a tree first, would you? Not unless you wanted to fall and break your neck, and our fruit trees aren’t that big. No, the police think it was an accident. Carrying a loaded rook rifle with him, somehow slipped or knocked the gun and it went off in his face.”

“Had he come onto your property to shoot rooks then, do you think?”

“Wouldn’t have thought so. The big elm by the church is where the rooks go to roost for the night. He could have stood in the churchyard, fired with his eyes closed and not been able to miss at dusk. No, my husband agrees with me—it was probably designed to be another of his practical jokes. Going to rig up the rifle so that it went off when someone walked past, or maybe aiming it to shoot at one of our windows—that’s what the inspector suggested.”

“He was aiming to kill one of you?”

“No, just give us a nasty scare. That was young Freddie’s stock in trade. M’husband reckons that he wanted to pay us back because Oswald found him shooting grouse on the moor the other day. I mean to say—everyone knows the grouse shooting season ends on the tenth of December. And there he was, bold as brass on the eighteenth. Gave him a damned good talking-to. Obviously he didn’t like that and decided to get back at us.”

She took another swig of sherry. “Inherited the property behind ours from his father a few years ago. Still hadn’t married and amused himself by being absolutely bloody to his neighbors. In his thirties but still acted like a ten-year-old boy.” She paused and sighed. “Still, I wouldn’t have wished an end like that for the poor chap. He might have turned out all right if he’d married and had to settle down.”

She broke off at the sound of footsteps outside and several blue uniforms passed the window.

“Ah, they are finally off home,” she said. “I told them they were wasting their time looking for clues on my property. Quite clear the fellow shot himself while trying to rig up some kind of trap. Had the wire with him. Fool. Well, let’s hope that’s the end of it. The last thing I want is to have my guests greeted by policemen all over the place. I was worried they’d all cancel when they read about the breakout last week.”