Receiving an affirmative answer, she said that Miss Marple would find her waiting at the top of the stairs.

Miss Marple went into the bathroom and washed her hands and dried them a little nervously on a very beautiful orchid-coloured face towel. Then she removed her hat and patted her soft white hair into place.

Opening her door, she found Miss Bellever waiting for her, and was conducted down the big gloomy staircase and across a vast dark hall and into a room where bookshelves went up to the ceiling and a big window looked out over an artificial lake.

Carrie Louise was standing by the window and Miss Marple joined her.

‘What a very imposing house this is,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I feel quite lost in it.’

‘Yes, I know. It’s ridiculous, really. It was built by a prosperous iron master — or something of that kind. He went bankrupt not long after. I don’t wonder really. There were about fourteen living-rooms — all enormous. I’ve never seen what people can want with more than one sitting-room. And all those huge bedrooms. Such a lot of unnecessary space. Mine is terribly overpowering — and quite a long way to walk from the bed to the dressing table. And great heavy dark crimson curtains.’

‘You haven’t had it modernized and redecorated?’

Carrie Louise looked vaguely surprised.

‘No. On the whole it’s very much as it was when I first lived here with Eric. It’s been repainted, of course, but they always do it the same colour. Those things don’t really matter, do they? I mean I shouldn’t have felt justified in spending a lot of money on that kind of thing when there are so many things that are so much more important.’

‘Have there been no changes at all in the house?’

‘Oh — yes — heaps of them. We’ve just kept a kind of block in the middle of the house as it was — the Great Hall and the rooms off and over. They’re the best ones and Johnnie — my second husband — was lyrical over them and said they should never be touched or altered — and of course he was an artist and a designer and he knew about these things. But the East and West wings have been completely remodelled. All the rooms partitioned off and divided up, so that we have offices, and bedrooms for the teaching staff, and all that. The boys are all in the College building — you can see it from here.’

Miss Marple looked out towards where large red brick buildings showed through a belt of sheltered trees. Then her eyes fell on something nearer at hand, and she smiled a little.

‘What a very beautiful girl Gina is,’ she said.

Carrie Louise’s face lit up.

‘Yes, isn’t she?’ she said softly. ‘It’s so lovely to have her back here again. I sent her to America at the beginning of the war — to Ruth. Did Ruth talk about her at all?’