'It's not my place to notice, miss. But since you ask, I must say, yes, it was rather rough...very rough. Because she tried to hold on to the letter to stop him seeing it.'

'I see.' She looked at the boy, who was smiling very earnestly under his fringe of black hair. 'Naturally, you would have tried not to notice too much about that letter. But I wonder a after all, you had to carry it quite a long way. It would not have been very surprising if you had just happened to see what kind of paper it was written on perhaps a or what the handwriting of the direction was like...?'

'I didn't notice very much, miss, and, of course, I wouldn't talk about it to anyone else. But since it's you that's asking, I did see it was rather fine striped paper it was written on.'

'And the handwriting? Was it a lady's writing?'

'No, miss, I don't think so.' His brow puckered up in thought and eventually he said, 'No, it wasn't a lady's writing. It might have been a woman's writing, miss, but it wasn't a lady's.'

'And why do you say that?'

'Well, you see, miss, I could read it. And I can't read gentlefolk's handwriting a it's too clever for me a all loops and slopes and there's no making sense of it. But this was clear and round and I could read "To Lady Montague" very well. Not that I tried to read it, but it just seemed to happen that I did a as I was walking up the stairs.'

'Yes, of course. It is quite one of the misfortunes of being able to read, is it not? Sometimes we just happen to read things without hardly knowing that we are doing it.'

'Yes, miss. That's just how it is!'

'So, I wonder whether you happened to notice if there was a direction as well as a name? The name of the house? The village? The county?'

'Oh yes, miss. That was all there.'

'I see. Then it must have been brought with the letters from the post office, not handed in at the door.'

'Maybe, miss. I didn't ask how it came.'

'This is all very interesting. It is very kind of you to answer my questions so patiently, Jack. There is just one more point. Do you think that Sir Edgar read that letter?'

'I think he did, miss. He had it in his hand, but I can't be quite certain, you see, because just then Mrs Pugh came in with her ladys.h.i.+p's outdoor things and Sir Edgar looked up and he saw me and told me there was no answer to wait for and I could go...' He stopped and stared at her. 'Miss? Have I said something wrong?'

'I am sorry,' said Mr Lomax as she finished her account of the interview, 'But, my dear Miss Kent, I am as much at a loss as poor Jack to understand why you should be surprised to hear that Sir Edgar sent the boy away. The rest, I grant you, is very interesting indeed and requires a great deal of thought.'

'No, no. You are quite mistaken. I was not shocked to hear what Sir Edgar said. The shock was rather that the maid should have brought in Lady Montague's outdoor clothes. For we have been told that she did not take her walk that day.'

'Perhaps she changed her mind at the last moment. Perhaps she had meant to walk out and so her maid brought her things, but then she found that she did not feel equal to the exercise.'

'Perhaps she did, Mr Lomax,' said Dido leaning forward eagerly in her chair. 'But if that is the case, then Sir Edgar was the only one of the company who knew she was not going out. There can have been no talk in the house of her changing her usual routine if she did not decide upon that change until the last moment.'

'Yes?' He looked at her earnestly. 'Miss Kent, what exactly do you mean to say?'

'I am convinced that there are only two people who could have gone to the shrubbery at three o'clock. Indeed, there are only two people who could have killed the young woman. It was either her ladys.h.i.+p herself, or else it was Sir Edgar. Though how either of them could have walked out armed with a gun, without anyone remarking upon it, I am still at a loss to explain.'

'You believe that the letter was sent by Miss Wallis?'

'Yes. She wished to meet with her ladys.h.i.+p. But Sir Edgar read that letter. And there is no knowing whether he prevented his wife from keeping the appointment a and went himself instead a or whether the lady did go after all.'

Mr Lomax looked very troubled. 'But,' he said slowly, 'it is possible that neither of them went. It is possible that the letter had nothing to do with the murder.'

'But how could that be?' she argued, aware that her words must be painful to him, but knowing she must speak them. 'Everyone at Belsfield knows that Lady Montague walks in the shrubbery at three o'clock. And there was no reason to suppose that this day was different from any other. Who would be foolhardy enough to commit murder thinking that there was a witness close by?'

He pa.s.sed his hand across his brow and tried again. 'If the killing was a rash act of the moment. A flash of temper, perhaps. Then the killer might not have considered such things a and it was merely a matter of luck that her ladys.h.i.+p had chosen to take no exercise that day.'

'But it was no impulse of the moment, Mr Lomax. It cannot have been. It was carefully planned to coincide with the ringing of the dinner bell.'

He sighed deeply. 'Your reasoning, as I have observed before, is very astute a and quite without mercy.'

'I am very sorry.'

'No, there is no need...' he began with a heavy sigh, and then stopped and sat for several minutes staring into the fire. 'And why,' he asked at last, 'do you believe Miss Wallis wished to meet her ladys.h.i.+p?'

'I think we both know the answer to that, Mr Lomax. Miss Wallis was housekeeper in an establishment set up for Mr Montague at Hopton Cresswell, was she not?'

His head jerked up sharply. His eyes were bright and his narrow cheeks slightly red with the heat of the fire. He watched her rather fearfully, as if trying to gauge how much she knew.

'I am right, am I not?' she said.

'Yes,' he said quietly at last, 'you are right. She was housekeeper to Mr Montague at Tudor House near Hopton Cresswell.'

'And, forgive me for asking, but one of your duties has been to oversee that establishment, has it not?'

He nodded.

'But there is something about Miss Wallis which I think perhaps you do not know, Mr Lomax.' Dido avoided his eyes and looked down at her own hands folded in her lap. 'She was expecting a child.'

'How do you know that?'

Dido explained about the kitchen maid and the blue gown while he held one hand to his head and gazed at her in bewilderment.

'Again I shall have to believe you,' he said with a weak smile, 'for we seem to have strayed once more into the difficult area of women's dress.'

'I am telling the truth, I a.s.sure you. And I am sure you will agree that it explains a great deal.'

There was a long silence. The clock on the mantelshelf ticked ponderously. The little dog sighed and stretched herself across the hearth. Lomax sat with his hands shading his eyes, almost as if he wished to hide his thoughts from his companion.

'And you believe,' he said at last, without raising his head or looking at her. 'You believe that Richard Montague was the father of her child?'

'Yes, I do.'

He sighed more deeply and pa.s.sed his hand across his face again, almost as if her answer was a relief to him.

'I believe that this liaison was the cause of Mr Montague leaving Belsfield,' continued Dido. 'And I believe that the young woman came here to plead her cause with her ladys.h.i.+p. Perhaps she intended to confide in her about the expected child.'

There was another long silence in which faint laughter from the drawing room could be heard. Eventually, Lomax raised his head and looked very earnestly at her. He opened his mouth to speak then seemed to think better of it.

'There is something you wish to say?' she asked.

'No,' he said uncomfortably. 'It is nothing. Nothing that ought to be said.'

'But I think it should be said. Pardon me, Mr Lomax, but I believe you were going to object that a natural child is no cause for murder.'

He hesitated. 'Well, of course it is very shocking,' he said, 'but...'

'But?'

'But, Miss Kent, we are not inhabiting the pages of a novel...' He smiled and shrugged.

'No, of course we are not,' she said briskly. 'And I quite agree with you that a sharp reprimand from Sir Edgar to his son, and a generous settlement on the woman would be more in keeping with the manners of the modern world.'

'You are a remarkable woman!' he said with a much broader smile.

'Thank you for the compliment, Mr Lomax. But I do not think I am unusual in understanding the ways of the world rather better than men expect me to.' She sighed. 'But, you see, in this case, worldly wisdom has been confusing me. From the very beginning I have been blinded by it!'

'I do not think I understand you now.'

'All along I have thought myself too clever to be taken in by such a simple explanation of the killing a or of Mr Montague's sudden disappearance. There must be more to it, I have reasoned; there must be a great deal which I was overlooking. And then yesterday, Miss Sophia said something to me which made me understand that one small detail could change everything.' She stopped and shook her head in an effort to make her thoughts a and her words a more lucid. 'I should have understood. You see I have suspected from the very beginning that Mr Pollard is a clergyman.'

'I am sorry. What are you talking about?'

'Marriage, Mr Lomax. Marriage. Yesterday Miss Sophia said, "Marriage is so very final. It changes everything." And then I saw that if Mr Montague had been persuaded into a secret marriage with his lover; if the child she was expecting was, in fact, legitimate a the future heir of Belsfield a then that would indeed change everything. And provide a motive for murder...'

She stopped. Mr Lomax was holding up his hand and looking down at the dog, who had raised her head with a little whine and was now padding towards the door. Beyond the clicking of her claws on the floorboards, they heard footsteps hurrying away across the hall.

Lomax leapt up and covered the distance to the door in two long strides. He threw it open, but the hall beyond was empty.

'Do you suppose that we were overheard?' asked Dido anxiously.

'I sincerely hope not,' he said.

Chapter Twenty-One.

...Well, like a heroine in a horrid novel, I have taken the precaution of pus.h.i.+ng a linen chest against my door tonight. Except that I had to remove it just now when Jack came to bring my chocolate a which is a difficulty that I do not recall any young lady in a novel ever having.

It seems such a very foolish measure to take and even as I was pus.h.i.+ng and tugging it across the carpet I was half laughing at myself. And yet the fact remains, Eliza, that someone in this house would seem to be a murderer a and that someone may have overheard my suspicions.

Oh, Eliza, I hardly know what to do next. Though one thing I am quite determined upon. Tomorrow I must persuade Catherine to break her engagement and leave Belsfield. It must be done and reluctant though I am to tell Catherine what I have discovered, I am yet determined to tell her as much as is necessary to make her abandon all connection with the family of Montague. So look for us at Badleigh within these next few days.

Though I confess that, for myself, I shall be extremely sorry to leave the place with so many questions still unanswered.

Was it Sir Edgar or his wife who went to that fateful appointment in the shrubbery? Will it ever be possible to discover exactly what happened?

And then there are two points on which I most particularly wish to be satisfied. Firstly: how could the murderer have walked armed across the grounds of Belsfield without anyone remarking upon the fact? And secondly: how did Mr Pollard contrive to convey his message at the ball without speaking a word?

Dido laid down her pen with a sigh, rubbed at her weary eyes, and blew out her candle.

It distressed her that she must leave Belsfield with these questions unanswered. And that, of course, must be the reason why she found that she was so very reluctant to go. There could be no other cause. She could safely resign the pursuit of justice to Mr Lomax and, even if there were no positive danger in remaining, there would certainly be very unpleasant scenes enacted here soon, scenes which she had no wish to take part in. She ought to be glad to go...

Of course she would miss her conversations with Mr Lomax; he was a very pleasant companion. And it was unfortunate that once Catherine's engagement was broken there was little chance of her ever meeting with him again. But it was foolish to waste time sighing over that...

No, she told herself stoutly, if only she could answer those few lingering questions, then she would be very happy to return to Badleigh. Very happy indeed.

The little room was full of shadows, and the dark bed-hangings and the little old witch shape of her cloak and bonnet on the door reminded her of her first night at Belsfield, when she had sat here beside her fire, dreading what the next day's investigations might produce.

It was about two hours after midnight and she was tired, worn out with the agitation and shocks of the day. She could not summon the strength, or the determination, to get herself into bed. She watched the firelight slide across the threadbare rug, her writing desk, the tray with her silver chocolate jug and the cup with its dark dregs, and she turned the two questions over in her mind. She could find no answers a and yet she was sure that they were there, somewhere within her reach.

The fire burnt low. She was on the very edge of sleep now and the questions began to form a kind of rhythm in her head until they seemed almost like a litany repeated in church. How can a gun be carried without it being seen? How can a man speak without opening his mouth? How can a gun...

The scene about her was growing indistinct, the shadows of the curtains seeming to swallow up the writing desk as her eyes flickered and closed...

She was sitting on the green bench in the park, looking across the long shadows of trees to the ploughman and his wheeling cloud of gulls.

'I like this spot,' said a voice beside her. 'I believe it commands the best view on the estate.'

She turned towards the speaker and saw, not Mr Lomax as she had expected, but Sir Edgar Montague. He was standing, feet planted well apart on the short gra.s.s, under the broad canopy of a great tree. There was a half smile on his face and he was gazing out over the park with all the pride of owners.h.i.+p; completely in control of everything he saw. And he had the symbols of his status with him a the servile dog and, carried negligently under his arm, the gun...

Dido woke. She sat for some time staring into the grey ash and red glow of her fire; her mind was suddenly wide awake and working very hard.

Yes, of course. The picture. The answers were all there in the picture. How stupid she had been! But she had not wanted to look for the answers because they would involve her in calculations which were particularly distasteful to her.

But now she must face those calculations. There was no escaping from them. And the first thing to be done was to look again at the painting.

Without allowing herself time to think further about it, she took a taper from the box on the mantelshelf and relit her candle from the fire. Then she pushed the chest away from the door, turned the lock and stepped out of her room.

The pa.s.sage was narrow and very dark. She stood still for a moment, hardly daring to breathe and listening hard. There was an occasional creaking sound, either from beds, or else from settling floorboards; and somewhere not far away, someone was snoring loudly. Beyond the little circle of light that her candle threw upon the plaster walls and old, uneven floorboards, there was utter blackness. Her courage almost failed her and she very nearly turned back. But that would be foolish. There was nothing to be afraid of in a dark house, she told herself firmly. And she crept along the pa.s.sage, one hand holding her candle high and the other just brus.h.i.+ng the wall.

This pa.s.sage took her down the side of the East wing to a little lobby and three steps which connected it with the Great Gallery at the front of the house, and, as she tiptoed down the steps, she saw that there was more light in the gallery. The big windows at the end admitted long rectangles of moonlight, which fell over the window seat and the highly polished, honey-coloured floor and onto one wall, cutting across the face of a dark, cracked Sir Edgar with a wheel ruff and a pointed chin.

As she pa.s.sed, she could not but think that his eyes had turned to follow her, and, as the candle's light fell on each of his companions in turn, she felt that they, too, were watching her progress with interest. The boards creaked alarmingly beneath her feet and she expected at any moment to be confronted by the butler in his nights.h.i.+rt, armed with a cudgel and intent upon defending his master's property from burglary.

Her heart was beating so hard when she reached the end of the gallery that the light in her hand was shaking. She stopped and listened at the head of the stairs. And very faintly, from one of the best chambers on the landing below, she heard the sound of hurried footsteps. Carefully setting her own candle down upon the floor, she leant over the banister, but she could discern no light below her. She stood for several moments with the cold polished rail beneath her hands, listening so intently that she scarcely dared to draw breath. There was the sound of a door opening, the faint gleam of a candle's light flickered across the white wall of the stairwell, then there were more footsteps. A second door opened and the light was gone.

All was quiet again in the big old house. There was nothing now but the faint creaking of ancient floors and, very faint and distant, the same spluttering snore. Satisfied that she had not been detected, Dido took up her candle and turned into the dark pa.s.sage in which was hidden the painting of Sir Edgar and his domain.

By candlelight it seemed larger than ever and it was not easy to study. The candle would light only a fragment of it at a time and the unsteady beam s.h.i.+mmered distractingly over the surface of the oil-paint. But there was Sir Edgar, just as she had recalled him in her dream: proud and self-important with his dog and his wife... And with his gun slung easily and negligently upon his arm as if it were a natural part of him.

She understood now.

How can a gun be carried without being seen?

The answer was plain. A gun could be carried by the master of the estate without anyone remarking upon it. They were so used to seeing it there upon his arm as he strode about the place that they would not think it worth mentioning. It was simply a mark of his status. A kind of symbol of that power of life and death that he had over every creature within his domain.

No one had thought to say that they had seen Sir Edgar walking about at three o'clock in the afternoon with a gun, because they were so used to seeing it.