“Has anyone ascertained whether Miss Craven arrived at her destination at Newcastle?”

Griffiths drew his brows together in thought.

“I did not see any necessity for such a thing,” he answered. “I don’t quite follow you. What do you mean to imply?”

“Oh, nothing. I don’t suppose it matters much: it might have been interesting as a side-issue.” She broke off for a moment, then added:

“Now tell me a little about the butler, the man whose wages were cut down to increase Sandy ’s pay.”

“Old John Hales? He’s a thoroughly worthy, respectable man; he was butler for five or six years to Mr. Craven’s brother, when he was master of Troyte’s Hill, and then took duty under this Mr. Craven. There’s no ground for suspicion in that quarter. Hales’ exclamation when he heard of the murder is quite enough to stamp him as an innocent man: ”Serve the old idiot right,“ he cried: ‘I couldn’t pump up a tear for him if I tried for a month of Sundays!” Now I take it, Miss Brooke, a guilty man wouldn’t dare make such a speech as that!“

“You think not?”

Griffiths stared at her. “I’m a little disappointed in her,” he thought. “I’m afraid her powers have been slightly exaggerated if she can’t see such a straightforward thing as that.”

Aloud he said, a little sharply. “Well, I don’t stand alone in my thinking. No one yet has breathed a word against Hales, and if they did I’ve no doubt he could prove an alibi without any trouble, for he lives in the house, and everyone has a good word for him.”

“I suppose Sandy ’s lodge has been put into order by this time?”

“Yes; after the inquest, and when all possible evidence had been taken, everything was put straight.”

“At the inquest it was stated that no marks of footsteps could be traced in any direction?”

“The long drought we’ve had would render such a thing impossible, let alone the fact that Sandy ’s lodge stands right on the gravelled drive, without flower-beds or grass borders of any sort around it. But look here, Miss Brooke, don’t you be wasting your time over the lodge and its surroundings. Every iota of fact on that matter has been gone through over and over again by me and my chief. What we want you to do is to go straight into the house and concentrate attention on Master Harry’s sick-room, and find out what’s going on there. What he did outside the house on the night of the 6th, I’ve no doubt I shall be able to find out for myself. Now, Miss Brooke, you’ve asked me no end of questions, to which I have replied as fully as it was in my power to do; will you be good enough to answer one question that I wish to put, as straightforwardly as I have answered yours? You have had fullest particulars given you of the condition of Sandy ’s room when the police entered it on the morning after the murder. No doubt, at the present moment, you can see it all in your mind’s eye – the bedstead on its side, the clock on its head, the bed-clothes half-way up the chimney, the little vases and ornaments walking in a straight line towards the door?”

Loveday bowed her head.

“Very well. Now will you be good enough to tell me what this scene of confusion recalls to your mind before anything else?”

“The room of an unpopular Oxford freshman after a raid upon it by under-grads.,” answered Loveday promptly.

Mr. Griffiths rubbed his hands.

“Quite so!” he ejaculated. “I see, after all, we are one at heart in this matter, in spite of a little surface disagreement of ideas. Depend upon it, by-and-bye, like the engineers tunnelling from different quarters under the Alps, we shall meet at the same point and shake hands. By-the-way, I have arranged for daily communication between us through the postboy who takes the letters to Troyte’s Hill. He is trustworthy, and any letter you give him for me will find its way into my hands within the hour.”

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when Loveday drove in through the park gates of Troyte’s Hill, past the lodge where old Sandy had met with his death. It was a pretty little cottage, covered with Virginia creeper and wild honeysuckle, and showing no outward sign of the tragedy that had been enacted within.

The park and pleasure-grounds of Troyte’s Hill were extensive, and the house itself was a somewhat imposing red brick structure, built, possibly, at the time when Dutch William’s taste had grown popular in the country. Its frontage presented a somewhat forlorn appearance, its centre windows – a square of eight – alone seeming to show signs of occupation. With the exception of two windows at the extreme end of the bedroom floor of the north wing, where, possibly, the invalid and his mother were located, and two windows at the extreme end of the ground floor of the south wing, which Loveday ascertained subsequently were those of Mr. Craven’s study, not a single window in either wing owned blind or curtain. The wings were extensive, and it was easy to understand that at the extreme end of the one the fever patient would be isolated from the rest of the household, and that at the extreme end of the other Mr. Craven could secure the quiet and freedom from interruption which, no doubt, were essential to the due prosecution of his philological studies.

Alike on the house and ill-kept grounds were present the stamp of the smallness of the income of the master and owner of the place. The terrace, which ran the length of the house in front, and on to which every window on the ground floor opened, was miserably out of repair: not a lintel or door-post, window-ledge or balcony but what seemed to cry aloud for the touch of the painter. “Pity me! I have seen better days,” Loveday could fancy written as a legend across the red-brick porch that gave entrance to the old house.

The butler, John Hales, admitted Loveday, shouldered her portmanteau and told her he would show her to her room. He was a tall, powerfully-built man, with a ruddy face and dogged expression of countenance. It was easy to understand that, off and on, there must have been many a sharp encounter between him and old Sandy. He treated Loveday in an easy, familiar fashion, evidently considering that an amanuensis took much the same rank as a nursery governess – that is to say, a little below a lady’s maid and a little above a house-maid.

“We’re short of hands, just now,” he said, in broad Cumberland dialect, as he led the way up the wide staircase. “Some of the lasses downstairs took fright at the fever and went home. Cook and I are single-handed, for Moggie, the only maid left, has been told off to wait on Madam and Master Harry. I hope you’re not afeared of fever?”

Loveday explained that she was not, and asked if the room at the extreme end of the north wing was the one assigned to “Madam and Master Harry.”

“Yes,” said the man, “it’s convenient for sick nursing; there’s a flight of stairs runs straight down from it to the kitchen quarters. We put all Madam wants at the foot of these stairs and Moggie comes down and fetches it. Moggie herself never enters the sick-room. I take it you’ll not be seeing Madam for many a day, yet awhile.”

“When shall I see Mr. Craven? At dinner tonight?”

“That’s what naebody could say,” answered Hales. “He may not come out of his study till past midnight; sometimes he sits there till two or three in the morning. Shouldn’t advise you to wait till he wants his dinner – better have a cup of tea and a chop sent up to you. Madam never waits for him at any meal.”

As he finished speaking he deposited the portmanteau outside one of the many doors opening into the gallery.

“This is Miss Craven’s room,” he went on; “cook and me thought you’d better have it, as it would want less getting ready than the other rooms, and work is work when there are so few hands to do it. Oh, my stars! I do declare there is cook putting it straight for you now.”

The last sentence was added as the opened door laid bare to view, the cook, with a duster in her hand, polishing a mirror; the bed had been made, it is true, but otherwise the room must have been much as Miss Craven left it, after a hurried packing up.