“Or someone could have entered her room during the night and simply exchanged samples. Well, you can eliminate James—he chose to spend the night over in the Dower House where his mother lives. He wasn’t creeping about the corridors with his pockets full of rotting livers.”

“I had wondered why he should choose that particular night to distance himself from his wife’s room,” Joe invited a comment. “Sounds very like someone setting up an alibi to me.”

Again the challenge in her eye as she spoke: “You’re right. It was. But you have the wrong reason. It was a deliberate choice. To avert any suspicion of hanky-panky with an unaccompanied female guest. Me. You know what these large households are like for gossip. But you can eliminate me as well. I never left the Old Nursery where the witch had stuck me for the night. It’s right over the other side. I would have had to walk miles of corridor and probably got lost en route looking for Lavinia’s room. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Are you losing your grip, Joe? Her maid did it. Quiet little thing but well-spoken. Her name’s Grace. Why don’t you just ask her? It was probably a half-baked reprisal for some ticking-off, some fancied slight or, at best, a hideous misunderstanding. Being maid to Lavinia would give anyone a hundred reasons for wishing her ill. She’s done the world a favour—don’t be hard on her. Put on your stern face and she’ll come clean. Then we can all go back to London and get on with our lives.”

Joe stared at Dorcas as though seeing her for the first time. Was this the girl he’d worried about for seven years? His charge? His delightful but tormenting responsibility? A pawn, casually pushing another pawn forward into the firing line? The young woman facing him was confident, argumentative and unyielding. She needed no help. She was flying by herself. She was leaving Joe behind, floundering in her slipstream, without a backward glance.

“And you can produce independent confirmation of your whereabouts during the crucial hours?” he asked with deceptive mildness.

A flash of scorn for his policeman’s phrasing cut him to the quick.

“I wouldn’t like to think I had to,” she said, turning away from him dismissively.

“Protecting Master Alex? Or is he protecting you? What sort of arrangement have you come to, the pair of you?”

“How on earth do you …?”

“I’m a detective. I’ve been detecting. I know that you spent the night of the murder holed up in the Old Nursery with Alexander. He came along at one o’clock, straight after snooker, still in evening dress, seeking admittance. You let him in and locked the door. Read him a bedtime story perhaps and he emerged at dawn to creep back to his own quarters.”

“Joe, you know too much and understand too little. Leave me now.”

“I understand everything. Well, nearly everything. I can’t be certain which particular story you told him but everything else.”

Dorcas looked up at him, shocked eyes seeking to read his mind.

“Young Alex was confused,” Joe went on constructing his theory, “at odds with his surroundings, targeted by older, successful—and critical—male guests, falling over themselves to give him the fatherly advice he so clearly lacked. It can’t be easy being the heir-but-one. The spare wheel, the afterthought who shows himself unsuited to modern life. Alex did what he’s been known to do before when squashed and belittled. He stumbled along here to seek the safety of his familiar old nursery, his own bed, the one he used before life got too much for him. Sadly there was no longer a comforting nanny in residence to make it all better. Just a fellow victim of the Truelove arrogance. He must have been quite surprised on this occasion to find you occupying it, thanks to a spiteful ploy of Lavinia’s.”

“You’re guessing all this.”

“No. Knowledge of you and knowledge of him helps me to stitch together more solid evidence from Rose, the upper floor maid. Very observant girl. She noticed that both beds had been slept in. Your guest bed and the nursery bed. Alex’s old bed had golden hairs on the pillow. Yours had dark ones. There was no trace of any other … um … intimacy, as far as Rosie could make out, and she’s got a seeing eye for these things.”

The anger was heating in Dorcas’s eyes. She curled her fingers into fists and Joe feared she might launch herself at him in fury. With a mighty effort at control she finally spoke. “It was ‘The Happy Prince,’ ” she said.

“What was that?”

“The story he asked me to read him. By Oscar Wilde. Since we’re dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s and attributing the hairs. Alex sees himself as the young hero. It all ends in death and disaster. I’m sure you know it.”

“There once was the statue of a rich young prince who had never experienced true happiness?” Joe remembered. “That one? Not one of my favourites.”

“Yes. The Prince asked a passing swallow to take the ruby from his sword hilt, the sapphires from his eyes and the gold-leaf from his body to give to the poor.”

“We all have our fantasies,” Joe said, uncertainly. “I was Rob Roy for many a year.”

“Well it’s more than a fantasy for Alex. He’s giving up everything to go off, doubtless in sandals, begging bowl in hand, to Africa to try to do some good or find his paradise.”

“Oh, dear. That may not be the best thing for Africa. Couldn’t you talk him out of it?”

“Arrogant toss pot! I encouraged him. There’s nothing for him here in Suffolk!”

“Watch it, Dorcas! The helpful swallow died too, as far as I remember.”

“Leave me now, Joe. I’ll talk to you when we’re back in Surrey. If I can go on dodging your suspicions and you let me get that far, that is.”

Unsure of himself and doubly unsure of her, Joe started to do as she asked. He paused at the door and looked back at her. Left to herself, she suddenly seemed small and dejected, a girl unhappy and out of place. Still his responsibility? No longer, he felt. It hadn’t escaped him—her frequent and unconscious use of “we” instead of “I.” But, now, the second person making up the pronoun was not Joe Sandilands. It was to Truelove she looked for support; his needs were paramount. Joe stopped his thoughts right there. If the details he’d gleaned from his examination of the household and estate records in Mrs. Bolton’s office had told him anything, it had sounded a warning that Dorcas must be carried, kicking and screaming if necessary, out of Truelove’s orbit as soon as he could manage it. Joe couldn’t leave her in this troubled house surrounded by these scheming people. He knew what he had to say.

“I’ve got a car on hand, Dorcas. Why don’t we grab our bags and just make a run for it? We could be back at Lydia’s in time for supper.” He was about to add a joking reference to cherry ice cream but remembered Adelaide Hartest’s advice to avoid nostalgia. “I don’t like or trust any of these people you’re involved with. I believe they wish you harm and I’m going to take you, by the scruff of your neck if you make a fuss, right away from here. We could do what I know you’ve always wanted to do—chase about the Continent hunting down your French family. We can hire an open-topped car and be on the road to Provence in no time.” Too late, he realised that it was nostalgia that had him by the throat and was shaking desperate clichés from him. “The warm south, pitchers of red wine, cicadas, violet evening skies, battlements if you hanker for them still—I know just the battlements. We’ll meet up with your painter friends … fast-talking rogues—poseurs the lot of them—but entertaining poseurs. They make you laugh, Dorcas. It’s a long time since I heard you laugh. A smile would be a start …”

A smile would have triggered it. Even a weak and watery one would have justified a lunge towards her. He’d have sunk to his knees and seized her hands. He’d have thrown away his uncertainty, his reserve, and blurted that this time they would travel with a marriage license and to hell with everything else.