'Here, you'd better put these back where you found them. We mustn't leave them lying around for the police to find.'

She was gone only a few seconds. When she returned, Cordelia said:

'Now we must act the rest just as it would have happened. You meet me as I come out of the room. I have been with Sir Ronald about two minutes. You put down your glass of whisky on the hall table and walk with me to the front door. You say – what would you say?'

'Has he paid you?'

'No, I'm to come in the morning for my money. I'm sorry it wasn't a success. I've told Sir Ronald that I don't want to go on with the case.'

'That's your concern, Miss Gray. It was a foolish business in the first place.'

They were walking out of the front door now. Suddenly Miss Learning turned to Cordelia and said urgently and in her normal voice:

'There's one thing you had better know. It was I who found Mark first and faked the suicide. He'd rung me earlier in the day and asked me to call. I couldn't get away until after nine because of Lunn. I didn't want him to be suspicious.'

'But didn't it occur to you when you found Mark that there might be something odd about the death? The door was unlocked although the curtains were drawn. The lipstick was missing.'

'I suspected nothing until tonight when I stood in the shadows and heard you talking. We're all sexually sophisticated these days. I believed what I saw. It was all horror but I knew what I had to do. I worked quickly, terrified that someone would come. I cleaned his face with my handkerchief dampened with water from the kitchen sink. It seemed that the lipstick would never come off. I undressed him and pulled on his jeans which had been thrown over the back of a chair. I didn't wait to put on his shoes, that didn't seem important. Typing the note was the worst part. I knew that he would have his Blake with him somewhere in the cottage and that the passage I chose might be more convincing than an ordinary suicide note. The clattering of the typewriter keys sounded unnaturally loud in the quietness; I was terrified that someone would hear. He had been keeping a kind of journal. There wasn't time to read it but I burnt the typescript in the sitting-room grate. Last of all, I bundled up the clothes and the pictures and brought them back here to be burnt in the lab incinerator.'

'You dropped one of the pictures in the garden. And you didn't quite succeed in cleaning the lipstick from his face.'

'So that's how you guessed?'

Cordelia didn't reply immediately. Whatever happened she must keep Isabelle de Lasterie out of the case.

'I wasn't sure if it was you who had been there first but I thought it must have been. There were four things. You didn't want me to investigate Mark's death; you read English at Cambridge and could have known where to find that Blake quotation; you are an experienced typist and I didn't think that the note had been typed by an amateur despite the late attempt to make it look like Mark's work; when I was first at Garforth House and asked about the suicide note you spoke the whole of the Blake quotation; the typed version was ten words short. I first noticed that when I visited the police station and was shown the note. It pointed direct to you. That was the strongest evidence I had.'

They had reached the car now and paused together. Cordelia said:

'We mustn't waste any more time before ringing the police. Someone may have heard the shot.'

'It's not likely. We're some distance from the village. Do we hear it now?'

'Yes. We hear it now.' There was a second's pause then Cordelia said:

'What was that? It sounded like a shot.'

'It couldn't have been. It was probably a car backfiring.'

Miss Learning spoke like a bad actress, the words were stilted, unconvincing. But she spoke them; she would remember them.

'But there isn't a car passing. And it came from the house.'

They glanced at each other, then ran back together through the open door into the hall. Miss Learning paused for a moment and looked Cordelia in the face before she opened the study door. Cordelia came in behind her. Miss Learning said:

'He's been shot! I'd better phone the police.'

Cordelia said:

'You wouldn't say that! Don't ever think like that! You'd go up to the body first and then you'd say:

"He's shot himself. I'd better phone the police."

Miss Learning looked unemotionally at her lover's body, then glanced round the room. Forgetting her role, she asked:

'What have you done in here? What about fingerprints?'

'Never mind. I've looked after that. All you have to remember is that you didn't know I had a gun when I first came to Garforth House; you didn't know Sir Ronald took it from me. You haven't seen that gun until this moment. When I arrived tonight you showed me into the study and met me again when I came out two minutes later. We walked together to the car and spoke as we have just spoken. We heard the shot. We did what we have just done. Forget everything else that has happened. When they question you, don't embroider, don't invent, don't be afraid to say you can't remember. And now – ring the Cambridge police.'

Three minutes later they were standing together at the open door waiting for the police to arrive. Miss Learning said:

'We mustn't talk together once they're here. And, afterwards, we mustn't meet or show any particular interest in each other. They'll know that this can't be murder unless we two are in it together. And why should we conspire together when we've only met once before, when we don't even like each other?'

She was right, thought Cordelia. They didn't even like each other. She didn't really care if Elizabeth Learning went to prison; she did care if Mark's mother went to prison. She cared, too, that the truth of his death should never be known. The strength of that determination struck her as irrational. It could make no difference to him now and he wasn't a boy who had cared over much what people thought of him. But Ronald Callender had desecrated his body after death; had planned to make him an object, at worse of contempt, at best of pity. She had set her face against Ronald Callender. She hadn't wanted him to die; wouldn't have been capable herself of pressing the trigger. But he was dead and she couldn't feel regret, nor could she be an instrument of retribution for his murderer. It was expedient, no more than that, that Miss Learning shouldn't be punished. Gazing out into the summer night and waiting for the sound of the police cars, Cordelia accepted once and for all the enormity and the justification of what she had done and was still planning to do. She was never afterwards to feel the least tinge of regret or of remorse.

Miss Learning said:

'There are things you probably want to ask me, things I suppose you've a right to know. We can meet in King's College Chapel after Evensong on the first Sunday after the inquest. I'll go through the screen into the chancel, you stay in the nave. It will seem natural enough for us to meet by chance there, that is if we are both still free.'

Cordelia was interested to see that Miss Learning was taking charge again. She said:

'We shall be. If we keep our heads this can't go wrong.'

There was a moment's silence. Miss Learning said:

'They're taking their time. Surely they should be here by now?'

'They won't be much longer.'

Miss Learning suddenly laughed and said with revealing, bitterness:

'What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men.'

So they waited quietly together. They heard the approaching cars before the headlamps swept over the drive, illuminating every pebble, picking out the small plants at the edge of the beds, bathing the blue haze of the wisteria with light, dazzling the watchers' eyes. Then the lights were dimmed as the cars rocked gently to a stop in front of the house. Dark shapes emerged and came unhurriedly Wit resolutely forward. The hall was suddenly filled with large, calm men, some in plain clothes. Cordelia effaced herself against the wall and it was Miss Learning who stepped forward, spoke to them in a low voice and led them into the study.