'"We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth." It's Voltaire, isn't it? But I was taught a different pronunciation.'

As soon as the words were out she was ashamed. But to her surprise his only response was a bellow of laughter.

'I bet you were, Miss Gray. I bet you were. I taught myself with a primer and a key to phonetics. But think about it. There's no better motto for a detective, and that includes female private eyes who would like to help the police but still be able to lie abed with a good conscience. It can't be done, Miss Gray. It can't be done.'

She didn't reply. After a moment, Grogan said:

'What surprises me a little, Miss Gray, is how much you noticed and how carefully when you found the body. Most people, and not only young women, would have been in a state of shock.'

Cordelia thought that he was entitled to the truth, or as much as she herself understood of it.

'I know. That has surprised me too. I think what happened was that I couldn't bear to feel too much emotion. It was so horrible that it was almost unreal. My intellect took over and made it into a kind of detective puzzle because, if I hadn't concentrated on detaching myself from the horror, examining the room, noticing little things like the lipstick smear on the cup, it would have been unbearable. Perhaps that's how doctors feel at the scene of an accident. You have to keep your mind on procedures and techniques because, otherwise, you might realize that what you have lying there is a human being.'

Sergeant Buckley said quietly:

'It's how a policeman trains himself to behave at the scene of an accident. Or a murder.'

Without taking his eyes from Cordelia, Grogan said:

'You find that credible then, do you Sergeant?' 'Yes, sir.'

Fear sharpens perception as well as the senses. Glancing at Sergeant Buckley's handsome, rather heavy face, at the controlled self-satisfied smile, Cordelia doubted whether he had ever in his life needed such an expedient against pain and wondered whether he was trying to signal his sympathy or was colluding with his superior in some pre-arranged interrogatory ploy. The Chief Inspector said:

'And what exactly did your intellect deduce when it had so conveniently taken over from your emotions?'

'The obvious things: that the curtains had been drawn although they weren't when I left, that the jewel box was missing, that the tea had been drunk. And I thought it odd that Miss Lisle had cleaned the make-up from her face but that there was a lipstick stain on the cup. That surprised me. I think she has – she had -sensitive lips and used a creamy lipstick which does smear easily. So why hadn't it come off when she ate her lunch? It looked as if she must have made up her lips again before she drank her tea. But if so, why had she taken off the rest of her make-up? The balls of stained cotton wool were all over the dressing-table top. And I noticed that there wasn't as much blood as one would expect from a head wound. I thought it possible that she might have been killed some other way and the injuries to her face made afterwards. And I was puzzled about the pads over her eyes. They must have been put there after death. I mean, it wouldn't be possible for them to stay so neatly in place while her face was being destroyed.'

After she had finished there was a long silence. Then Grogan said, his voice expressionless:

'You're sitting on the wrong side of the desk, Miss Gray.'

Cordelia waited. Then she said, hoping that she wasn't doing more harm than good:

'There's one thing more I ought to tell you. I know that Sir George can't have killed his wife. I'm sure that you wouldn't suspect him, anyway, but there is something you should know. When he first arrived in the bedroom and I blurted out how sorry I was he looked at me with a kind of amazed horror. I realized that he thought for a moment that I'd killed her, that I was confessing.' 'And you weren't?'

'Not to murder. Only to failure to do what I was here for.'

He changed the tack of his questioning again.

'Let's go back to the Friday night, the time when you were with Miss Lisle in her room and she showed you the secret drawer in her jewel box. That review of the Rattigan play. Are you sure that that is what it in fact was?'

'Quite sure.'

'The paper wasn't a document or a letter.'

'It was a newspaper cutting. And I read the headline.'

'And at no time did your client – and she was your client, remember – ever give you the least indication that she knew or suspected who it was threatening her?'

'No, never.'

'And she had no enemies as far as you know.' 'None that she told me of.'

'And you yourself can throw no light on why and by whom she was killed?' 'No.'

It must, she thought, feel like this to be in the witness box, the careful questions, the even more careful answers, the longing to be released.

He said:

'Thank you, Miss Gray. You've been helpful. Not, perhaps, as helpful as I'd hoped. But helpful. And it's early days yet. We shall be talking again.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

After Cordelia had left, Grogan relaxed in his chair: 'Well, what do you think of her?'

Buckley hesitated, uncertain whether his chief wanted an assessment of the last interviewee as a woman or as a suspect. He said cautiously:

'She's attractive. Like a cat.' Since this evoked no immediate response he added: 'Self-contained and dignified.'

He was rather pleased with the description. It had, he thought, a certain cleverness while committing him to nothing. Grogan began doodling on the blank sheet in front of him, a complicated mathematical design of triangles, squares and precisely interlacing circles spread over the page and reminding Buckley of the more obscure of his school geometry problems. He found it difficult not to fix his eyes obsessively on isosceles triangles and bisecting arcs. He said:

'Do you think she did it, sir?'

Grogan began filling in his design.

'If she did, it was during those fifty-odd minutes when she claims she was taking the sun on the bottom step of the terrace, conveniently out of sight and sound. She had time and opportunity. We've only her word that she locked her bedroom door or that Miss Lisle actually locked hers. And even if both doors and the communicating one were locked, Gray is probably the only person Lisle would have let in. She knew where the marble was kept. She was up and about early this morning when Gorringe first discovered that it was missing. She has a locked cabinet in her room where she could have kept it safely hidden. And we know that the final message, like the one typed on the back of the woodcut, was typed on Gorringe's machine. Gray can type and she had access to the business room where it's kept. She's intelligent, and she can keep her head even when I'm trying to needle her into losing it. If she did have a hand in it, my guess is that it was as Ralston's accomplice. His explanation of why she was called in sounded contrived. Did you notice how she and Ralston gave almost identical accounts of his visit to Kingly Street, what he said, what she said? It was so neat it could have been rehearsed. It probably was.'

But Buckley could think of an objection and he voiced it.

'Sir George was a soldier. He's used to getting his facts right. And she has a good memory, particularly for important events. And that visit was important. He probably paid well, and it could have led to other jobs. The fact that they gave the same account, got the details right, speaks as much for innocence as guilt.'

'According to both of them, that's the first time they met. If they are conspirators, they must have got together before then. Whatever there is between them, it shouldn't be too difficult to grub it out.'

'They're an unlikely couple. I mean, it's difficult to see what they have in common.'