“Miss Preston will support me,” Mr. Markos said, “won’t you?”

Verity pulled herself together and said the picture was a triumph.

Alleyn said: “The painter will be delighted,” and to all of them: “The gentlemen of the press look like heading this way. I suggest it might be as well if Miss Foster escaped.”

“Yes, of course,” said Gideon quickly. “Darling, let’s go to the car. Quick.”

But a stillness had fallen on the people who remained at the scene. Verity turned and saw that Dr. Schramm had come out into the sunshine. The reporters fastened on him.

A handsome car was parked nearby. Verity thought: that’s got to be his car. He’ll have to come past us to get to it. We can’t break up and bolt.

He said something — “No comment,” Verity supposed — to the press and walked briskly toward the group. As he passed them he lifted his hat. “Good morning, Verity,” he said. “Hullo, Markos, how are you? Morning, Superintendent.” He paused, looked at Prunella, gave a little bow and continued on his way. It had been well done, Verity thought, if you had the nerve to do it, and she was filled with a kind of anger that he had included her in his performance.

Mr. Markos said: “We all of us make mistakes. Come along, children.”

Verity, left with Alleyn, supposed Mr. Markos had referred to his dinner-party.

“I must be off,” she said. She thought: Death creates social contretemps. One doesn’t say: “See you on Thursday” when the meeting will be at a funeral.

Her car was next to Alleyn’s and he walked beside her. Dr. Schramm drove past them and lifted a gloved hand as he did so.

“That child’s surviving all this pretty well, isn’t she?” Alleyn asked. “On the whole, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. I think she is. She’s sustained by her engagement.”

“To young Markos? Yes. And by her godmama, too, one suspects?”

“Me! Not at all. Or anyway, not as much as I’d like.”

He grunted companionably, opened her car door for her and stood by while she fastened her safety belt. She was about to say goodbye but changed her mind. “Mr. Alleyn,” she said, “I gather that probate has been granted or passed or whatever it is? On the second Will?”

“It’s not a fait accompli but it will be. Unless, of course, she made yet another and later one, which doesn’t seem likely. Would it be safe to tell you something in confidence?”

Verity, surprised, said: “I don’t break confidences but if it’s anything that I would want to speak about to Prunella, you’d better not tell me.”

“I don’t think you would want to but I’d make an exception of Prunella. Dr. Schramm and Mrs. Foster were engaged to be married.”

In the silence that she was unable to break Verity thought that it really was not so very surprising, this information. There was even a kind of logic about it. Given Syb. And given Basil Schramm.

Alleyn said: “Rather staggering news, perhaps?”

“No, no,” she heard herself saying. “Not really. I’m just — trying to assimilate it. Why did you tell me?”

“Partly because I thought there was a chance that she might have confided it to you that afternoon but mostly because I had an idea it might be disagreeable for you to learn of it accidentally.”

“Will it be made known, then? Will he make it known?”

“Well,” said Alleyn, “I’m sure. If it’s anything to go by, he did tell me.”

“I suppose it explains the Will?”

“That’s the general idea, of course.”

Verity heard herself say: “Poor Syb.” And then: “I hope it doesn’t come out. Because of Prue.”

“Would she mind so much?”

“Oh, I think so. Don’t you? The young mind terribly if they believe their parents have made asses of themselves.”

“And would any woman engaging herself to Dr. Schramm make an ass of herself?”

“Yes,” said Verity. “She would. I did.”

ii

When Alleyn had gone Verity sat inert in her car and wondered what had possessed her to tell him something that for twenty-odd years she had told nobody. A policeman! More than that, a policeman who must, the way things had gone, take a keen professional interest in Basil Schramm, might even — no, almost certainly did — think of him as a “Suspect.” And she turned cold when she forced herself to complete the sequence — a suspect in what might turn out to be a case of foul play: of — very well, then, use the terrible soft word — of murder.

He had not followed up her statement or pressed her with questions nor, indeed, did he seem to be greatly interested. He merely said: “Did you? Sickening for you,” made one or two remarks of no particular significance and said goodbye. He drove off with a large companion who could not be anything that was not constabular. Mr. Rattisbon, too, looking gravely preoccupied, entered his own elderly car and quitted the scene.

Still Verity remained, miserably inert. One or two locals sauntered off. The Vicar and Jim Jobbin, who was part-time sexton, came out of the church and surveyed the weathered company of headstones. The Vicar pointed to the right and they made off in that direction, round the church. Verity knew, with a jolt, that they discussed the making of a grave. Sybil’s remotest Passcoigne forebears lay in the vault but there was a family plot among the trees beyond the south transept.

Then she saw that Bruce Gardener, in his Harris tweed suit, had come out of the hall and was climbing up the steps to the church. He followed the Vicar and Jim Jobbin and disappeared. Verity had noticed him at the inquest. He had sat at the back, taller than his neighbours, upright, with his gardener’s hands on his thighs, very decorous and solemn. She thought that perhaps he wanted to ask about the funeral, about flowers from Quintern Place, it might be. If so, that was nice of Bruce. She herself, she thought, must offer to do something about flowers. She would wait a little longer and speak to the Vicar,

“Good morning,” said Claude Carter, leaning on the passenger’s door.

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. She had been looking out of the driver’s window and he must have come up from behind the car on her blind side.

“Sorry,” he said, and grinned. “Made you jump, did I?”

“Yes.”

“My mistake. I just wondered if I might cadge a lift to the turn-off. If you’re going home, that is.”

There was nothing she wanted less but she said yes, if he didn’t mind waiting while she went up to the church. He said he wasn’t in a hurry and got in. He had removed his vestigial beard, she noticed, and had his hair cut to a conservative length. He was tidily dressed and looked less hang-dog than usual There was even a hint of submerged jauntiness about him.

“Smoking allowed?” he asked.

She left him lighting his cigarette in a guarded manner as if he was afraid someone would snatch it out of his mouth.

At the head of the steps she met the Vicar returning with Bruce and Jim. To her surprise Jim, a bald man with a loud voice, was now bent double. He was hovered over by the Vicar.

“It’s a fair bugger,” he shouted. “Comes over you like a bloody thunderclap. Stooping down to pull up them bloody teazles and now look at me. Should of minded me own business.”

“Yes, well: jolly bad luck,” said the Vicar. “Oh. Hullo, Miss Preston. We’re in trouble as you see. Jim’s smitten with lumbago.”

“Will he be able to negotiate the descent?” Bruce speculated anxiously. “That’s what I ask myself. Awa’ wi ye, man, and let us handle you doon the steps.”

“No, you don’t. I’ll handle myself if left to myself, won’t I?”

“Jim!” said Verity, “what a bore for you. I’ll drive you home.”

“No, ta all the same, Miss Preston. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. I’m best left to manage myself and if you’ll excuse me that’s what I’ll do. I’ll use the handrail. Only,” he added with a sudden, shout of agony, “I’d be obliged if I wasn’t watched.”