Lynley ignored the final reference, saying only, “And?”

Barbara knew what Lynley wanted, but she delayed a bit by focussing on the minor players in the drama, whose comings and goings Gowan had remembered in astonishing detail. Lady Stinhurst, clad in black, wandering aimlessly between drawing room, dining room, sitting room, and great hall until after midnight when her husband came from above stairs to fetch her; Jeremy Vinney finding excuses to follow Lady Stinhurst, murmuring questions which she steadfastly ignored; Joanna Ellacourt, storming down an upstairs corridor in a violent fit of temper after a loud argument with her husband; Irene Sinclair and Robert Gabriel closeting themselves in the library. The house had eventually fallen into relative calm at about half past twelve.

Barbara heard Lynley say with his usual perspicacity, “But that’s not all Gowan saw, I imagine.”

Her teeth pulled at the inside of her lower lip. “No, that’s not all. Later, after he’d gone to bed, he heard footsteps in the corridor outside his door. He’s right on the corner, where the lower northwest wing meets the great hall. He’s not certain of the time except that it was well after half past twelve. Close to one, he thinks. He was curious because of all the excitement in the evening. So he got out of bed, cracked his door, and listened.”

“And?”

“More footsteps. And then a door opened and closed.” Barbara wasn’t particularly eager to relate the rest of Gowan’s tale, and she knew her face reflected that reluctance. Nonetheless, she plodded forward and completed the story, relating how Gowan had left his room, gone to the end of the corridor, and peered out into the great hall. It was dark-he’d shut off the lights himself just minutes before-but the exterior estate lights managed to provide a faint illumination.

Barbara saw from the swift change of Lynley’s expression that he read what was coming. “He saw Davies-Jones,” he said.

“Yes. But he was coming out of the library, not the dining room where the dirks are, Inspector. He had a bottle. It must have been the cognac he took up to Helen.” She waited for Lynley to offer the inevitable, the conclusion she had already worked out for herself. A trip to pick up a dirk in the dining room was every bit as convenient as one to pick up cognac thirty feet away in the library. And always there remained the fact that Joy Sinclair’s hall door had been locked.

However, Lynley merely said, “What else?”

“Nothing. Davies-Jones went upstairs.”

Lynley nodded grimly. “Let’s do so ourselves.”

He led Barbara towards the back stairway. Narrow, uncarpeted, lit only by two unshaded bulbs, and entirely devoid of decoration, it would take them to the west wing of the house.

“What about Mary Agnes?” Lynley asked as they climbed.

“She didn’t hear a sound during the night according to the statement I had from her prior to this new Gabriel-twist. Just the wind, she said. But of course, she may well have heard that from Gabriel’s room, not her own. However, there was one curious item, and I think you need to hear it.” She waited until Lynley paused and turned on the stair above her. Near his left hand, a largish stain marred the wall, much the shape of Australia. It looked like a patch of damp. “Immediately after she found the body this morning, Mary Agnes went for Francesca Gerrard. They fetched Lord Stinhurst together. He went into Joy’s room, came out a moment later, and ordered Mary Agnes to go back to her own room and wait for Mrs. Gerrard to come for her.”

“I’m not certain I see your point, Sergeant.”

“My point is that Francesca Gerrard didn’t come back to fetch Mary Agnes from her room for the next twenty minutes. And only then did Lord Stinhurst tell Mary Agnes to begin waking the household and telling them to come to the drawing room. In the meantime, he placed some phone calls from Francesca’s office-it’s next to Mary Agnes’ bedroom, so she could hear his voice. And, Inspector, he received two calls as well.”

When Lynley didn’t react to this piece of information, Barbara felt her earlier irritation begin to bite. “Sir, you’ve not forgotten Lord Stinhurst, have you? You know who he is: the man who ought to be on his way to the police station right now for destruction of evidence, interfering with the police, and murder.”

“That’s a bit premature,” Lynley remarked.

His calm rubbed the sore of Barbara’s irritation.

“Is it?” she demanded. “And at what point did you make that fi ne decision?”

“I’ve heard nothing so far to convince me that Lord Stinhurst murdered Joy Sinclair.” Lynley’s voice was a model of patience. “But even if I thought that he might have done so, I’m not about to arrest a man on the strength of his having burned a stack of scripts.”

“What?” Barbara’s own voice rasped. “You’ve made your decision about Stinhurst already, haven’t you? Based on one conversation with a man who spent the fi rst ten years of his career on the bloody stage and no doubt turned in his finest performance right here tonight, explaining himself away to you! That’s rich, Inspector. Police work you can be proud of!”

“Havers,” Lynley said quietly, “step back in line.”

He was pulling rank. Barbara heard the warning. She knew she ought to back down, but she wasn’t about to at a moment when she was so completely in the right. “What did he tell you that has you so convinced of his innocence, Inspector? That he and Daddy were school chums at Eton? That he’d like to see more of you round the London club? Or better yet, that his destroying evidence had nothing at all to do with the murder and you can trust him to tell you the truth about it since he’s a real gent, just like you!”

“There’s more involved than that,” Lynley said, “and I’m not about to discuss it-”

“With the likes of me! Oh, rot!” she finished.

“Get that blasted chip off your shoulder and you might find yourself a person that other people want to confide in,” Lynley snapped. But he spun from Barbara quickly and didn’t move on.

She could tell that he regretted his loss of control at once. She had pushed him to it, wanting his anger to bubble and boil over just as her own had done earlier when he had locked her out of the sitting room. But she saw quite clearly how little ground she would gain in his estimation with this sort of manipulative behaviour. She berated herself for her temperamental stupidity. After a moment, she spoke.

“Sorry,” she said wretchedly. “I was off, Inspector. Out of line. Again.”

Lynley didn’t immediately respond. They stood on the stairs, caught by a tension that seemed painfully immutable, each involved in a separate misery. Lynley appeared to rouse himself only with an effort.

“We make an arrest on the strength of evidence, Barbara.”

She nodded calmly, her brief passion spent. “I know that, sir. But I think…” He wouldn’t want to hear it. He would hate her. She plunged on. “I think you’re ignoring the obvious so that you can head directly towards Davies-Jones, not on the strength of evidence at all, but on the strength of something else that… perhaps you’re afraid to admit.”

“That isn’t the case,” Lynley replied. He continued up the stairs.

At the top, Barbara identified each room for him as they passed it: Gabriel’s the closest to the rear stairway, then Vinney’s, Elizabeth Rintoul’s, and Irene Sinclair’s. Across the hall from this last was Rhys Davies-Jones’ room, where the west corridor turned right, widened, and led into the main body of the house. All the doors here were locked, and as they walked along the hallway where portraits displayed several generations of sombre-faced Gerrard ancestors and delicately worked sconces intermittently cast half-circles of light on the pale walls, St. James met them, handing Lynley a plastic bag.

“Helen and I found this stuffed into one of the boots downstairs,” he said. “According to David Sydeham, it’s his.”