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of resentment in the blue eyes. He detected none. She said, ‘Yes. It went on the market two months ago. Probate took time, but the planning permission took longer still.’ She might have been a businesswoman explaining the situation to a naïve inquirer: there was no hint of bitterness at the prospect of losing the roof which had sheltered her for the last fourteen years. Yet all around them was evidence of her pride in this place.
    He moved on with an attempt at briskness. ‘Do you know why we are here, Mrs Lewis?’
    ‘I know about the exhumation.’ There was the first hint now of a tautness disturbing her composure, the first sign that her demeanour might just have been a carefully assumed disguise. But if she had liked her employer, as it was reasonable to project from her length of time in his service, the disturbance of that quiet grave would have upset her a little anyway. And the deduction that any intelligent woman would make that his death had not been as straightforward as she had previously assumed would be more distressing still. It was time to turn the screw a little.
    ‘I have to tell you now that the examination of the remains of Edmund Craven by medical experts reveals that he quite certainly did not die from natural causes.’ The formal recitation enabled him to protract the inevitable announcement, to study his listener’s reaction as it were in slow motion. He elicited nothing more here than a slow nod and a slight lift of the chin in anticipation. With the irritating lack of timing which makes the human brain a disconcerting instrument, he noticed at this moment that Margaret Lewis had a neck that was almost unlined and which offered no sign of the incipient double chin that her pleasantly curved form might have suggested in one of her years. He went on almost hastily, ‘I have to tell you, indeed, that we are now at the beginning of a murder inquiry.’
    There was, at last, a small, involuntary gasp from the woman opposite him. Probably it was no more than the reaction which the first mention of that word always brought. Lambert said, ‘The news is a surprise to you?’
    She took her time before answering. Then she said coolly, ‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’ For a moment, he thought she was not going to elaborate without further prompting. Then she said, ‘I’d heard, you see, that there was to be an exhumation, so I presumed something serious was wrong.’
    ‘Who told you about the exhumation?’
    ‘Mr Craven’s daughter, Angela Harrison, told me. Otherwise I should not have known.’ The terse statement became an accusation.
    ‘I’m sorry about that, Mrs Lewis. The regulations require that we inform only the next of kin about an exhumation when the permission comes through from the Home Secretary’s Office. You would understand, I am sure, that it is in the interests of all that these things should be kept as private as possible until we know that there is a crime involved. If the death had been after all from natural causes, the fewer people who knew about the exhumation the better. I hope you see that.’
    She nodded, almost impatiently, with the air of one who has already put these arguments to herself repeatedly. ‘Apart from two weeks holiday a year when I was away from here, I saw Edmund Craven every day during the last thirteen years of his life. No one else could claim that.’ Lambert noted that for the first time she had dropped the title; his mind speculated for the instant before he controlled it on the possibilities of a sexual relationship between the personable Margaret Lewis and her elderly employer. There would be time enough for the investigation of such possibilities later. No doubt other people would be ready enough to tell him of any such liaison—it was always easier to co llect salacious detail from those who observed than from those who were involved.
    He said stiffly, ‘We have to go by the rules, Mrs Lewis, even though we may sometimes feel privately