'What a fug! I was right – they must have been having themselves a quiet little ball last night.'

She began drawing curtains back prior to opening a window. Pascoe too was sniffing gently, a faintly puzzled look on his face. He crossed the room to the door in the farthermost wall. It was ajar and he pushed it fully open and stepped through into the next room. It was clearly the dining-room. The round, highly polished mahogany table still bore the debris of a meal.

But it wasn't the table which held his attention. White-faced he turned to stop Ellie from following him. She had moved to the rear window now and was just drawing the curtains there.

'Ellie,' he said.

She froze, her hand on the window-latch, staring incredulously through the pane.

A thin, single-noted scream forced its way from the back of her throat.

Two men were lying on the dining-room floor in the positions indicated in the police photograph 'Al'. They had both received severe gunshot wounds, and had been bleeding copiously. The nature of the wounds and the strong cordite smell I had noticed in the air led me to assume the wounds had been caused by a shotgun fired at close range. The man lying beside the dining-table (position 'X' on the photograph) I recognized as Timothy Mansfield of Grover Court, London, NW2. The other man I was not able to recognize immediately as he had received the greater part of the gun-blast in the neck and lower face, but later I was able to confirm he was Charles Rushworth of the same address. I turned to prevent Miss Soper from following me into the room, but she was clearly disturbed by something she could see from the rear window. I looked out into the garden at the back of the house and saw the figure of a woman lying at the base of the sundial in the centre of the lawn (photograph 'C3') I could not recognize her from the window as her face was pressed to the grass. There had been a great deal of bleeding from the head.