Felicity turned as he came up. "Oh, Frank, whatever do you think? Joan says their butler's been murdered! By the way, this is my cousin, Frank Amberley, Joan. He says he knows you, Mr. Corkran. I say, how thrilling about Dawson, though! How did it happen? Frightfully ghastly, of course," she added, as an afterthought.

"Your butler?" Frank said, released from Mr. Corkran's hearty handshake. "Oh!"

"Beastly, isn't it?" said Anthony, a young man of engaging ingenuousness. "What I mean to say is - one moment the fellow's murmuring, "Will you take hock, sir?" and the next he's been bumped off. Bad business, what?" He regarded his erstwhile school-friend with the respect due to Higher Beings. "Of course, I know these little contretemps are everyday matters to you brainy johnnies at the Bar. Still - not nice, you know. Definitely a bad show."

"Definitely," Frank agreed. He was frowning slightly. His cousin accused him of lack of proper interest. "No. By no means," he said. "I'm quite unusually interested. How did it happen, Miss Fountain?"

The fair girl said shyly: "Well, we don't know very much yet. It was Dawson's half-day and he seems to have gone off in the Baby Austin. Basil keeps it for the servants because the manor's such a way from the town and there aren't any buses near us. We didn't know a thing about it till a policeman turned up late last night and told Basil they'd found a man dead on the Pittingly Road, and he'd been identified as Dawson. He'd been shot. It's rather awful. Because he'd been at the manor for simply ages, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to shoot him. Basil's dreadfully upset about it."

"An old retainer, in fact?"

"Oh, rather!" said Anthony. "Stately old fossil. Frightfully keen on the done thing. Pretty grim."

Joan gave a little shiver. "It's horrid. I - I hate it having happened. I mean - Dawson wasn't our retainer, really, because we took him on with Collins when Uncle Jasper died, but all the same it's a beastly thing to happen, and it makes it seem pretty heartless to go on with the dance on Wednesday."