He marshalled them all into the billiard room, quite in his usual manner, nor was any further reference made to the murder. Yet for all his laughter, for all Corkran's airy persiflage, Amberley was conscious of that vague sensation of discomfort which seemed to brood over the house and which Anthony had tried ineffectively to describe.

He was not sorry when the evening came to an end, but the visit, little though he might have enjoyed it, had given him something to think about. Silently he cursed himself for his rash, unaccustomed quixotry in shielding by his silence the girl he had found beside the murdered man's car.

It was not she who had fired the shot; of that he was convinced. But her presence had not been accidental, nor had her agitation (he was convinced) been entirely due to finding the butler's body. She had given him the impression that she was suffering less from shock, or from horror, than from bitter disappointment.

It looked like being an interesting case. There was the girl, a lady, who had so evidently gone to meet the butler; there was Fountain, shaken by the news, plainly aghast; there was Joan, frightened, nervous of the house, nervous of the valet; there was Collins himself, impassive yet oddly sinister, listening at doors, as anxious as his master to hear all that Amberley had to tell.

Nothing in that, Amberley reminded himself. Why should they not want to know every detail? Yet he could swear that something lay behind, something obscure that would not readily be disclosed.

He determined to look into the butler's record. He had little expectation that anything would come out at the inquest. Whatever the butler's secret was and whoever held the key to it, were mysteries which would need a deal of solving.

Nor was he mistaken. The inquest next morning provided the sensation hunters who flocked to it with very little to interest them. The doctor and the gun expert were dull witnesses, and the most hopeful witness, Amberley himself, disappointed everyone by giving his evidence in a dry and exceedingly succinct manner.