The bodies were discovered by Mrs. Trepol, widow, occupation housekeeper and cook to the deceased.

It was not a morning of swirling sea mists and gray drifting sheets of rain, although afterward Mrs. Trepol remembered it that way.

In fact, the clouds had lifted in the night. The sea was gleaming in patchy May sunlight down below the headland, the house cast long shadows across the wet grass, and an unseasonable warmth already touched the light breeze as she came out of the wood at the side of the big kitchen garden. Her eyes jealously studied the cabbages in their neat rows, measuring them against the size of her own, deciding that hers still had an edge. Weil, of course they should! She’d always had the finest garden in the village, and hadn’t she proved it with ribbons won at every Harvest Festival? The onions were taller-surely they hadn’t been that high on Saturday? But anyone could grow onions. Her peas were already straggling up the sticks she’d set beside them, and growing peas was an art. No sticks stood beside these sad little stalks! She’d be cooking hers before these saw their first blossoms. Old Wilkins, who had kept the Hall’s gardens and stables since the lads had all gone off to the war, knew more about horses than vegetables.

Not that he didn’t crow over his work.

“Your carrots look a mite small, Mrs. Trepol,” he’d say, hanging over the rock wall by her front walk. “Compared to mine, that is.” Or, “Them beans is spindly. Put ‘em in late, did ye?”

Nosy old fool!

Her complacency restored, she went up the three steps to the kitchen door and let herself in with her key as she always did. Not that this was her day to clean. Mondays normally were her day off. But tomorrow she wanted to visit her sister-Naomi’s husband had offered to take them both to market in the morning-and Miss Livia never minded if occasionally she shifted her time.