Beecher, opening the door for him, volunteered the information, in a rather offended tone, that the body had been cold when he had found it at eight o'clock. The doctor nodded, and passed out of the room to the head of the stairs.

Below, in the hall, the party had been augmented by the arrival of Mrs Lupton and her husband, who had motored over from their house on the other side of the Heath. The presence of Henry Lupton, a little, sandy moustached man with weak, worried blue eyes, was generally felt to be insignificant, but Gertrude Lupton's personality made her a formidable and unwelcome visitor. She was a massively built woman of about fifty-five, extremely upright, and reinforced wherever possible with whalebone. She even wore it inserted into the net fronts which invariably encased her throat. Her hats always had wide brims and very high crowns, and her face-powder was faintly tinted with mauve. She had been the nearest to Gregory Matthews in age of all his family, and the most like him in temperament. Both resembled nothing so much as steam-rollers in their dealings with their fellow creatures, but the difference between them had lain in the fact that whereas Gregory Matthews had been subject to awe-inspiring rages no one had ever seen Gertrude lose one jot of her implacable calm.

She was perfectly calm now, though evidently in the grip of some powerful emotion. She stood resting one hand on the gateleg table in the middle of the hall while she delivered herself of various forceful statements. Dr Fielding, pausing on the top stair, heard her quell Harriet's volubility with a stern admonition to the unfortunate lady to control herself; and annihilate Mrs Matthews, who had unwisely repeated the history of her premonition, by saying: “I have the greatest dislike for that kind of foolish talk, and I must say that I consider it quite uncalled—for in one who was no relation of my poor brother whatsoever. I sincerely trust, Zoë, that you will abandon any attempt to make yourself the central figure in this appalling affair, though I am bound to confess from my knowledge of you that it would be extremely like you to try to focus the limelight on yourself.”