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said, gloomily. “It isn’t an unusual shade like this
    Dior one. Half the women one sees have painted their lips blood red.”
    “Do you think a woman could have done it?” Royston asked. “I mean physically? Strangling isn’t a woman’s normal way to murder.”
    “We’ll know more after the autopsy,” Carmichael said. “I’d say, maybe. If he was asleep, or if he trusted her to come up close. And in some ways it’s more likely for a woman to walk into his bedroom than a man—whether his wife or any other woman. He was a big man, but he wasn’t young, and he doesn’t look as if he was very active or strong. There are plenty of women who could have got their hands around his neck. Whether it’s psychologically something a woman could have done, I’m not so sure. It certainly isn’t common.”
    “If he’d been asleep, suffocating him would have been just as easy, or easier,” Royston said.
    “There was a pillow.”
    “I want to take a look at Lady Thirkie, see how big she is for one thing, and see what her attitude to her husband was for another.”
    “The footman described her as having hysterics,” Royston reminded him.
    “In Miss Dorset’s room,” Carmichael remembered. “I think I’ll have Jeffrey take me along there to have a word with her while she’s off her guard.”
    “Shall I come too, sir?” Royston asked, with a hesitation that made Carmichael laugh.
    “No, I’ll let you off questioning the screaming woman this time. You get on the blower to the Yard and ask about those things you wrote down earlier. Then round up Yately and see where my list of guests has got to. Then, probably, you can start interviewing the servants, but get back to me before that in case
    I’ve thought of something else for you.”

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    “Yes, sir,” Royston said.
    Miss Dorset’s room turned out to be at the back of the house on the ground floor. Jeffrey announced
    him. “Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard.”
    Carmichael swept in hard on the heels of this, anxious to see the effect on the inhabitants of the room.
    There were three of them, all women, in an airless space that at first glance seemed to be composed entirely of lace and ribbons. He wondered if this was what was described as a boudoir, or if the absent
    Miss Dorset were merely very fond of embroidering frills. Two of the women were dark and one very fair. One of the dark ones was sitting on the frilled and ruffled bed and the other on a broad cushioned lace-edged window seat surrounded by lacy ruffled curtains. She was engaged in staring out of the window and smoking. Either of them could have been the widow or the sister. Both of them seemed to be sitting in indifference; neither of them appeared to be in hysterics at this moment. The one on the bed was wearing green, with lace, and the other something gray.
    The fair woman was sitting in a little pink frilled basket chair. She was the one who reacted most immediately to the announcement. She jumped to her feet and spun to face Carmichael. She had very blue eyes, pink cheeks, pink lipstick, and an expression that said she welcomed any distraction. She was wearing rather plain clothing that implicitly rejected all attempts at lace and ruffles and which stood out in that room as almost masculine. Carmichael recognized her from newspaper photographs as Lucy Kahn but wondered, now he saw her in person, what could have led her to throw herself away on a Jew? A
    possibly murderous Jew, at that? Oh well, they said love was inexplicable.
    “Mrs. Kahn?” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I was hoping to have a few words with Lady Thirkie.”
    “Oh that’s quite all right,” Mrs. Kahn said. “This is Lady Thirkie, and this is Mrs. Normanby.”
    She indicated first the woman on the bed, and then the woman at the window. Then she went over to the bed and touched the shoulder of the woman there. “Angela? Here’s a policeman to speak to you.” To
    Carmichael’s surprise, he saw