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man’s wife ought to come first. He ought to think more of her than of outsiders, not go and do his work in somebody else’s house.’
    ‘You felt that Mr Nightingale had too great an influence over your husband?’
    ‘I don’t care,’ said Georgina, ‘for any outside interference.’ She pulled at the earrings, slightly releasing the screw of one of them. ‘I was a teacher of physical education,’ she said proudly, ‘before I was married, but I’ve given it up for good. Don’t you think a woman ought to stay at home and look after her husband? That’s best for people like us, have a real home and family without too much outside interest.’
    Frowning at Burden, who was nodding his head approvingly, Wexford said, ‘Would you object if we searched this house?’
    Georgina hesitated, then shook her head.
    The bungalow had another reception room and two bedrooms, the smaller of which was unfurnished and uncarpeted.
    ‘I wonder what he does with his money?’ Wexford whispered. ‘He’s got a good job and he writes those books.’
    Burden shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s extravagant like his sister,’ he said. ‘He’ll be different now. He’s got a good wife.’
    ‘Oh, my God!’
    Searching the sparsely filled cupboards, Burdensaid stiffly, ‘Well, I think it makes a nice change, talking to an ordinary decent woman.’
    ‘Perhaps she is ordinary and decent. She’s dull enough, God knows. There’s nothing here, no blood, nothing that could conceivably have been used as a weapon.’ They moved on into the kitchen where Wexford lifted the lid of the old-fashioned coke boiler. ‘Blazing away merrily,’ he said. ‘They could have burnt practically anything on here and she’s had hours to do it in.’
    Georgina was waiting for them in the living room, sitting apathetically, staring at the wall.
    ‘I can’t think of why my husband’s so long. You’d think that today he’d want to be here with me. You’d think …” Suddenly she froze, listening intently. ‘Here he is now.’
    She leapt from her chair and rushed into the hall, slamming the door behind her. Listening with half an ear to the whispered conversation between husband and wife, Burden said, ‘She’s certainly a mass of nerves. It’s almost as if she expected us to find something. I wonder if …’
    ‘Sssh!’ said Wexford sharply.
    Denys Villiers walked into the room, talking over his shoulder to his wife. ‘I can’t be in two places at once, Georgina. Quen’s in a bad way I left him with Lionel Marriott.’
    Burden’s eyes met Wexford’s. The chief inspector got up, his eyebrows raised in pleased astonishment.
    ‘Did I hear you mention the name Lionel Marriot?’
    ‘I expect so, if you were listening,’ said Villiers rudely. He still looked a good deal more than thirty-eight, but less ill than in the Old House that morning. ‘Why, d’you know him?’
    ‘He teaches,’ said Wexford, ‘at the same school asyou do. As a matter of fact, his nephew is married to my elder daughter.’
    Villiers gave him an offensive glance. ‘Remarkable,’ he said, his tone clearly implying that Marriott, a cultured person and colleague of his own, had distinctly lowered himself in being associated by marriage with the chief inspector’s family.
    Wexford swallowed his wrath. ‘Is he a friend of your brother-in-law’s?’
    ‘He hangs about the Manor from time to time,’ Coldly Villiers disengaged his arm from his wife’s grasp and slumped into an armchair. He closed his eyes in despair or perhaps simply exasperation. ‘I want a drink,’ he said, and as Georgina hovered over him, her earrings bobbing, ‘There’s a half-bottle of gin somewhere. Go and find it, will you?’

6
    I t was a great piece of luck, Wexford thought as he strolled down Kingsmarkham High Street at sunset, that by serendipity he had lighted on one of Quentin Nightingale’s cronies and that the crony was Lionel Marriott. Indeed, had he been allowed to select from all his