The Shadow at Greystone Chase (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 10) by Clara Benson

up to the killing, for example? One would expect there to have been an argument, at least. I don’t suppose he just went into her room and killed her without anything being said first.’
    ‘I suppose not,’ said Freddy. ‘We may never find out. At any rate, we know he had plenty of opportunity to get rid of her body during the night, since it had been hidden there in the cupboard in his bedroom.’
    ‘What did he say about that?’
    ‘Oh, he denied it absolutely, of course. Said he’d been very tired and had slept like a top without waking up once. He said he never went anywhere near the cupboard. But it was easy enough for him to lie about that.’
    ‘True,’ said Angela. ‘Well, that all seems to point fairly conclusively to his guilt. But since I’m supposed to be looking for evidence of his innocence, I suppose we’d better look at other possibilities. Who else might have done it? What were all the others doing while Valencourt was supposedly merrily killing his wife and hiding her body? Let’s assume he was telling the truth and had nothing to do with it. What then?’
    Freddy consulted his notebook.
    ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If he didn’t do it, and assuming he really did knock on Selina’s door at seven o’clock and pass on without going in, that means we have a period of nearly four hours, between a quarter past six and ten o’clock, in which someone else might have killed her.’
    ‘But who? Did the police investigate the alibis of everyone in the house? Four hours is a long time, and surely they can’t all have been in sight of one another for the whole evening.’
    ‘I should imagine not,’ said Freddy. ‘I don’t know the answer, though. If the police did take down everybody’s movements that evening I expect they put the information away in a file somewhere once they’d found the evidence in the cupboard and decided they had their man. My sergeant said he’d told me everything he knew, however, so perhaps they didn’t look into alibis too closely.’
    ‘What did the servant who spoke to her at a quarter past six say?’ said Angela, after a moment’s reflection. ‘Did Selina seem normal? Was there anything amiss?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Freddy. ‘The sergeant didn’t say anything about it—only that the woman had been sent downstairs to pass on the message, and that nobody had thought any more about it.’
    ‘Then she must have been the last person to see Selina alive,’ said Angela. ‘Apart from her killer, I mean. I wonder whether she knew anything or saw anything.’
    ‘If she’d seen the murder, then presumably she would have said so.’
    ‘Still, I’d like to talk to her. Perhaps she remembers something that didn’t seem important at the time.’
    ‘Well, I don’t seem to have her name here,’ said Freddy. ‘What makes you think she knew something?’
    ‘Nothing in particular,’ said Angela. ‘Only I was speaking to Colonel Dempster this morning and he seemed to think that if anybody knew what had really happened it was the servants—although he’s of the opinion that they knew Valencourt really did do it, which of course is no good for our present purposes.’
    They fell silent for a few moments. Angela was thinking.
    ‘I can’t help feeling that what happened on that day must have something to do with Selina’s personality,’ she said at last. ‘From everything I’ve heard about her she was very out of place in that house, where everybody conformed. It sounds as though she liked to stand out and be noticed.’
    ‘I’d hardly call Valencourt a conformist,’ said Freddy.
    ‘No, I suppose not,’ admitted Angela. ‘I wonder how he and his father got along before it all happened. I gather there’d been a disagreement between them about Valencourt’s going into the family business. Perhaps that rebelliousness is why he and Selina were drawn together. They had that in common, at least. But don’t you think it’s odd that Roger permitted