“Put it that way if you like,” was the response. “Who might you be?”
Barrant did not deign to reply to this inquiry. “Take us upstairs,” he said.
“Pengowan wants us to look at the outside first,” said Dawfield, but Barrant was already mounting the stairs.
“You do so,” he called back, over his shoulder. “I’ll go up.”
At the top of the staircase he waited until Thalassa reached him. “Where are Mr. Turold’s rooms?” he asked.
Thalassa pointed with a long arm into the dim vagueness of the passage. “Down there,” he said, “at the end. The study on the right, the bedroom opposite.”
“Very well. You need not come any further.”
The old man’s eyes travelled slowly upward to the detective’s face, but he kept his ground.
“Did you hear me?” Barrant asked sharply. “You can go downstairs again.”
Again the other’s eyes sought his face with a brooding contemplative look. Then he turned sullenly away with moving lips, as though muttering inarticulate words, leaving Barrant standing on the landing, watching his slow descent.