"Wilkes knows, yes."
"Then he'll direct the ambulance on. Now, sir, I don't think there's any need for me to keep you standing about here any longer, but if you could make it convenient to come over to the station to-morrow we may have something more to ask you. And we'd like you to read through your statement, which we'll have put into longhand by then, and sign it. Sergeant Matthews will drive you home now. I hope what you've seen won't keep you awake." He went out with them to the car, and saw them off. The police car backed down the lane to the main road, and in a very short time deposited them at their own front door.
Celia and Margaret were both awake, and no sooner had the two men entered the house than Margaret leaned over the banisters, and asked them to come up at once and tell them what had happened.
Celia was sitting up in bed with a shawl round her shoulders. "Thank goodness you're back!" she sighed. "You've been away such ages we've imagined all sorts of horrors. Did you discover anything?"
Charles and Peter exchanged glances. "They're bound to know when the inquest comes on," Peter said. "Tell them."
"Inquest?" Margaret said sharply. "Who's dead? You haven't - no, of course you haven't."
"It's Duval," Charles explained. "We didn't find him in our grounds, so Peter suggested we should go down to his cottage. And we found him there, dead."
"Murdered?" Celia quavered, gripping her shawl with both hands.
"We don't know," Charles answered, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Apparently he hanged himself, but we shan't know definitely whether it was suicide or not till the inquest, I imagine."
"But what a ghastly thing!" Margaret said. "Who can - oh, surely it wasn't murder? Why should anyone think so?"