Somerset stopped.
‘You have a studio at the castle in which you are preparing drawings?’
‘I have.’
‘Have you a clerk?’
‘I had three till yesterday, when I paid them off.’
‘Would they have any right to enter the studio late at night?’
‘There would have been nothing wrong in their doing so. Either of them might have gone back at any time for something forgotten. They lived quite near the castle.’
‘Ah, then all is explained. I was riding past over the grass on the night of last Thursday, and I saw two persons in your studio with a light. It must have been about half-past nine o’clock. One of them came forward and pulled down the blind so that the light fell upon his face. But I only saw it for a short time.’
‘If it were Knowles or Cockton he would have had a beard.’
‘He had no beard.’