Salting Towers was the residence of Sir Roger Penterton, a man who cared nothing for the village which had happened to lie in the hollow below the hill selected as a suitable site for his house. He was not interested in agricultural affairs; he had chosen the locality solely because it was sufficiently convenient for the visits he continued to pay two and three times a week to the town in which he had pursued a highly successful career at the head of a big business; hence an appearance in a birthday honour list and that accretion of dignity and pride which proclaims itself in the carriage of a Knight. He liked, however, to fancy himself as a landed proprietor even while holding that class in the greatest contempt as a set of idle and unthrifty folk; the type of man of whom he was a shining example was, as he often used to proclaim as he stood astride of the fire in hall or smoking-room, the real backbone of the country. By years of hard work he had built up a fine business, amassed a large fortune, and incidentally married above himself. He had succeeded and not by any stroke of luck, but, as he would declare, by sheer industry, and so could any one else; he had no pity for failures. “Show me a failure and I’ll show you an idler,” was a favourite remark of his to those who tried to enlist his purse in aid of some charitable scheme. As Inspector Humblethorne sat finishing his supper in the dingy coffee-room of the Rose and Crown, he could see the grandiloquent sweep of the drive as it crossed the park and disappeared into the wood which shut off the Towers from the village, and idly wondered where it led to. He had never heard of Sir Roger Penterton. The warmth of the evening and the freshness of the air had their usual subtle effect upon him, which the draining of a big glass of ale did nothing to dispel. He felt mellowed, sociable and well-pleased with himself, and heaved a big sigh to say so to all whom it might concern. It concerned nobody; that was the one objection to an otherwise entirely satisfactory state of things.