He suddenly became conscious of something hard pressing against the palm of his hand and remembered the little red cap the tramp had given him at parting. It belonged obviously to the pen he had picked up on his visit to the farm and he was in the act of slipping it into his pocket and dismissing it from his mind when a thought struck him which caused him to pause in his descent and stand gazing blankly into the hall below. He had suddenly realized that if the tramp had picked up the cap on the occasion of his arrival at the farm somewhere about seven o’clock the pen must have been dropped still earlier in the evening. Fayre’s mind went back to the copper-coloured sequins he had found by the gate. They had been lying close to the pen and he found himself trying to picture what had happened. If Mrs. Draycott’s dress had caught in the gate in passing, the pen might have fallen from her companion’s pocket while he was disentangling it. Or could the unhappy woman have been seized with a premonition of her fate and hesitated on the very threshold of the farm? At any rate, the finding of the cap by the tramp did away once for all with the possibility of the pen’s having been dropped after the murder by a reporter, as Kean had suggested, and its proximity to the spangles from Mrs. Draycott’s dress pointed to the possibility that she and her companion might have paused for a moment near the gate on their way to the house. The pen had suddenly developed into a far more important link than they had supposed, and Fayre went on his way feeling that not only had his morning not been wasted, but that Cynthia, this time at least, had scored, not only against himself but against Kean, a fact which afforded him a certain amount of satisfaction. He found Cynthia deep in conversation with the porter of the hospital. “Cummin’s son is our undergardener at Galston,” she explained with a smile that included both men. “I was telling him that he’s the only person who really understands Mother’s beloved roses.” Fayre, watching her, understood why it was that she had, not only the estate, but the whole of the village of Galston, at her feet, and remembered how even Gunnet had dropped his official reserve when speaking of her. He climbed into the car and, after a few more friendly words to the porter, they drove off. “Well?” she asked as they swept round the corner into the High Street of Whitbury. “Did he say anything?” “He cleared himself, if what he says is true. Is there time to call on your lodge-keeper at Galston on the way back?” She turned to him in surprise. “Of course. It’s a little out of the way, but not enough to matter. Why do you want to see him?” “I want to see her, if there is a her.” “There is. His wife, Mrs. Doggett, is a dear old thing. If you want to get something out of her, you’d better leave it to me. I’ve known her all my life.” “I do. I want her to deal kindly with our friend, the tramp, for one thing.”