After the lapse of a few moments the door was opened by a woman with a candle in her hand--a stout countrywoman of forty, with a curved nose, prominent teeth, and hair screwed up in a tight knob at the back of her head. Her small grey eyes, scanning the visitor at the door, showed both surprise and deference. The butler of the moat-house was not in the habit of mixing with the villagers, and by them he was accounted something of a personage. He not only shone with the reflected glory of the big house, but was respected on his own merit as a "snug" man, who had saved money, and had a little property of his own. "Is your husband at home, Mrs. Lumbe?" he asked, in response to her mute glance of inquiry. He spoke condescendingly, like a man who recognized the social gulf between them, but believed in being polite to the lower orders. "Yes, he is in, Mr. Tufnell. Will you come inside?" The butler rubbed his boots carefully on the doormat, and followed the woman down a narrow passage to a small sitting-room at the end of it, where a man was sitting, reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe. "Robert," said the woman, "here is Mr. Tufnell to see you." The man looked up from his newspaper in some surprise, and got up to greet his visitor. He was not in uniform, and his rough, ungainly figure and round red face revealed the countryman, but from the crown of his close-cropped bullet head to his thick-soled boots he looked like a rural policeman. There was an awkward pose about him as he stood up--a clumsy effort to maintain the semblance of an official dignity. The questioning look his ferret eyes cast at the butler through the haze of tobacco smoke which filled the room indicated his impression that the visit was not merely a neighbourly call. Tufnell did not leave him in doubt on the point. "You are wanted at the moat-house at once, Sergeant Lumbe," he said gravely. "A terrible crime has been committed. Mrs. Heredith has been murdered." "Murdered!" ejaculated the sergeant, looking vacantly across the table at his wife, who had given vent to a cry of horror. "Murdered!" he repeated, as though seeking to assure himself of the truth of the butler's statement by a repetition of the word. "Yes. She was shot in her bedroom a little while ago while the other guests were at dinner. You must come at once." Sergeant Lumbe laid his pipe on the table with a trembling hand. He was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe, and hardly knew what to do. His previous experience of crime was confined to an occasional arrest of the village drunkard, who invariably went with him confidingly. His eye wandered to a bookcase in the corner of the room, as if he would have liked to consult a "Police Code" which was prominently displayed on one of the shelves. Apparently he realized the indignity of such a course in the presence of a member of the public, so he turned to Tufnell and said: "I'll go with you, but I must first put on my tunic."