“But the doctor’s rather a darling. We’re friends. That’s all.”

Nurse Barker looked at Mrs. Oates. “What a curious house this is. I expected a staff of servants. Why are there none?”

“Funny thing,” she remarked, “but as long as this place has been built there’s been a trouble to get girls to stay here. Too lonely, for one thing. And then, it got an unlucky name with servants.”

“Unlucky?” prompted Nurse Barker, while Helen pricked up her ears for the answer.

“Yes. It’s an old tale now, but right back in Sir Robert’s time, one of the maids was found drowned in the well. Her sweetheart had jilted her, so it was supposed she’d threw herself down. It was the drinking-well, too.”

“Disgusting pollution,” murmured Nurse .Barker. “So it was. And then, on top of that, was the murder. …Kitchen-maid it was, found dead in the house, with her throat slit from ear to ear. She was always hard on tramps and used to like to turn them from the door, and one was heard to threaten to do her in. They never caught him. But it got the house a bad smell.”

Helen clasped her hands tightly.

“Mrs. Oates,” she asked, “where, exactly, was she mur dered?”

“In the dark passage, where the cellars are,” was the reply. “I wouldn’t tell you, just now, but Oates and I always call that bit, ‘Murder Lane’.” . .

As she listened, it occurred to Helen that Lady W arren’s rambling talk about trees breaking into the house was built on a solid foundation. When she was a young woman, she had been soaked to the marrow in this damp solitude. She had stood at her window staring out into the winter twilight, while the mist curled to shapes, and trees writhed into life.

One of the trees-a tramp, savage and red-eyed-had actually slipped inside. No wonder, now that she was old, she re-lived the scene in her memory.

“When did this happen?” she asked.

“Just before Sir Robert’s death. Lady Warren wanted. to give up the house, as they couldn’t get no servants, and it was rows, all the time, till the accident.”

“And has the Professor servant-trouble, too?” enquired Nurse Barker.

“Not till now,” replied Mrs. Oates. “There’s always been old and middle-aged bits, as wanted a quiet home. They’ve kept things going until these murders started the old trouble again.”

Nurse Barker licked her lips with gloomy relish. “One of them was quite close to the Summit, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“A few miles off.”

Nurse Barker laughed as she lit a fresh cigarette.

“Well, I needn’t worry,” she said.