We'd no idea anything was wrong until I came out and found her lying face down - all sprawled out. Sophia's voice broke a little. "There was blood on her hair..."
"That her scarf?" Taverner pointed to a checked woollen muff lying on the floor.
"Yes."
Using the scarf he picked up the block of marble carefully.
"There may be fingerprints, he said, but he spoke without much hope. "But I rather think whoever it was, was - careful."
He said to me: "What are you looking at?"
I was looking at a broken backed wooden kitchen chair which was among the derelicts. On the seat of it were fragments of muddy feet.
"Curious," said Taverner. "Someone stood on that chair with muddy feet.
Now, why was that?"
He shook his head.
"What time was it when you found her, Miss Leonides?"
"It must have been five minutes past one."
"And your Nannie saw her going out about twenty minutes earlier - who was the last person before that known to have been in the wash house?"
"I've no idea.
Probably Josephine herself.
Josephine was swinging on the door this morning after breakfast, I know."
Taverner nodded.
"So between then and a quarter to one someone set the trap.
You say that bit of marble is the door stop you use for the front door?
Any idea when that was missing?"
Sophia shook her head.
"The door hasn't been propped open at all today.
It's been too cold."
"Any idea where everyone was all the morning?"
"I went out for a walk.
Eustace and Josephine did lessons until half past twelve - with a break at half past ten.
Father, I think, has been in the library all the morning."
"Your mother?"
"She was just coming out of her bedroom when I came in from my walk - that was about a quarter past twelve.
She doesn't get up very early."
We re-entered the house.
I followed Sophia to the library.
Philip, looking white and haggard, sat in his usual chair. Magda crouched against his knees, crying quietly.
Sophia asked:
"Have they telephoned yet from the hospital?"
Philip shook his head.
Magda sobbed:
"Why wouldn't they let me go with her?
My baby - my funny ugly baby.
And I used to call her a changeling and make her so angry.
How could I be so cruel?
And now she'll die. I know she'll die."
"Hush, my dear," said Philip. "Hush."
I felt that I had no place in this family scene of anxiety and grief.
I withdrew quietly and went to find Nannie.
She was sitting in the kitchen crying quietly.
"It's a judgement on me, Mr Charles, for the hard things I've been thinking.
A judgement, that's what it is."
I did not try and fathom her meaning.
"There's wickedness in this house. That's what there is.