that don't brighten up at the sound of her voice,' he had said, 'nor yet a
grown-up, for the matter of that. Everybody used to look forward to her coming
over in the summer. I don't mean that she's one of those women that are all
kind heart and nothing else. There's backbone with it, if you know what I
mean--pluck any amount of go. There's nobody in Marlstone that isn't sorry for
the lady in her trouble--not but what some of us may think she's lucky at the
last of it.' Trent wanted very much to meet Mrs. Manderson.

He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of the two-
storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables from which it
had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car that morning. A
modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place was beautifully kept,
with that air of opulent peace that clothes even the smallest houses of the
well-to-do in an English countryside. Before it, beyond the road, the rich
meadow-land ran down to the edge of the cliffs; behind it a woody landscape
stretched away across a broad vale to the moors. That such a place could be
the scene of a crime of violence seemed fantastic; it lay so quiet and well
ordered, so eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there
beyond the house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot,
white road, stood the gardener's toolshed, by which the body had been found,
lying tumbled against the wooden wall, Trent walked past the gate of the drive
and along the road until he was opposite this shed. Some forty yards further
along the road turned sharply away from the house, to run between thick
plantations; and just before the turn the grounds of the house ended, with a
small white gate at the angle of the boundary hedge. He approached the gate,
which was plainly for the use of gardeners and the service of the
establishment. It swung easily on its hinges, and he passed slowly up a path
that led towards the back of the house, between the outer hedge and a tall
wall of rhododendrons. Through a gap in this wall a track led him to the
little neatly built erection of wood, which stood among trees that faced a