The Inspector's Visit

Inspector Rennick Hale came up the drive at twenty past ten on the eighth day in a hired gig, in the rain, and Nell watched him from the hall window and knew three things about him before he was out of it.

He paid the driver first and counted the change. He looked at the roof of the house before he looked at the door of it. And he took his gloves off finger by finger on the step, in the wet, rather than carry them wet into somebody’s hall.

A careful man. She had been hoping for a tired one.

“Miss Hartigan.” He had a damp overcoat, a clerk’s satchel, fifty-odd years and a Midland voice underneath a guild-house one. “I’ll not want luncheon and I’ll not want the drawing room. I want a table under a window, the ledger, the preliminary, and an hour without anybody being helpful…