CHAPTER SEVENIt was after sunset before the Superintendent left Garthmere Hall, but Malcolm Garth had not yet returned home. Marion had said that he had probably gone up to the fells to see his bee-hives which had been taken up for the bees to collect the heather honey. “He often comes back late because he’s a poor walker and gets tired easily,” she told Layng. “When he gets up there as likely as not he’ll go to sleep in the heather. I’ve often known him do it.”
“Does he take a gun with him?”
“Goodness, no! Malcolm loathes guns. He’s like a gun-shy dog. He probably cleared out this afternoon because he dislikes the noise the guns make at the fox hunt. Malcolm’s like that. He never shoots. I doubt if he knows how to load a gun even.”
Layng pondered over this and other things he had heard
