4: Inspector Feather
EXTERIORLY, as Gees decided when he came out from the house after a huge and satisfying lunch with his host, Dowlandsbar was utterly devoid of architectural pretensions: it was no more than a big, oblong stone box, divided into compartments by the interior partitioning walls and dumped on a ledge of a hillside so that it faced south-west—if the ledge had been artificially terraced in the side of the hill, the work had been done so long ago that no trace of it remained. The thickness of the grey stone walls was that of a fortress, and, as Gees had already noted, the interior walls were of little less solidity. Slate-roofed above its two stories, it was a grim- looking habitation—but inside was a treasure house of the handicraft of past ages. There was a huddle of outbu
