his nose long and pointed, but not quite straight, as if at some time it had been broken and ill set. His mouth was small, his teeth when he smiled very regular. It was a highly individual face, and he seemed a man very much at his ease.
"Good evening, Mr. Monk. I doubt I can be of any assistance, but of course I shall do everything I can, although I have already spoken to the police - naturally."
"Thank you, sir," Monk accepted. "That is most generous of you."
"Not at all. A wretched business." Hargrave waved towards one of the large leather-covered chairs beside the fireplace, and as Monk sat in one, he sat in the other."What can I tell you? I assume you already know the course of events that evening."
"I have several accounts, none seriously at variance with another," Monk replied. "But there remain some unanswered questions. For example, do you know what so distressed Mrs.'Erskine?"
Hargrave smiled suddenly, a charming and candid gesture. "No idea at all. Quarrel with Louisa, I should think, but I haven't the faintest notion about what. Although it did seem to me she was quite uncharacteristically beastly to poor Maxim. Sorry not to be more helpful. And before you ask, neither do I know why Thaddeus and Alexandra quarreled."
"Could that also have been about Mrs. Furnival?" Monk asked.
Hargrave considered for a moment or two before replying, placing his fingers together in a steeple and looking at Monk over the point of them.
"I thought at first that it was unlikely, but on consideration perhaps it is not. Rivalry is a strange thing. People may fight passionately over something, not so much because they desire it for itself but because they wish to win the struggle, and be seen to win it - or at least not to lose." He regarded Monk closely, searching his face, his expression grave. "What I was going to say is that although Alexandra was not deeply in love with the general, it may be that her pride was very precious to her, and to have her friends and family see him giving his attention to someone else may have been more than she was prepared to endure." He saw Monk's doubt, or imagined it. "I realize murder is a very extreme reaction to mat." He frowned, biting his lips. "And solves nothing at all. But then it is absurd to imagine it would solve anything else either - but the general was undoubtedly murdered."
"Was he?" Monk did not ask the question with skepticism so much as enquiry for clarification. "You examined the body; you did not perceive it as murder immediately, did you?"
Hargrave smiled wryly. "No," he admitted. "I would not have said anything that evening, whatever I had thought. I confess, I was considerably shaken when Maxim came back and said Thaddeus had had an accident, and then of course when I saw him I knew immediately that he was dead. It was a very nasty wound. My first thoughts, after it was obvious I could do nothing for him, were to break it as gently as possible to his family, many of whom were present, especially his wife. Of course I had no idea then that she was involved in it, and already knew better than any of us what had happened."
"What had happened, Dr. Hargrave, in your medical opinion?"
Hargrave pursed his lips.
"Exactly," Monk added.
"Perhaps I had better describe the scene as I found it." Hargrave crossed his legs and stared at the low fire in the hearth, lit against the evening chill. "The general was lying sprawled on the floor below the curve of the banister," he began. "The suit of armor was on the floor beside him. As I remember, it had come to pieces, presumably from the impact of his body on it. It can have been held together only by rather perished leather straps, and a certain amount of sheer balance and weight of itself. One gauntlet was under his body, the other close to his head. The helmet had rolled away about eighteen inches."
"Was the general on his back or his face?" Monk asked.
"His back," Hargrave said immediately. "The halberd was sticking out of his chest. I assumed he had gone over sideways, overbalanced and then twisted in the air in his effort to save himself, so that the point of the halberd had gone through his chest. Then when he hit the armor, it had deflected him and he had landed on