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with the same small group of dwellings repeated every few miles in endless permutation: castle, church, and cottages; monastery, church, and cottages; manor, church, and cottages. The strips of cultivation round the cluster of dwellings, and beyond that the greenness. The unbroken greenness. The deep-rutted lanes that ran from group to group, mired to bog in the winter and white with dust in the summer; decorated with wild roses or red with hawthorn as the seasons came and went.
    For thirty years, over this green uncrowded land, the Wars of the Roses had been fought. But it had been more of a blood feud than a war. A Montague and Capulet affair; of no great concern to the average Englishman. No one pushed in at your door to demand whether you were York or Lancaster and to hale you off to a concentration camp if your answer proved to be the wrong one for the occasion. It was a small concentrated war; almost a private party. They fought a battle in your lower meadow, and turned your kitchen into a dressing-station, and then moved off somewhere or other to fight a battle somewhere else, and a few weeks later you would hear what had happened at that battle, and you would have a family row about the result because your wife was probably Lancaster and you were perhaps York, and it was all rather like following rival football teams. No one persecuted you for being a Lancastrian or a Yorkist, any more than you would be persecuted for being an Arsenal fan or a Chelsea follower.
    He was still thinking of the green England when he fell asleep.
    And he was not a whit wiser about the two young Princes and their fate.

CHAPTER THREE
    "Can't you find something more cheerful to look at than that thing?" The Midget asked next morning, referring to the Richard portrait which Grant had propped up against the pile of books on his bed-side table.
    "You don't find it an interesting face?"
    "Interesting! It gives me the willies. A proper Dismal Desmond."
    "According to the history books he was a man of great ability."
    "So was Bluebeard."
    "And considerable popularity, it would seem."
    "So was Bluebeard."
    "A very fine soldier, too," Grant said wickedly, and waited. "No Bluebeard offers?"
    "What do you want to look at that face for? Who was he anyway?"
    "Richard the Third."
    "Oh, well, I ask you!"
    "You mean that's what you expected him to look like. "
    "Exactly."
    "Why?"
    "A murdering brute, wasn't he?"
    "You seem to know your history."
    "Everyone knows that. Did away with his two little nephews, poor brats. Had them smothered."
    "Smothered?" said Grant, interested. "I didn't know that."
    "Smothered with pillows." She banged his own pillows with a fragile vigorous fist, and replaced them with speed and precision.
    "Why smothering? Why not poison?" Grant inquired.
    "Don't ask me. I didn't arrange it."
    "Who said they were smothered?"
    "My history book at school said it."
    "Yes, but whom was the history book quoting?"
    "Quoting? It wasn't quoting anything. It was just giving facts."
    "Who smothered them, did it say?"
    "A man called Tyrrel. Didn't you do any history, at school?"
    "I attended history lessons. It is not the same thing. Who was Tyrrel?"
    "I haven't the remotest. A friend of Richard's."
    "How did anyone know it was Tyrrel?"
    "He confessed."
    "Confessed?"
    "After he had been found guilty, of course. Before he was hanged."
    "You mean that this Tyrrel was actually hanged for the murder of the two Princes?"
    "Yes, of course. Shall I take that dreary face away and put up something gayer? There were quite a lot of nice faces in that bundle Miss Hallard brought you yesterday. "
    "I'm not interested in nice faces. I'm interested only in dreary ones; in 'murdering brutes' who are 'men of great ability.' "
    "Well, there's no accounting for tastes," said The Midget inevitably. "And /don't have to look at it, thank goodness. But in my humble estimation it's enough to prevent bones knitting, so help me it is."
    "Well, if my fracture doesn't mend you