The fact that Rufus MacIan had just stabbed the Lieutenant of the Tower to death in his own dining-room had no effect at all, and would not have made a difference even if these men had been aware of it. They were carrying out standing orders, which was exactly what was wanted at this stage of the Plan. If the Lieutenant (Throwley) had been alive, or if the Colonel of the regiment (Barnes) or even its Master Sergeant (Shaftoe) had been present, any of them might have countermanded those standing orders, and dashed the whole enterprise. As matters stood, none of them was in a position to put his superior intelligence to use here. Besides them, only three other personages stood in the chain of command: the Constable of the Tower (the late Ewell Throwley’s superior) and the Deputy Lieutenant and the Major (Throwley’s subordinates). The Constable was presently taking the waters in the country, trying to rid his system of three dozen faulty oysters he’d tucked into yesterday afternoon. The other two had been drawn away for the afternoon on some pretext. And so the Tower guard, like a killed chicken dashing around the farm-yard, was aping the remembered commands of a head that had already been thrown to the dogs.