midnight
As he did so , his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before . As a pretext for postponing his letter , he took up the paper and glanced down the first page . He read : `` Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent . The Earl of Altringham and his son Viscount d'Amblay drowned in midnight collision . Both bodies recovered . '' He read on . He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night before he had left Venice and that , as the result of a fog in the Solent , their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham , and possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England .