“Ten minutes before?”

“I feel sure it must have been. I — we were talking. Yes, it must have been at least ten minutes.”

“There’s no way by which you could come a little nearer to it? For example, did he light a cigarette when he came into the room?”

“Let me think. No. No, I don’t believe he did. But I did. I’d forgotten to bring my case down and I was helping myself to one of his when he came into the room. I remember that,” said Mandrake and Alleyn saw the back of his neck go red, “because I felt—” He stopped and made rather a business of adjusting his wind-screen wiper which at that moment was not needed.

“Yes?”

“What? Oh, I merely felt, very stupidly, a little embarrassed.” Mandrake’s voice trailed off and then he said loudly: “I was not born into the purple, Mr. Alleyn. Until a few years ago, I lived in the odour of extreme economy, among people who waited to be invited before they smoked other people’s cigarettes.”

“I should call that a sign of courtesy rather than penury,” said Alleyn, and received a brilliant smile from Miss Wynne. “Well, you lit your cigarette, then. That’s a help. Was it still going when you heard Nicholas Compline yell?”

“Was it, now? Yes. Yes, I remember throwing it in the fire before I went upstairs but it was almost smoked out, I’m sure. Yes, I’m sure of that.”

“Good. Well, now, Madame Lisse’s alibi is vouched for by Nicholas Compline and looks pretty well cast-iron. William Compline was in the smoking-room listening to the news bulletin. He heard Mr. Royal speak to the butler in the hall, and was prepared to give the gist of the bulletin which does not come on until seven-thirty.”

“Surely that’s of academic interest, only,” said Mandrake, “considering what has happened to William Compline.”

“You are probably quite right, but you know what policemen are. Dr. Hart has no alibi. Wait a bit, I must count up. Who haven’t I got? Oh, there’s you, Miss Wynne.”

“I haven’t got one,” said Chloris quickly. “I was in my room and I had a bath next door and I changed. But I can’t prove it.”

“Oh, well,” said Alleyn, “it’d be an odd state of affairs if everybody could prove all the things they hadn’t done every minute of the day. Is there to be no privacy, not even in the bathroom? That leaves Lady Hersey Amblington.”

“But she was with Mrs. Compline,” said Mandrake. “Nicholas saw her go past his door on her way to Mrs. Compline’s room. It’s there in the notes. We’ve been over that.”

“Have we? Then I’ve got myself into a muddle, no doubt. Lady Hersey gives Mrs. Compline an alibi. Does Mrs. Compline do as much for Lady Hersey? I mean did Mrs. Compline agree that Lady Hersey was in her room from seven-thirty until the alarm?”

“Well, she — Well, I mean she wasn’t there when we talked about alibis. Lady Hersey saw her afterwards and may have spoken about it then.”

“But actually nobody else questioned Mrs. Compline about it?”

“No, but of course it’s all right. I mean it’s out of the question that Lady Hersey—”

“I expect it is,” said Alleyn. “But you see just at the moment we’re dealing with hard facts, aren’t we? And the actual fact, which may be of no importance whatever, is that Lady Hersey vouches for Mrs. Compline but Mrs. Compline doesn’t happen to have corroborated her account. Is that it?”

“She can’t,” said Chloris. “She can’t, now. She may never…”

“We won’t jump that fence,” said Alleyn, “until we meet it.”

So far the return journey had not presented many difficulties. The new set of chains worked well and Mandrake kept to his own tracks where the snow had packed down hard and was already freezing over again. They ran into desultory flurries of snow, but the rain had not crossed Cloudyfold. Beyond the hills, the sky was still terraced with storm-clouds, prolonged at their bases into down-pouring masses, as if some Olympian painter had dragged at them with a dry brush.

At Alleyn’s suggestion they broached Dinah’s luncheon hamper and he continued his examination of Mandrake’s notes in an atmosphere of ham and hard-boiled egg, plying Chloris with food and both of them with questions.

“The oddest thing about this beastly business,” he said, “seems to be your plunge in the pond, Mandrake. You say here that Dr. Hart had the best chance of bringing it off unobserved, and that he saw Compline leave the house wearing Mr. Royal’s cape which is the double of your cape which incidentally seems to be Hart’s cape. Having absorbed those fancy touches, I learn that Nicholas Compline saw you through the window of the pavilion, where he was undressing in order to plunge into the ornamental waters in pursuance of a wager. He recognized you, and exchanged waves. Then comes your plunge, attended by the Compline brothers, Hart, Miss Wynne, and Mr. Royal, in that order. Again Mrs. Compline, Madame Lisse and Lady Hersey are absent. The first two breakfasted in their rooms. Lady Hersey says she was in the smoking-room. I understand you have read these notes, Miss Wynne?”

“Yes.”

“Have you formed any theory about the footprints which Mandrake says he saw in the snow? The small prints that led out of the top of the terrace from the house and returned to the house, suggesting that the person who made them stood on the terrace for a time at a spot from which she — apparently it must have been a woman — had a full view of the pond and the pavilion?”

“I?” said Chloris. “Why, I’ve thought a lot about it ever since Aubrey told me but I’m afraid I’ve no ideas at all. It might have been one of the maids, even, though I suppose that’s not very likely.”

“Did you notice these prints as you went down?”‘

“I’m not sure. I stood on the top of the terrace for a bit and noticed Aubrey’s and some other big footprints — William’s they must have been — and I thought I might walk dawn inside them, do you know? I’ve got a sort of feeling I did notice something out of the tail of my eye. I’ve got a sort of after-flavour of having fancied there must be someone else about but it’s much too vague to be useful. On the way back I was too concerned about Aubrey to notice.”

“Were you?” asked Mandrake with unmistakable fervour. Alleyn waited philosophically through an exchange of inaudible phrases, and remarked the air of complacency that characterizes persons who have arrived at a certain stage of mutual attraction.

“The smoking-room is on that side of the house, isn’t it?” he said at last.

“Yes,” agreed Chloris uncomfortably, “but so are the visitors’ rooms upstairs.”

“Do they overlook the lake and pavilion?”

“Madame Lisse’s room doesn’t,” said Mandrake. “I asked Jonathan that, and he said some tall evergreens on the bank would be in the way. I imagine they’d interrupt Mrs. Compline’s view too.”

“And you definitely connect these three strange events? You feel certain that the same person is behind all of them?”

“But — yes,” said Chloris blankly. “Of course we do. Don’t you?”

“It looks like it, certainly,” said Alleyn absently.

“Surely,” said Mandrake, acidly, “it would be too fantastic to suppose there has been more than one person planning elaborate deaths for Nicholas Compline during the weekend?”

“For Nicholas Compline?” Alleyn repeated. “Oh, yes. It would, wouldn’t it?”

“I assure you I had no enemies at Highfold. I’d never met a single one of the guests before.”

“Quite so,” said Alleyn mildly. “Going back still farther, we come to the first hint of trouble, the rather childish message on the Charter form which you say Dr. Hart handed to Nicholas Compline, together with a form that had been correctly filled in. ‘You are warned. Keep off.’ You say that there is no question of anyone else handing this paper to Compline.”

“No possibility of it. Nicholas simply took the paper from Hart,” said Mandrake, “and, on looking at it, found this second one underneath. Hart’s explanation was that he must have torn two papers off at once. Nicholas didn’t say, at the time, what was on the paper, but he was obviously very much upset and, later that evening, he told Jonathan he thought he ought to go. The following day, and good God it’s only yesterday, he actually tried to go and nearly drowned himself in a drift.”