The flustered Mary had reappeared.

“Tell Vassily to bring some brandy,” said Handesley.

“Please, sir, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, sir, he’s gone — he’s disappeared, sir, and none of us liked to tell you!”

“Hell’s teeth!” ejaculated Alleyn.

Detective-Inspector Alleyn had been most particular about the state of the house. Nothing must be touched, he said, until he had finished what he called his nosey-parkering. Nothing had been touched. Little Doctor Young, in his capacity as police surgeon for the district, had stressed the point from the moment of his arrival and Bunce, P.C., in his brief and enjoyable supremacy, had scared the life out of the servants, keeping them all confined to their own quarters. He had, however, set no watch at the gate and Vassily apparently escaped by the simple method of walking out at the back door.

Alleyn recovered from his momentary rage at the disappearance of the butler, rang up the station and found that the old Russian had, with peculiar ingenuousness, caught the ten-fifteen for London. The Inspector telephoned the Yard and gave orders that he should be traced and detained immediately.

By this time a detachment of plainclothes men had appeared at Frantock. Alleyn had the tall and quite unsurmountable fence inspected, mounted a guard of helmets, felt hats and waterproofs at the gates, and invited Detective-Sergeant Bailey, the finger-print expert who had come down with him, to attend him in the house. Mr. Bunce was also on tap in the hall. Handesley had been requested to detain his guests in the library or to let them loose in the garden.

“Now,” said Detective-Inspector Alleyn, “I’ll see Ethel, the only housemaid remaining. Ask her to come in, Bunce.”

Mary had been scared and Florence calm. Ethel, a pretty girl of about twenty-seven, was intelligent and interested.

“Where were you,” Alleyn asked her, “at ten to eight last night?”

“I was in my room upstairs, sir, at the end of the back corridor. I had just changed my apron and noticed the time and thought I would go downstairs and help Mary tidy the hall. So I came along the back corridor into the passage past the best bedrooms.”

“You mean past Mr. Bathgate’s room?”

“Yes, sir, that’s right. I got as far as the head of the stairs and looked over and I saw Mr. Rankin was still in the hall. Mary was there too, sir, locking the front door, and she looked up at me and jerked her head like, so I said to myself that I’d wait till the hall was clear before I came down. I turned back and as I passed Mr. Bathgate’s door I remembered I hadn’t brought his shaving water and that there was only two cigarettes left in his box. So I tapped on the door.”

“Yes?”

“The door wasn’t shut and when I tapped it, it swung in a bit like and at the same time Mr. Bathgate calls out, ‘Come in.’ So I went in and just as I was asking about the shaving water the lights went out and I felt all confused, sir, so I went out too, and kind of groped my way back to my own room, sir.”

“What was Mr. Bathgate doing?”

“Smoking a cigarette, sir, with a book in his hand. I think he had just called out something to Mr. Wilde who was bathing next door.”

“Thank you, Ethel.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ethel plaintively. She withdrew with some reluctance.

Alleyn, with a mental shrug at Nigel’s amazing imbecility in having overlooked his own cast-iron alibi, got on with the work. Roberts, the pantry man, proved unprofitable. He had been in his pantry solidly for twenty minutes when the gong sounded. The cook and odd-boy were also completely without interest Alleyn turned his attention to the hall itself.

He produced a tape measure and carefully took measurements between the cocktail table and the foot of the stairs. The tray with its sordid array of used glasses had been left untouched.

“All very nice and proper,” grumbled Alleyn to Detective-Sergeant Bailey, “nothing disturbed except the minor detail of the body.”

“Lovely funeral if we’d only had a corpse, sort of,” responded Bailey.

“Well, young Bathgate says the body was lying at right angles to the gong. The last that Mary saw of Mr. Rankin he was standing at the cocktail tray. Presumably at the end of it when he was struck. Come here, Bunce. How tall are you?”

“Five-foot-eleven in me socks, sir.”

“Good enough. The body is just on six foot. Stand here, will you?”

Bunce stood to attention and Alleyn walked round him, looking at him carefully.

“What do you make of this, Bailey?” he said. “This job was done inside five minutes at the most. The knife was in that leather slot by the stairs, unless it had been previously removed, which I think unlikely. Therefore, the murderer started off from here, took the thing in his right hand — so — and struck from the back.”

He went through the pantomime of stabbing the constable. “Now see what I mean. I’m six-foot-two, but I can’t get the right angle. Bend over, will you, Bunce. Ah, that’s more like it, but the bannister gets in the way. He may have been leaning over the tray. It’s too far if I stand on the bottom step. Wait a bit. See if you can get anything from the bottom knob of the bannister, will you, Bailey?”

“It’ll be a fair mess of prints,” said the expert glumly. He opened a small grip and busied himself with the contents.

Alleyn nosed round the hall. He inspected the main switch, the glasses, the cocktail shaker, the gong, all the tables and woodwork. He paused by the grate. The dead clinkers of last night’s fire were still there.

“I ses, ‘don’t you touch none of them grates,’ ” said Bunce suddenly, “there’s only gas upstairs.”

“Quite right,” rejoined the Inspector, “we will deal with the fireplaces ourselves.” He bent over the fireplace and taking a pair of tongs, removed the clinkers one by one, laying them on a piece of newspaper. As he did this he kept up a running commentary to Detective-Constable Bailey.

“You’ll find Miss North’s prints on that sketch plan of the house that I put on the tray there. Also Bathgate’s. We must have everyone’s, of course. The tooth mugs upstairs will be profitable in that direction. I hate asking for prints, it makes me feel so self-conscious. There’s nothing on the knife, needless to say— nor yet the switch. A nit-wit wouldn’t leave a print behind him nowadays if he could help it.”

“That’s right, sir,” agreed Bailey. “There’s a proper muck up on the bannister, but I rather think we’ll get something a bit better from the knob.”

“The knob, eh?” said Alleyn, who had now drawn out the ash tray from under the grate.

“Curious position, too. There’s a clear left hand impression pointing downwards. Quite an awkward place to get your left hand with the bannister curving out at the bottom the way it does. It’s right on the inside edge. Very clear, too. Saw it with me naked eye at once.”

“Your naked eye is uncanny, Bailey. Try the head of the stairs. Hullo, what’s this?”

He had been sifting the ashes in the tray and now paused, squatting on his heels and peering at a small grimy object in the palm of his hand.

“Made a find, sir?” said the finger-print expert, who was now at work on the stair head.

“Somebody’s been chucking away their belongings,” grunted the Inspector. He produced a small magnifying glass and squinted through it.

“A Dent’s press button,” he murmured, “with just a fragment of — yes, of leather — charred, but unmistakable. Ah, well.” He put his trophy in an envelope and wrote on the flap.

The next twenty minutes he spent crawling about the floor, standing on chairs to examine the stair well and outside of the treads, gingerly inspecting the cigarette boxes, and directing Bailey to test the coal-scuttle and fire-irons for prints.