“And now,” he said, “for the bedrooms. The mortuary van will be here any time now, Bunce. I’ll leave you to attend to that. Come on,” he said, and led the way upstairs. On the landing he paused and looked about him.

“On our left,” he informed Bailey, “the bedroom of Mrs. Wilde, the dressing-room of her husband, the bathroom, and Mr. Bathgate’s room. All communicating. Very matey and rather unusual. Well, begin at the beginning, I suppose.”

Mrs. Wilde’s room was disordered and bore a faint family likeness to a modern comedy bedroom. She had taken away its character and Florence had not been allowed to put it back. The bed had not been made and the early morning tea-tray was still on the table.

“There’s your mark for prints, Bailey,” said the Inspector, and once again the expert produced his bag.

“The alibi here is pretty good, I understand,” remarked Bailey, sifting a fine powder over the surface of a cup.

“Pretty good?” answered Alleyn. “It’s pretty damn good for all of ’em except Miss Grant. She did tell a nice meaty lie about her movements, and followed up with a faint on top of it.”

He opened a suitcase and began going through the contents.

“What about this Russian affair, sir? The doctor or whatever he is?”

“Yes, he seems to be a likely horse. Do you fancy him, Bailey?”

“Well, from what you’ve told me about the knife and all that, it looks sort of possible. Personally I favour the butler.”

“If Tokareff’s our man, he is pretty nimble on his pins. His room is some way along the passage and he sang, so they tell me, continuously. As for the butler— he was in the servants’ quarters the whole time and was seen there.”

“Is that dead certain, sir? After all, he has done a bunk.”

“True. He is rather tempting; but when we’ve got your prints from the bannister, I’ll know better if I’m on the right track. Do your stuff in the bathroom now, will you, Bailey? Bathgate and Wilde will be found to predominate. Then come back and go through this tallboy for me while I get on to the other rooms. Do you mind working out of your department for a bit?”

“Pleasure, sir. What am I looking for?”

“A single glove. Probably yellow dogskin. Right hand. I don’t expect to find it here. Make a list of all the clothes, please.”

“Right, sir,” said Bailey from the bathroom. Alleyn followed him and looked round the dressing-room and bathroom very carefully. Then he went into Nigel’s room.

It was much as it had been the night before. The bed had not been slept in. Alleyn had learnt from Bunce that Nigel had been up all night, trying to get calls through to the family solicitor, to his own office, and, on behalf of the police, to Scotland Yard. He had been invaluable to Handesley and to Angela North, had succeeded in getting Tokareff to stop talking and go to bed, and had silenced Mrs. Wilde’s hysterics when her husband had thrown up his hands in despair and left her to it. The Inspector considered Ethel’s statement that she had actually seen Nigel in his room as the lights went out good enough proof of his integrity. However, he examined the room carefully.

Conrad’s Suspense lay on the bedside table. The butts of two Sullivan Powell cigarettes were in the ash tray. An inquiry showed that these were the last in the cigarette box at seven-thirty the evening before, and Ethel, recalled, repeated that she had noticed the box empty and Mr. Bathgate smoking the last on her dramatically terminated visit. Mr. Bathgate’s own cigarettes were of a less expensive variety. “Exit Mr. Bathgate,” murmured the detective to himself. “He couldn’t smoke two cigarettes, commit a murder, and talk to a housemaid while he was doing it, in ten or twelve minutes.” He had come to this conclusion when the door opened and in walked Nigel himself.

At the sight of the Yard man in his room Nigel immediately felt as guilty as he would have done if his hands had been metaphorically drenched in his cousin’s blood.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I didn’t realize you were here — I’ll push off.”

“Don’t go,” said Alleyn amiably. “I’m not going to put the handcuffs on you. I want to ask you a question. Did you by any chance hear anything outside in the passage while you were dressing last night?”

“What sort of thing?” asked Nigel, overwhelmed with relief.

“Well, what does one hear in passages? Any sound of a footfall for instance?”

“No, nothing. You see, I was talking to Wilde all the time and his bath was running, too — I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything.”

“I understand Mrs. Wilde was in her room all this time. Do you remember hearing her voice?”

Nigel considered this carefully.

“Yes,” he said at last, “yes, I am positive I heard Mr. Wilde call out to her and I heard her answer him.”

“At what precise moment? Before or after the lights went out?”

Nigel sat on the bed with his head in his hands.

“I can’t be certain,” he said at last. “I’ll swear on oath I heard her voice and I think it was before and after the lights went out. Is it important?”

“Everything is important, but taken in conjunction with the icy Florence’s statement, your own is useful as a corroboration. Now, look here, show me Tokareff’s room, will you?”

“I think I know where it is,” said Nigel. He led the way down the passage into the back corridor and turned to the left. “Judging from my recollection of his vocal efforts, I should say this was it.”

Alleyn opened the door. The room was singularly tidy. The bed had been slept in, but was little disturbed. Dr. Tokareff would have appeared to have passed a particularly tranquil night. On the bedside table lay a Webster’s Dictionary and a well-thumbed copy of The Kreutzer Sonata in English.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Bathgate,” said Alleyn, “I can carry on here.”

Nigel withdrew, thankful to leave the atmosphere of official investigation and yet, paradoxically, conscious of a sense of thwarted curiosity.

Inspector Alleyn opened the wardrobe and drawers and noted down the contents, then turned his attention to the suitcase that had been neatly bestowed under one of the cupboards. In this he found a small leather writing case with a lock that responded at once to the attentions of a skeleton key. The case contained a number of documents typewritten in Russian, a few photographs, mostly of the doctor himself, and a small suède pouch in which he found a little seal set in a steel mount. Alleyn took it to the writing table, inked it and pressed it down on a piece of paper. It gave a tolerably clear impression of a long-bladed dagger. The Inspector whistled softly between his teeth and referring to the documents found a similar impression on many of the pages. He copied one or two sentences into his note-book, carefully cleaned the seal and replaced everything in the writing case, snapping the lock home and restoring the suitcase to its former position. Then he wrote a note in his little book, “Communicate with Sumiloff in re above” and with a final glance round, returned to the passage.

Next he went into Angela’s bedroom and then into Rosamund Grant’s. Finally he visited Sir Hubert Handesley’s bedroom, dressing-room, and bathroom. All these he subjected to a similar meticulous search, making a list of the clothes, going through the pockets, sorting, examining and restoring every movable and garment. He found little to interest him and had paused to light a cigarette in Handesley’s dressing-room, when a light rap on the door and a respectful murmur outside announced the presence of Detective-Constable Bailey.

Alleyn went out into the passage.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Bailey, “but I think I’ve got hold of something.”

“Where?”

“In the lady’s bedroom, sir. I’ve left it just as it is.”

“I’ll come,” said Alleyn.

They returned to Marjorie Wilde’s bedroom, passing Mary, all eyes, on the landing.