“Anybody come in?” he asked under his breath.

“No, sir.”

“Keep the press out, but admit anyone else and don’t let them go again. Take the names and say there’s been an accident in the vicinity and we’re doing a routine check.”

“Very good, sir.”

Alleyn returned to Warrender. “No one’s come in,” he said. “Where can we talk?”

Warrender glanced at him. “Not here,” he muttered, and led the way into the deserted drawing-room, now restored to order but filled with the flower-shop smell of Bertie Saracen’s decorations and the faint reek of cigarette smoke and alcohol. The connecting doors into the dining-room were open and beyond them, in the conservatory, Dr. Harkness could be seen, heavily asleep in a canvas chair and under observation by Inspector Fox. When Fox saw them he.came out and shut the glass door. “He’s down to it,” he said, “but rouseable. I thought I’d leave him as he is till required.”

Warrender turned on Alleyn. “Look here!” he demanded. “What is all this? Are you trying to make out there’s been any — any…” he boggled, “any hanky-panky?”

“We can’t take accident as a matter-of-course.”

“Why not? Clear as a pikestaff.”

“Our job,” Alleyn said patiently, “is to collect all the available information and present it to the coroner. At the moment we are not drawing any conclusions. Come sir,” he said, as Warrender still looked mulish, “I’m sure that, as a soldier, you’ll recognize the position. It’s a matter of procedure. After all, to be perfectly frank about it, a great many suicides as well as homicides have been rigged to look like accidents.”

“Either suggestion’s outrageous.”

“And will, we hope, soon turn out to be so.”

“But, good God, is there anything at all to make you suppose…” He stopped and jerked his hands ineloquently.

“Suppose what?”

“That it could be — either? Suicide — or murder?”

“Oh, yes,” Alleyn said. “Could be. Could be.”

“What? What evidence…?”

“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss details.”

“Why the hell not?”

“God bless my soul!” Alleyn exclaimed. “Do consider. Suppose it was murder — for all I know you might have done it. You can’t expect me to make you a present of what may turn out to be the police case against you.”

“I think you must be dotty,” said Colonel Warrender profoundly.

“Dotty or sane, I must get on with my job. Inspector Fox and I propose to have a word with those wretched people we’ve cooped up over the way. Would you rather return to Mr. Templeton, sir?”

“My God, no!” he ejaculated with some force and then looked hideously discomfited.

“Why not?” Alleyn asked coolly. “Have you had a row with him?”

“No!”

“Well, I’m afraid it’s a case of returning to him or staying with me.”

“I… God damn it, I’ll stick to you.”

“Right. Here we go, then.”

Bertie, Pinky, and Timon Gantry seemed hardly to have moved since he last saw them. Bertie was asleep in his chair and resembled an overdressed baby. Pinky had been crying. Gantry now was reading ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. He laid it aside and rose to his feet.

“I don’t want to be awkward,” Gantry said, “but I take leave to ask why the hell we’re being mewed up in this interminable and intolerable fashion.”

He used what was known in the theatre as the Terrifying Tone. He moved towards Alleyn, who was almost his own height.

“This room,” Bertie faintly complained as he opened his eyes, “would appear to be inhabited by angry giants.”

“You’re being mewed up,” Alleyn said with some evidence of toughness, “because of death. Death, for your information, with what are known as unexplained features. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be here. If you’re hungry, we shall arrange for food to be sent in. If you’re stuffy, you may walk in the garden. If you want to talk, you may use the telephone, and the usual offices are last on the right at the far end of the hall.”

There was an appreciable pause.

“And the worst of it is, Timmy angel,” Bertie said, “you can’t tell him the casting’s gone wrong and you’ll let him know if he’s wanted.”

Pinky was staring at Alleyn. “I never,” she muttered, “could have thought to see the day.”

There can be no dictator whose discomfiture will not bring some slight degree of pleasure, to his most ardent disciples. Bertie and Pinky, involuntarily, had given this reaction. There was a suggestion of repressed glee.

Gantry gave them the sort of look he would have thrown at an inattentive actor. They made their faces blank.

He drew in his breath. “So be it,” he said. “One submits. Naturally. Perhaps one would prefer to know a little more, but elucidation is evidently not an ingredient of the Yardly mystique.”

From his ramrod station inside the door, Warrender said, “Foul Play. What it amounts to. They’re suggesting foul play.”

“Oh my God!” cried Pinky and Bertie in unison. They turned sheet-white and began to talk at the tops of their voices. Fox took out his notebook.

Alleyn raised his hand and they petered out. “It doesn’t,” he said crossly, “amount to anything of the sort. The situation is precisely as I have tried to define it. There are unexplained discrepancies. They may add up to accident, suicide or homicide, and I know no better than any one of you what the answer will be. And now, if you please, we will try to arrive at a few possibly unimportant facts.”

To his surprise he found himself supported.

Timon Gantry said, “We’re being emotional and tedious. Pay no attention. Your facts?”

Alleyn said patiently, “Without any overtones or suggestions of criminal intention, I would rather like to trace exactly the movements of the group of people who were in conversation with Miss Bellamy during the last ten minutes or so of her life. You have all heard, ad nauseam, I daresay, of police routine. This is an example of it. I know you were all with her in the conservatory. I know each one of you, before the climax of her party, came out into the hall with the intention, Colonel Warrender tells me, of saying goodbye to two comparative strangers, who for some reason that has not yet been divulged, were leaving just before this climax. Among you was Mr. Richard Dakers, Miss Bellamy’s ward. Mr. Dakers left the house on the heels of those two guests. His reason for doing so may well be personal and, from my point of view, completely uninteresting. But I’ve got to clear him up. Now, then. Any of you know why they left and why he left?”

“Certainly,” Gantry said promptly. “He’s catched with Anelida Lee. No doubt he wanted to see more of her.”

“At that juncture? All right!” Alleyn added quickly. “We leave that one, do we? We take it that there was nothing remarkable about Octavius Browne and his niece sweeping out of the party, do we, and that it was the most natural thing in the world for Miss Bellamy’s ward to turn his back on her and follow them? Do we? Or do we?”

“Oh Lord, Lord, Lord!” Bertie wavered. “The way you put things.”

Pinky said, “I did hear the uncle remind her that they had to leave early.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

“Had any of you met them before?”

Silence.

“None of you? Why did you all feel it necessary to go into the hall to say goodbye to them?”

Pinky and Bertie looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes and Warrender cleared his throat. Gantry appeared to come to a decision.

“I don’t usually discuss this sort of thing outside the theatre,” he said, “but under the circumstances I suppose I’d better tell you. I’ve decided to hear Miss Lee read the leading role in…” he hesitated fractionally, “in a new play.”

“Really? Wonderful luck for her,” Alleyn said. “What play?”

“Oops!” Bertie said involuntarily.

“It’s called Husbandry in Heaven.”

“By…?”