“He had indeed, poor chap.”

“So did they all, if it comes to that. She must have been a very vexing sort of lady. There’ll have to be a p.m., Mr. Alleyn.”

“Yes, of course. All right. I’ll see these people next door.”

He re-covered the face and went out.

Dr. Harkness and Florence were in the hall, watched over by a Yard reinforcement. Alleyn said, “I think you’d better come in with me, if you will, Harkness.” And to Florence, “You’ll stay where you are for the moment, if you please.”

Harkness followed him into the boudoir.

It had been created by Bertie Saracen in an opulent mood and contrasted strangely with the exquisite austerity of the study. “Almost indecently you, darling!” Bertie had told Miss Bellamy and, almost indecently, it was so.

Its present occupants — Richard, Anelida and Warrender — were standing awkwardly in the middle of this room, overlooked by an enormous and immensely vivacious portrait in pastel of Mary Bellamy. Charles, photographed some twenty years ago, gazed mildly from the centre of an occasional table. To Alleyn there was something atrociously ironic in this circumstance.

Richard demanded at once: “What is it? What happened? Is Charles…?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “It’s bad news. He collapsed a few minutes ago.”

“But…? You don’t mean…?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Richard said, “Anelida! It’s Charles. He means Charles has died. Doesn’t he?”

“Why,” she said fiercely, “must these things happen to you. Why?”

Dr. Harkness went up to him. “Sorry, old boy,” he said, “I tried but it was no good. It might have happened any time during the last five years, you know.”

Richard stared blankly at him. “My God!” he cried out. “You can’t talk like that!”

“Steady, old chap. You’ll realize, when you think it over. Any time.”

“I don’t believe you. It’s because of everything else. It’s because of Mary and…” Richard turned on Alleyn. “You’d no right to subject him to all this. It’s killed him. You’d no right. If it hadn’t been for you it needn’t have happened.”

Alleyn said very compassionately, “That may be true. He was in great distress. It may even be that for him this was the best solution.”

“How dare you say that!” Richard exclaimed and then, “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think he’d pretty well got to the end of his tether? He’d lost the thing he most valued in life, hadn’t he?”

“I–I want to see him.”

Alleyn remembered Charles’s face. “Then you shall,” he promised, “presently.”

“Yes,” Harkness agreed quickly. “Presently.”

“For the moment,” Alleyn said, turning to Anelida, “I suggest that you take him up to his old room and give him a drink. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” Anelida said. “That’s the thing.” She put her hand in Richard’s. “Coming?”

He looked down at her. “I wonder,” he said, “what on earth I should do without you, Anelida.”

“Come on,” she said, and they went out together.

Alleyn nodded to Harkness and he too went out.

An affected little French clock above the fireplace cleared its throat, broke into a perfect frenzy of silvery chimes and then struck midnight. Inspector Fox came into the room and shut the door.

Alleyn looked at Maurice Warrender.

“And now,” he said, “there must be an end to equivocation. I must have the truth.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Warrender, and could scarcely have sounded less convincing.

“I wonder why people always say that when they know precisely what one does mean. However, I’d better tell you. A few minutes ago, immediately after Charles Templeton died, I talked to the nanny, Mrs. Plumtree, who had been alone with him at the moment of his collapse. I told her that I believed she had uttered threats, that she had acted in this way because she thought Templeton was withholding information which would clear your son from suspicion of murder and that under the stress of this scene, Templeton suffered the heart attack from which he died. I told her your son was in no danger of arrest and she then admitted the whole story. I now tell you, too, that your son is in no danger. If you have withheld information for fear of incriminating him, you may understand that you have acted mistakenly.”

Warrender seemed to be on the point of speaking but instead turned abruptly away and stood very still.

“You refused to tell me of the threats Mrs. Templeton uttered in the conservatory and I got them, after great difficulty it’s true, from the other people who were there. When I asked you if you had quarrelled with Charles Templeton you denied it. I believe that, in fact, you had quarrelled with him and that it happened while you were together in the study before I saw you for the first time. For the whole of that interview you scarcely so much as looked at each other. He was obviously distressed by your presence and you were violently opposed to rejoining him there. I must ask you again. Had you quarrelled?”

Warrender muttered, “If you call it a quarrel.”

“Was it about Richard Dakers?” Alleyn waited. “I think it was,” he said, “but of course that’s mere speculation and open, if you like, to contradiction.”

Warrender squared his shoulders. “What’s all this leading up to?” he demanded. “An arrest?”

“Surely you’ve heard of the usual warning. Come, sir, you did have a scene with Charles Templeton and I believe it was about Richard Dakers. Did you tell Templeton you were the father?”

“I did not,” he said quickly.

“Did he know you were the father?”

“Not… We agreed from the outset that it was better that he shouldn’t know. That nobody should know. Better on all counts.”

“You haven’t really answered my question, have you? Shall I put it this way? Did Templeton learn for the first time, this afternoon, that Dakers is your son?”

“Why should you suppose anything of the sort?”

“Your normal relationship appears to have been happy, yet at this time, when one would have expected you all to come together in your common trouble, he showed a vehement disinclination to see Dakers — or you.”

Warrender made an unexpected gesture. He flung out his hands and lifted his shoulders. “Very well,” he said.

“And you didn’t tell him.” Alleyn walked up to him and looked him full in the face. “She told him,” he said. “Didn’t she? Without consulting you, without any consideration for you or the boy. Because she was in one of those tantrums that have become less and less controllable. She made you spray that unspeakable scent over her in his presence, I suppose to irritate him. You went out and left them together. And she broke the silence of thirty years and told him.”

“You can’t possibly know.”

“When she left the room a minute or two later she shouted at the top of her voice: ‘Which only shows how wrong you were. You can get out whenever you like, my friend, and the sooner the better.’ Florence had gone. You had gone. She was speaking to her husband. Did she tell you?”

“Tell me! What the hell…”

“Did she tell you what she’d said to Templeton?”

Warrender turned away to the fireplace, leant his arm on the shelf and hid his face.

“All right!” he stammered. “All right! What does it matter, now. All right.”

“Was it during the party?”

He made some kind of sound, apparently in assent.

“Before or after the row in the conservatory?”

“After.” He didn’t raise his head and his voice sounded as if it didn’t belong to him. “I tried to stop her attacking the girl.”

“And that turned her against you? Yes, I see.”

“I was following them, the girl and her uncle, and she whispered it. ‘Charles knows about Dicky.’ It was quite dreadful to see her look like that. I–I simply walked out — I…” He raised his head and looked at Alleyn. “It was indescribable.”

“And your great fear after that was that she would tell the boy?”