“By this time,” said Fox sourly, “they’ll probably have had it repapered.”

“I wonder if Paul Kentish is handy with electrical gadgets. I’ll wager Cedric Ancred isn’t.”

“What’s that?” Fox demanded.

“What’s what?”

“I can hear something. A child crying, isn’t it, sir?”

They had reached the second terrace. At each end of this terrace, between the potato-field and the woods, were shrubberies and young copses. From the bushes on their left hand came a thin intermittent wailing; very dolorous. They paused uncertainly, staring at each other. The wailing stopped, and into the silence welled the accustomed sounds of the countryside — the wintry chittering of birds and the faint click of naked branches.

“Would it be some kind of bird, should you say?” Fox speculated.

“No bird!” Alleyn began and stopped short. “There it is again.” It was a thin piping sound, waving and irregular and the effect of it was peculiarly distressing. Without further speculation they set off across the rough and still frost-encrusted ground. As they drew nearer to it the sound became, not articulate, but more complex, and presently, when they had drawn quite close, developed a new character. “It’s mixed up,” Fox whispered, “with a kind of singing.”

“For ever and ever,” the thin voice repeated, and drifted off again into its former desolate wail. As they brushed against the first low bushes it ceased, and there followed a wary silence disrupted by harsh sobbing.

Between the bushes and the copse they came upon a little girl in a white cap, sitting by a newly-turned mound of earth. A child’s spade was beside her. Stuck irregularly in the mound of earth were a few heads of geraniums. A piece of paper threaded on a twig stood crookedly at the head of the mound. The little girl’s hands were earthy, and she had knuckled her eyes so that black streaks ran down her face. She crouched there scowling at them, rather like an animal that flattens itself near the ground, unable to obey its own instinct for flight.

“Hallo,” said Alleyn, “this is a bad job!” And unable to think of a more satisfactory opening, he heard himself repeating Dr. Withers’s phrase. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

The little girl was convulsed, briefly, by a sob. Alleyn squatted beside her and examined the writing on the paper. It had been executed in large shaky capitals.

“Was Carabbas,” Alleyn ventured, “your own cat?”

Panty glared at him and slowly shook her head.

Alleyn said quickly: “How stupid of me; he was your grandfather’s cat, wasn’t he?”

“He loved me,” said Panty on a high note. “Better than he loved Noddy. He loved me better than he loved anybody. I was his friend.” Her voice rose piercingly like the whistle of a small engine. “And I didn’t,” she screamed, “I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t give him the ringworms. I hate my Auntie Milly. I wish she was dead. I wish they were all dead. I’ll kill my Auntie Milly.” She beat on the ground with her fists, and, catching sight of Fox, screamed at him: “Get out of here, will you? This is my place.”

Fox stepped back hastily.

“I’ve heard,” said Alleyn, cautiously, “about Carabbas and about you. You paint pictures, don’t you? Have you painted any more pictures lately?”

“I don’t want to paint any more pictures,” said Panty.

“That’s a pity, because we rather thought of sending you a box of paints for yourself from London.”

Panty sobbed dryly. “Who did?” she said.

“Troy Alleyn,” said Alleyn. “Mrs. Alleyn, you know. She’s my wife.”

“If I painted a picture of my Auntie Milly,” said Panty, “I’d give her pig’s whiskers, and she’d look like Judas Iscariot. They said my cat Carabbas had the ringworms, and they said I’d given them to him, and they’re all, all liars. He hadn’t, and I didn’t. It was only his poor fur coming out.”

With the abandon which Troy had witnessed in the little theatre, Panty flung herself face forward on the ground and kicked. Tentatively Alleyn bent over her, and after a moment’s hesitation picked her up. For a moment or two she fought violently, but suddenly, with an air of desolation, let her arms fall and hung limply in his hands.

“Never mind, Panty,” Alleyn muttered helplessly. “Here, let’s mop up your face.” He felt in his pocket and his fingers closed round a hard object. “Look here,” he said. “Look what I’ve got,” and pulled out a small packet. “Do you ever play Happy Families?” he said. He pushed the box of cards into her hands and not very successfully mopped her face with his handkerchief. “Let’s move on,” he said to Fox.

He carried the now inert Panty across to the third flight of steps. Here she began to wriggle, and he put her down.

“I want to play Happy Families,” said Panty thickly. “Here,” she added. She squatted down, and, still interrupting herself from time to time with a hiccuping sob, opened her pack of picture cards, and with filthy fingers began to deal them into three heaps.

“Sit down, Fox,” said Alleyn. “You’re going to play Happy Families.”

Fox sat uneasily on the second step.

Panty was a slow dealer, principally because she examined the face of each card before she put it down.

“Do you know the rules?” Alleyn asked Fox.

“I can’t say I do,” he replied, putting on his spectacles. “Would it be anything like euchre?”

“Not much, but you’ll pick it up. The object is to collect a family. Would you be good enough,” he said, turning to Panty, “to oblige me with Mrs. Snips the Tailor’s Wife?”

“You didn’t say ‘Please,’ so it’s my turn,” said Panty. “Give me Mr. Snips, the Tailor, and Master Snips and Miss Snips, please.”

“Damn,” said Alleyn. “Here you are,” and handed over the cards, each with its cut of an antic who might have walked out of a Victorian volume of Punch.

Panty pushed these cards underneath her and sat on them. Her bloomers, true to her legend, were conspicuous; “Now,” she said, turning a bleary glance on Fox, “you give me—”

“Don’t I get a turn?” asked Fox.

“Not unless she goes wrong,” said Alleyn. “You’ll learn.”

“Give me,” said Panty, “Master Grit, the Grocer’s Son.”

“Doesn’t she have to say ‘please’?”

“Please,” yelled Panty. “I said ‘please’. Please.”

Fox handed over the card.

“And Mrs. Grit,” Panty went on.

“It beats me,” said Fox, “how she knows.”

“She knows,” said Alleyn, “because she looked.”

Panty laughed raucously. “And you give me Mr. Bull, the Butcher,” she demanded, turning on Alleyn. “Please.”

“Not at home,” said Alleyn triumphantly. “And now, you see, Fox, it’s my turn.”

“The game seems crook to me,” said Fox, gloomily.

“Master Bun,” Panty remarked presently, “is azzakerly like my Uncle Thomas.” Alleyn, in imagination, changed the grotesque faces on all the cards to those of the Ancreds as Troy had drawn them in her notebook. “So he is,” he said. “And now I know you’ve got him. Please give me Master Ancred, the Actor’s Son.” This sally afforded Panty exquisite amusement. With primitive guffaws she began to demand cards under the names of her immediate relations and to the utter confusion of the game.

“There now,” said Alleyn at last, in a voice that struck him as being odiously complacent. “That was a lovely game. Suppose you take us up to see the — ah—”

“The Happy Family,” Fox prompted in a wooden voice.

“Certainly,” said Alleyn.

“Why?” Panty demanded.