“And had you ever seen the book before?”

“I seem to remember,” she began, and then looking from Alleyn to Fox with a new wariness, she said sharply: “Not to notice. Not to know what it was about.” And after a pause she added dully: “I’m not much of a one for reading.”

Alleyn said: “Miss Orrincourt, will you without prejudice tell me if you personally were responsible for any of the practical jokes other than the ones already under discussion?”

“I’m not answering any questions. I don’t know what’s going on here. A girl’s got to look after herself. I thought I had one friend in this crazy-gang, now I’m beginning to think he’s let me down.”

“I suppose,” said Alleyn, wearily, “you mean Sir Cedric Ancred?”

“Sir Cedric Ancred,” Miss Orrincourt repeated with a shrill laugh. “The bloody little baronet. Excuse my smile, but honestly it’s a scream.” She turned her back on them and walked out, leaving the door open.

They could still hear her laughing with unconvincing virtuosity as she walked away down the corridor.

v

“Have we,” Fox asked blandly, “got anywhere with that young lady? Or have we not?”

“Not very far, if anywhere at all,” Alleyn said, morosely. “I don’t know about you, Fox, but I found her performance tolerably convincing. Not that impressions of that sort amount to very much. Suppose she did put arsenic in the old man’s hot milk, wouldn’t this be the only line she could reasonably take? And at this stage of the proceedings, when I still have a very faint hope that we may come across something that blows their damn’ suspicions to smithereens, I couldn’t very well insist on anything. We’ll just have to go mousing along.”

“Where to?” Fox asked.

“For the moment, in different directions. I’ve been carrying you about like a broody hen, Foxkin, and it’s time you brought forth. Down you go and exercise the famous technique on Barker and his retinue of elderly maids. Find out all about the milk, trace its whole insipid history from cow to Thermos. Inspire gossip. Prattle. Seek out the paper-dump, the bottle-dump, the mops and the pails. Let us go clanking back to London like a dry canteen. Salvage the Thermos flask. We’ll have to try for an analysis but what a hope! Get along with you, Fox. Do your stuff.”

“And where may I ask, Mr. Alleyn, are you going?”

“Oh,” said Alleyn, “I’m a snob. I’m going to see the baronet.” Fox paused at the doorway. “Taking it by and large, sir,” he said, “and on the face of it as it stands, do you reckon there’ll be an exhumation?”

“There’ll be one exhumation at all events. To-morrow, if Dr. Curtis can manage it.”

“To-morrow!” said Fox, startled. “Dr. Curtis? Sir Henry Ancred?”

“No,” Alleyn said, “the cat, Carabbas.”

i

Alleyn interviewed Cedric in the library. It was a place without character or life. Rows of uniform editions stood coldly behind glass doors. There was no smell of tobacco, or memory of fires, only the darkness of an unused room.

Cedric’s manner was both effusive and uneasy. He made a little dart at Alleyn and flapped at his hand. He began at once to talk about Troy. “She was too marvellous, a perfect darling. So thrilling to watch her at work: that magical directness, almost intimidating, one felt. You must be madly proud of her, of course.”

His mouth opened and shut, his teeth glinted, his pale eyes stared and his voice gabbled on and on. He was restless too, and wandered about the room aimlessly, lifting lids of empty cigarette boxes and moving ornaments. He recalled acquaintance with Alleyn’s nephews, with whom, he said, he had been at school. He professed a passionate interest in Alleyn’s work. He returned again to Troy, suggesting that he alone among the Philistines had spoken her language. There was a disquieting element in all this, and Alleyn, when an opportunity came, cut across it.

“One moment,” he said. “Our visit is an official one. I’m sure you will agree that we should keep it so. May we simply think the fact of my wife having been commissioned to paint Sir Henry a sort of freakish coincidence and nothing to do with the matter in hand? Except, of course, in so far as her job may turn out to have any bearing on the circumstances.”

Cedric’s mouth had remained slightly open. He turned pink, touched his hair, and said: “Of course if you feel like that about it. I merely thought that a friendly atmosphere—”

“That was extremely kind,” said Alleyn.

“Unless your somewhat muscular sense of the official proprieties forbids it,” Cedric suggested acidly, “shall we at least sit down?”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn tranquilly, “that would be much more comfortable.”

He sat in a vast arm-chair, crossed his knees, joined his hands, and with what Troy called his donnish manner, prepared to tackle Cedric.

“Mr. Thomas Ancred tells me you share the feeling that further inquiries should be made into the circumstances of Sir Henry’s death.”

“Well, I suppose I do,” Cedric agreed fretfully. “I mean, it’s all pretty vexing, isn’t it? Well, I mean one would like to know. All sorts of things depend… And yet again it’s not very delicious… Of course, when one considers that I’m the one who’s most involved… Well, look at me. Incarcerated, in this frightful house! And the entail a pittance. All those taxes too, and rapacious death duties. Never, never will anybody be found mad enough to rent it, and as for schools, Carol Able does nothing but exclaim how inconvenient and how damp. And now the war’s over the problem children will be hurtled away. One will be left to wander in rags down whispering corridors. So that you see,” he added, waving his hands, “one does rather wonder—”

“Quite so.”

“And they will keep talking about me as Head of the Family. Before I know where I am I shall have turned into another Old Person.”

“There are one or two points,” Alleyn began, and immediately Cedric leant forward with an ineffable air of concentration, “that we’d like to clear up. The first is the authorship of these anonymous letters.”

“Well, I didn’t write them.”

“Have you any idea who did?”

“Personally I favour my Aunt Pauline.”

“Really! Why?”

“She prefaces almost every remark she makes with the phrase: ‘I have reason to believe.’

“Have you asked Mrs. Kentish if she wrote the letters?”

“Yes, indeed. She denies it hotly. Then there’s Aunt Dessy. Quite capable, in a way, but more likely, one would have thought, to tell us flatly what she suspected. I mean, why go in for all this hush-hush letter-writing? That leaves my cousins Paul and Fenella, who are, one imagines, too pleasurably engrossed in their amorous martyrdom for any outside activities; my Mama, who is much too common-sensical; my aunt-in-law, Jenetta, who is too grand; and all the servants led by the Ancient of Days. That, as they say in sporting circles, is the field. Unless you feel inclined to take in the squire and the parson and dear old Rattlebones himself. It couldn’t be more baffling. No, on the whole I plump for Pauline. She’s about somewhere. Have you encountered her? Since the Tragedy she is almost indistinguishable from Lady Macduff. Or perhaps that frightful Shakespearian dowager who curses her way up hill and down dale through one of the historical dramas. Constance? Yes, Pauline is now all compact of tragedy. Dessy’s pretty bad, but wait till you meet Pauline.”

“Do you know if there’s any paper in the house of the kind used for these letters?”

“Gracious, no! Exercise-book paper! The servants wouldn’t have had it at any price. By the way, talking of exercise books, do you think Caroline Able might have done it? I mean, she’s so wrapped up in id and isms and tracing everything back to the Oedipus Complex. Might it perhaps have all snapped back at her and made her a weeny bit odd? It’s only an idea, of course. I merely throw it out for what it’s worth.”