“I reckon,” said Fox, “it’s going to be a case for the Home Secretary.”

“Oh, yes, yes, I’m afraid you’re right. Down this passage, didn’t they say? And there’s the green baize door. I think we’ll separate here, Fox. You to collect your unconsidered trifles in Isabel’s case and, by the way, you might take charge of Miss Orrincourt’s. Here it is. Then, secretly, Foxkin, exhume Carabbas, deceased, and enclose him in a boot-box. By the way, do we know who destroyed poor Carabbas?”

“Mr. Barker,” said Fox, “got Mr. Juniper to come up and give him an injection. Strychnine, I fancy.”

“I hope, whatever it was, it doesn’t interfere with the autopsy. I’ll meet you on the second terrace.”

Beyond the green baize door the whole atmosphere of Ancreton was charged. Coir runners replaced the heavy carpets, passages were draughty and smelt of disinfectant, and where Victorian prints may have hung there were pictures of determined modernity that had been executed with a bright disdain for comfortable, but doubtless undesirable, prettiness.

Led by a terrific rumpus, Alleyn found his way to a large room where Miss Able’s charges were assembled, with building games, with modelling clay, with paints, hammers, sheets of paper, scissors and paste. Panty, he saw, was conducting a game with scales, weights and bags of sand, and appeared to be in hot dispute with a small boy. When she saw Alleyn she flung herself into a strange attitude and screamed with affected laughter. He waved to her and she at once did a comedy fall to the floor, where she remained, apeing violent astonishment.

Miss Caroline Able detached herself from a distant group and came towards him.

“We’re rather noisy in here,” she said crisply. “Shall we go to my office? Miss Watson, will you carry on?”

“Certainly, Miss Able,” said an older lady, rising from behind a mass of children.

“Come along, then,” said Caroline Able.

Her office was near at hand and was hung with charts and diagrams. She seated herself behind an orderly desk, upon which he at once noticed a pile of essays written on paper with yellow lines and ruled margin.

“I suppose you know what all this is about,” he said.

Miss Able replied cheerfully that she thought she did. “I see,” she said frankly, “quite a lot of Thomas Ancred and he’s told me about all the trouble. It’s been a pretty balanced account, as a matter of fact. He’s fairly well adjusted, and has been able to deal with it quite satisfactorily so far.”

Alleyn understood this to be a professional opinion on Thomas, and wondered if a courtship had developed and if it was conducted on these lines. Miss Able was pretty. She had a clear skin, large eyes and good teeth. She also had an intimidating air of utter sanity.

“I’d like to know,” he said, “what you think about it all.”

“It’s impossible to give an opinion that’s worth much,” she replied, “without a pretty thorough analysis of one if not all of them. Obviously the relationship with their father was unsatisfactory. I should have liked to know about his marriage. One suspected, of course, that there was a fear of impotency, not altogether sublimated. The daughter’s violent antagonism to his proposed second marriage suggsts a rather bad father-fixation.”

“Does it? But it wasn’t a particularly suitable alliance from— from the ordinary point of view, was it?”

“If the relationship with the father,” Miss Able said firmly, “had been properly adjusted, the children should not have been profoundly disturbed.”

“Not even,” Alleyn ventured, “by the prospect of Miss O. as a mother-in-law and principal beneficiary in the Will?”

“Those may have been the reasons advanced to explain their antagonism. They may represent an attempt to rationalise a basic and essentially sexual repulsion.”

“Oh, dear!”

“But, as I said before,” she added, with a candid laugh, “one shouldn’t pronounce on mere observation. Deep analysis might lead to a much more complex state of affairs.”

“You know,” Alleyn said, taking out his pipe and nursing it in his palm, “you and I, Miss Able, represent two aspects of investigation. Your professional training teaches you that behaviour is a sort of code or cryptogram disguising the pathological truth from the uninformed, but revealing it to the expert. Mine teaches me to regard behaviour as something infinitely variable after the fact and often at complete loggerheads with the fact. A policeman watches behaviour, of course, but his deductions would seem completely superficial to you.” He opened his hand. “I see a man turning a dead pipe about in his hand and I think that, perhaps unconsciously, he’s longing to smoke it. May he?”

“Do,” said Miss Able. “It’s a good illustration. I see a man caressing his pipe and I recognise a very familiar piece of fetishism.”

“Well, don’t tell me what it is,” Alleyn said hurriedly.

Miss Able gave a short professional laugh.

“Now, look here,” he said, “how do you account for these anonymous letters we’re all so tired of? What sort of being perpetrated them and why?”

“They probably represent an attempt to make an effect and are done by someone whose normal creative impulses have taken the wrong turning. The desire to be mysterious and omnipotent may be an additional factor. In Patricia’s case for instance—”

“Patricia? Oh, I see. That’s Panty, of course.”

“We don’t use her nickname over here. We don’t think it a good idea. We think nicknames can have a very definite effect, particularly when they are of a rather humiliating character.”

“I see. Well, then, in Patricia’s case?”

“She formed the habit of perpetrating rather silly jokes on people. This was an attempt to command attention. She used to let her performances remain anonymous. Now she usually brags about them. That, of course, is a good sign.”

“It’s an indication, at least, that she’s not the author of the more recent practical jokes on her grandfather.”

“I agree.”

“Or the author of the anonymous letters.”

“That, I should have thought,” said Miss Able patiently, “was perfectly obvious.”

“Who do you think is responsible for the letters?”

“I’ve told you, I can’t make snap decisions or guesses.”

“Couldn’t you just unbend far enough to have one little potshot?” he said persuasively. Miss Able opened her mouth, shut it again, looked at him with somewhat diminished composure and finally blushed. “Come!” he thought, “she hasn’t analysed herself into an iceberg, at least.” And he said aloud: “Without prejudice, now, who among the grown-ups would you back as the letter-writer?” He leant forward, smiling at her, and thought: “Troy would grin if she saw this exhibition.” As Miss Able still hesitated, he repeated: “Come on; who would you back?”

“You’re very silly,” Miss Able said, and her manner, if not coy, was at least very much less impersonal.

“Would you say,” Alleyn went on, “that the person who wrote them is by any chance the practical joker?”

“Quite possible.”

He reached a long arm over the desk and touched the top sheet of the exercises. “They were written,” he said, “on this paper.”

Her face was crimson. With a curious and unexpected gesture she covered the paper with her hands. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

“Will you let me look at it? ” He drew the sheet out from under her hands and held it to the light. “Yes,” he said. “Rather an unusual type with a margin. It’s the same watermark.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“He?”

“Tom,” she said, and the diminutive cast a new light upon Thomas. “He’s incapable of it.”

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Then why bring him up?”

“Patricia,” said Miss Able, turning a deeper red, “must have taken some of this exercise paper over to the other side. Or…” She paused, frowning.

“Yes?”

“Her mother comes over here a great deal. Too often, I sometimes think. She’s not very wise with children.”