“Where is the paper kept?”

“In that cupboard. The top one. Out of reach of the children.”

“Do you keep it locked?”

She turned on him quickly.

“You’re not going to suggest that I would write anonymous letters? I?”

“But you do keep it locked, don’t you?” said Alleyn.

“Certainly. I haven’t denied that.”

“And the key?”

“On my ring and in my pocket.”

“Has the cupboard been left open at all? Or the keys left out of your pocket?”

“Never.”

“The paper comes from a village shop, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does. Anyone could buy it.”

“So they could,” he agreed cheerfully, “and we can find out if they have. There’s no need, you see, to fly into a huff with me.”

“I do not,” said Miss Able mulishly, “fly into huffs.”

“Splendid! Now look here. About this medicine your kids had. I want to trace its travels. Not inside the wretched kids, but en route to them.”

“I really don’t see why—”

“Of course you don’t and I’ll tell you. A bottle of medicine for Sir Henry came up at the same time and its history is therefore bound up with theirs. Now, as the pudding said to the shop assistant, can you help me, Moddom?”

This laborious pun was not immediately absorbed by Miss Able. She looked at him with wonder but finally produced a tolerably indulgent smile.

“I suppose I can. Miss Orrincourt and Mrs. Alleyn…”

Here came the now familiar pause and its inevitable explanation. “Fancy!” said Miss Able. “I know,” said Alleyn. “About the medicine?”

“I was really very annoyed with Miss Orrincourt. It seems that she asked Mrs. Alleyn to drive the trap round to the stables and she herself brought in the medicine. Instead of leaving it in the hall, or as you would think she might have done, bringing it in here to me, she simply dumped the whole lot in the flower-room. It seems that Sir Henry had given her some flowers out of the conservatory and she’d left them there. She’s abnormally egocentric, of course. I waited and waited, and finally, at about seven o’clock, went over to the other side to ask about it. Mrs. Ancred and I hunted everywhere. Finally, it was Fenella who told us where they were.”

“Was Sir Henry’s medicine with theirs?”

“Oh, yes. Mrs. Ancred sent it up at once.”

“Were the bottles alike?”

“We made no mistake, if that’s what you’re wondering. They were the same sort of bottles, but ours was much larger and they were both clearly labelled. Ours had the instructions attached. Unnecessarily, as it turned out, because Dr. Withers came up himself that evening and he weighed the children again and measured out their doses himself. It was odd, because he’d left it that I should give the medicine and I could have managed perfectly well; but evidently,” said Miss Able with a short laugh, “he’d decided I was not to be trusted.”

“It’s a fault on the right side, I suppose,” Alleyn said vaguely. “They have to be careful.”

Miss Able looked unconvinced. “No doubt,” she said. “But I still can’t understand why he wanted to come up to Ancreton, when he was supposed to be so busy. And after all that fuss, we’ve had to go back to the ointment.”

“By the way,” Alleyn asked, “did you happen to see the cat Carabbas before it died?”

Instantly she was away on her professional hobby-horse. He listened to an exposition on Panty’s fondness for the cat, and the strange deductions which Miss Able drew, with perfect virtuosity, from this not unusual relationship.

“At this stage of her development, it was really a bad disturbance when the link was broken.”

“But,” Alleyn ventured, “if the cat had ringworm…”

“It wasn’t ringworm,” said Miss Able firmly. “I ought to know. It might have been mange.”

Upon that pronouncement he left her, apparently in two minds about himself. She shook hands with an air of finality, but when he reached the door he thought he heard an indeterminate sound, and turned to find her looking anxiously at him.

“Is there anything else?” he asked.

“It’s only that I’m worried about Tom Ancred. They’re dragging him in and making him do all their dirty work. He’s quite different. He’s too good for them. I’m afraid this will upset him.”

And then with a rather strenuous resumption of her professional manner: “Psychologically, I mean,” said Miss Able.

“I quite understand,” said Alleyn, and left her.

He found Fox waiting for him on the second terrace. Fox was sitting on the steps with his greatcoat drawn closely round him and his spectacles on his nose. He was reading from the manual on poisons which Alleyn had lent him in the train. By his side were two suitcases. One of these Alleyn recognized as Miss Orrincourt’s. The other, he presumed, was Isabel’s. Near by was a boot-box tied up with string. As Alleyn bent over Fox he noticed an unpleasant smell.

“Carabbas?” he asked, edging the box away with his foot.

Fox nodded. “I’ve been asking myself,” he said, and placed a square finger under a line of print. Alleyn read over his shoulder. “Arsenic. Symptoms. Manifested as progressive cachexia and loss of flesh; falling out of hair…”

Fox glanced up and jerked a thumb at the boot-box.

“Falling out of hair,” he said. “Wait till you’ve had a look at Carabbas deceased.”

iii

“You know, Fox,” Alleyn said as they walked back to the village, “if Thomas Ancred can stand having his lightest cares implacably laid at the door of some infantile impropriety, he and Miss Able will probably get along together very nicely. Obviously, she’s in love with him, or should I say that obviously she finds herself adjusted to a condition of rationalized eroticism in relation to poor old Thomas?”

“Courting, do you reckon?”

“I think so, Fox, I think we’ve had Ancreton for the moment, but I’m going to ask you to stay behind and warn the parson about an exhumation. Return to Katzenjammer Castle in the morning and ask the inmates if they’ve any objection to having their prints taken. They won’t have any if they’re not completely dotty. Bailey can come down by the morning train and work round the house for the stuff we want there. Get him to check prints on any relevant surfaces. It’ll all be utterly useless no doubt, but it had better be done. I’ll go back to the Yard. I want to learn Messrs. Mortimer and Loame’s recipe for tasteful embalming. As soon as we get the exhumation order through we’ll come down and meet you here. There’s a train this evening. Let’s have a meal at the pub and then I’ll catch it. I was going to see Dr. Withers again, but I fancy that particular interview had better wait. I want to get the medicine bottle and poor old Carabbas up to London.”

“What’s the betting, Mr. Alleyn? Arsenic in the medicine or not?”

“I’m betting not.”

“Routine job. It’ll be a nuisance if they don’t find anything, though. Not a hope with the Thermos.”

“No, damn it.”

They walked in silence. Frost tingled in the dusk and hardened the ground under their feet. A pleasant smell of burning wood laced the air and from Ancreton woods came the sound of wings.

“What a job!” Alleyn said suddenly.

“Ours, sir?”

“Yes, ours. Walking down a country lane with a dead cat in a boot-box and working out procedure for disentombing the body of an old man.”

“Somebody’s got to do it.”

“Certainly. But the details are unlovely.”

“Not much doubt about it, sir, is there? Homicide?”

“Not much doubt, old thing. No.”

“Well,” said Fox, after a pause, “as it stands, the evidence all points one way. It’s not one of those funny affairs where you have to clear up half a dozen suspects.”

“But why kill him? She knew the Will was in her favour. She wanted to be Lady Ancred. She knew he wasn’t likely to live much longer. Why incur the appalling risk when all she had to do was marry him and wait?”