“But you didn’t consent?”

“I must confess, Chief Inspector, I–I—the situation was most awkward. I feared, he would upset himself seriously. I must confess that I compromaysed. In point of fact, I—”

“You consented?”

“I would have gladly refused the commission altogether but he would take no refusal. He forced me to take the book away with me. I returned it with compliments, and without comment through the registered post. He replied that when the time came I was to understand my instructions. The — ah — the time came and — and—”

“You followed your own method, and said nothing to anybody?”

“It seemed the only thing to do. Anything else was impossible from the point of view of technique. Ridiculous, in fact. Such preposterous ingredients! You can’t imagine.”

“Well,” said Fox, “as long as you can testify there was no arsenic. Eh, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I must say,” said Mr. Mortimer, “I don’t at all care for the idea of giving evidence in an affair of this sort. Ours is a delicate, and you might say exclusive, profession, Chief Inspector. Publicity of this kind is most undesirable.”

“You may not be subpoenaed, after all,” said Alleyn.

“Not? But I understood Inspector Fox to say—”

“You never know. Cheer up, Mr. Mortimer.”

Mr. Mortimer muttered to himself disconsolately and fell into a doze.

“What about the cat?” Fox asked. “And the bottle of medicine?”

“No report yet.”

“We’ve been busy,” Dr. Curtis complained. “You and your cats! The report should be in some time to-day. What’s all this about a cat anyway?”

“Never you mind,” Alleyn grunted, “you do your Marsh-Berzelius tests with a nice open mind. And your Fresenius process later on, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Dr. Curtis paused in the act of lighting his pipe. “Fresenius process?” he said.

“Yes, and your ammonium chloride and your potassium iodide and your Bunsen flame and your platinum wire. And look for the pretty green line, blast you!”

After a long silence Dr. Curtis said: “It’s like that, is it?” and glanced at Mr. Mortimer.

“It may be like that.”

“Having regard to the general lay-out?”

“That’s the burden of our song.”

Fox said suddenly: “Was he bald when they laid him out?”

“Not he. Mrs. Henry Ancred and Mrs. Kentish were both present. They’d have noticed. Besides, the hair was there, Fox. We collected it while you were ministering to Thomas.”

“Oh!” Fox ruminated for a time and then said loudly: “Mr. Mortimer! Mr. Mortimer!”

«Wha—?”

“Did you notice Sir Henry’s hair when you were working on him?”

“Eh! Oh, yes,” said Mr. Mortimer, hurriedly, but in a voice slurred with sleep. “Yes, indeed. We all remarked on it. A magnificent head of hair.” He yawned hideously. “A magnificent head of hair,” he repeated.

Alleyn looked at Dr. Curtis. “Consistent?” he asked.

“With your green line? Yes.”

“Pardon?” said Mr. Mortimer anxiously.

“All right, Mr. Mortimer. Nothing. We’re in London. You’ll be in bed by daybreak.”

i

At breakfast Alleyn said: “This case of ours is doing the usual snowball business, Troy.”

“Gathering up complications as it goes?”

“A mass of murky stuff in this instance. Grubby stuff, and a lot of it waste matter. Do you want an interim report?”

“Only if you feel like making one. And is there enough time?”

“Actually there’s not. I can answer a crisp question or two, though, if you care to rap them out at me.”

“You know, I expect, what they’ll be.”

“Was Ancred murdered? I think so. Did Sonia Orrincourt do it? I don’t know. I shall know, I believe, when the analyst sends in his report.”

“If he finds the arsenic?”

“If he finds it in one place, then I’m afraid it’s Sonia Orrincourt. If he finds it in three places, it’s Sonia Orrincourt or one other. If he doesn’t find it at all, then I think it’s that other. I’m not positive.”

“And — the one other?”

“I suppose it’s no more unpleasant for you to speculate about one than about several.”

“I’d rather know, if it’s all right to tell me.”

“Very well,” Alleyn said, and told her.

After a long silence she said: “But it seems completely unreal. I can’t possibly believe it.”

“Didn’t everything they did at Ancreton seem a bit unreal?”

“Yes, of course. But to imagine that underneath all the showings-off and temperaments this could be happening… I can’t. Of all of them… that one!”

“Remember, I may be wrong.”

“You’ve a habit of not being wrong, though, haven’t you?”

“The Yard,” said Alleyn, “is littered with my blunders. Ask Fox. Troy, is this very beastly for you?”

“No,” said Troy, “it’s mostly bewildering. I didn’t form any attachments at Ancreton. I can’t give it a personal application.”

“Thank God for that,” he said and went to the Yard.

Here he found Fox in, waiting with the tin of rat-bane. “I haven’t had a chance to hear your further adventures at Ancreton, Foxkin. The presence of Mr. Mortimer rather cramped our style last night. How did you get on?”

“Quite nicely, sir. No trouble really about getting the prints. Well, when I say no trouble, there was quite a bit of high-striking in some quarters as was to be expected in that family. Miss O. made trouble, and, for a while, stuck out she wouldn’t have it, but I talked her round. Nobody else actually objected, though you’d have thought Mrs. Kentish and Miss Desdemona Ancred were being asked to walk into the condemned cell, the way they carried on. Bailey got down by the early train in the morning and worked through the prints you asked for. We found a good enough impression in paint on the wall of Mrs. Alleyn’s tower. Miss O. all right. And her prints are in the book. Lots of others too, of course. Prints all over the cover, from when they looked at it after it turned up in the cheese-dish, no doubt. I’ve checked up on the letters, but there’s nothing in it. They handed them round and there you are. Same thing in the flower-room. Regular mess of prints and some odds and ends where they’d missed sweeping. Coloured tape off florist’s boxes, leaves and stalks, scraps of sealing-wax, fancy paper and so on. I’ve kept all of it in case there was anything. I took a chance to slip into Miss O.’s room. Nothing beyond some skittish literature and a few letters from men written before Sir Henry’s day. One, more recent, from a young lady. I memorized it. ‘Dear S. Good for you, kid, stick to it, and don’t forget your old pals when you’re Lady A. Think the boy friend’d do anything for me in the business? God knows, I’m not so hot on this Shakespeare, but he must know other managements. Does he wear bed-socks? Regards Clarrie.’ ”

“No mention of the egregious Cedric?”

“Not a word. We looked at Miss Able’s cupboard. Only her own prints. I called in at Mr. Juniper’s. He says the last lot of that paper was taken up with some stuff for the rest of the house a fortnight ago. Two sets of prints on the bell-push from Sir Henry’s room — his own and old Barker’s. Looks as if Sir Henry had grabbed at it, tried to use it and dragged it off.”

“As we thought.”

“Mr. Juniper got in a great way when I started asking questions. I went very easy with him, but he made me a regular speech about how careful he is and showed me his books. He reckons he always double-checks everything he makes up. He’s particularly careful, he says, because of Dr. Withers being uncommonly fussy. It seems they had a bit of a row. The doctor reckoned the kids’ medicine wasn’t right, and Juniper took it for an insult. He says the doctor must have made the mistake himself and tried to save his face by turning round on him. He let on the doctor’s a bit of a lad and a great betting man, and he thinks he’d been losing pretty solidly and was worried, and made a mistake weighing the kids or something. But that wouldn’t apply to Sir Henry’s medicine, because it was the mixture as before. And I found out that at the time he made it up he was out of arsenic and hasn’t got any yet.”