“Thank you,” Verity said. “We were to do flowers first thing in the morning. It had better be this afternoon, hadn’t it? Nice of you to think of it.”

She told herself she knew precisely why she was glad Alleyn had arrived: idiotically it was because of Mr. Markos’s manner, which had become inappropriately warm. Old hand though she was, this had flustered Verity. He had made assumptions. He had been too adroit. Quite a long time had gone by since assumptions had been made about Verity and still longer since she had been ruffled by them. Mr. Markos made her feel clumsy and foolish.

Alleyn had spotted the plan. He said Prunella had mentioned the collection. He bent over it, made interested noises, looked closer and finally took out a pocket lens. Mr. Markos crowed delightedly: “At last!” he cried, “we can believe you are the genuine article.” He put his arm round Verity and gave her a quick little squeeze. “What is he going to look at?” he said. “What do you think?”

And when Alleyn used his lens over the stable buildings, Mr. Markos was enraptured.

“There’s an extra bit pencilled in,” Alleyn said. “Indicating the room next the mushroom bed.”

“So, my dear Alleyn, what do you make of that?”

“Nothing very much, do you?”

“Not of the ‘point marked X’? No buried treasure, for instance? Come!”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “you can always dig for it, can’t you? Actually it marks the position of a dilapidated fireplace. Perhaps there was some thought of renovating the rooms. A flat for the gardener, for instance.”

“Do you know,” Verity exclaimed, “I believe I remember Sybil said something about doing just that. Setting him up on the premises because his room at his sister’s house was tiny and he’d nowhere to put his things and they didn’t hit it off, anyway.”

“No doubt you are right, both of you,” admitted Mr. Markos, “but what a dreary solution. I am desolate.”

“Perhaps I can cheer you up with news of an unexpected development,” said Alleyn. “It emerges that Bruce Gardener was Captain Maurice Carter’s soldier-servant during the war.”

After a considerable interval Mr. Markos said: “The gardener. You mean the local man? Are you saying that this was known to Sybil Foster? And to Prunella? No. No, certainly not to Prunella.”

“Not, it seems, even to Gardener himself.”

Verity sat down abruptly. “What can you mean?” she said.

Alleyn told her.

“I have always,” Mr. Markos said, “regarded stories of coincidence in a dubious light. My invariable instinct is to discredit them.”

“Is it?” said Verity. “I always believe them and find them boring. I am prepared to acknowledge, since everyone tells me so, that life is littered with coincidences. I don’t mind. But this,” she said to Alleyn, “is something else again. This takes a hell of a lot of acceptance.”

“Is that perhaps because of what has happened? If Mrs. Foster hadn’t died and if one day in the course of conversation it had emerged that her Maurice Carter had been Bruce Gardener’s Captain Carter, what would have been the reaction?”

“I can tell you what Syb’s reaction would have been. She’d have made a big tra-la about it and said she’d always sensed there was ‘something.’ ”

“And you?”

Verity thought it over. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. I’d have said: fancy! Extraordinary coincidence, but wouldn’t have thought much more about it.”

“If one may ask?” said Mr. Markos, already asking. “How did you find out? You or whoever it was?”

“I recognized him in an old photograph of the regiment. Not at first. I was shamefully slow. He hadn’t got a beard in those days but he had got his squint”

“Was he embarrassed?” Verity asked. “When you mentioned it, I mean?”

“I wouldn’t have said so. Flabbergasted is the word that springs to mind. From there he passed quickly to the ‘what a coincidence’ bit and then into the realms of misty Scottish sentiment on ‘who would have thought it’ and ‘had I but known’ lines.”

“I can imagine.”

“Your Edinburgh Castle guide would have been brassy in comparison.”

“Castle?” asked Mr. Markos. “Edinburgh?”

Verity explained.

“What’s he doing now?” Mr. Markos sharply demanded. “Still cultivating mushrooms? Next door, by yet another coincidence”—he tapped the plan—“to the point marked X.”

“When we left him he was going to the church.”

“To the church! Why?”

Verity said: “I know why.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Oh,” said Verity, “this is all getting too much. Like a Jacobean play. He’s digging Sybil’s grave.”

“Why?” asked Mr. Markos.

“Because Jim Jobbin has got lumbago.”

“Who is — no,” Mr. Markos corrected himself, “it doesn’t matter. My dear Alleyn, forgive me if I’m tiresome, but doesn’t all this throw a very dubious light upon the jobbing Gardener?”

“If it does he’s not the only one.”

“No? No, of course. I am forgetting the egregious Claude. By the way — I’m sorry, but you may slap me back if I’m insufferable — where does all this information come from?”

“In no small part,” said Alleyn, “from Mrs. Jim Jobbin.”

Mr. Markos flung up his hands. “These Jobbins!” he lamented and turned to Verity. “Come to my rescue. Who are the Jobbins?”

“Mrs. Jim helps you out once a week at Mardling. Her husband digs drains and mows lawns. I daresay he mows yours if the truth were known.”

“Odd job Jobbins, in fact,” said Alleyn and Verity giggled.

“Gideon would know,” his father said. “He looks after that sort of thing. In any case, it doesn’t matter. Unless — I suppose she’s — to be perfectly cold-blooded about it — trustworthy?”

“She’s a long-standing friend,” said Verity, “and the salt of the earth. I’d sooner suspect the Vicar’s wife of hanky-panky than Mrs. Jim.”

“Well, of course, my very dear Verity” (damn’, thought Verity, I wish he wouldn’t) “that disposes of her, no doubt.” He turned to Alleyn. “So the field is, after all, not extensive. Far too few suspects for a good read.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alleyn rejoined. “You may have overlooked a candidate.”

In the pause that followed a blackbird somewhere in Verity’s garden made a brief statement and traffic on the London motorway four miles distant established itself as a vague rumour.

Mr. Markos said: “Ah, yes. Of course. But I hadn’t overlooked him. You’re talking about my acquaintance, Dr. Basil Schramm.”

“Only because I was going to ring up and ask if I might have a word with you about him. I think you introduced him to the Upper Quintern scene, didn’t you?”

“Well — fleetingly, I suppose I did.”

Verity said: “Would you excuse me? I’ve got a telephone call I must make and I must see about the flowers.”

“Are you being diplomatic?” Mr. Markos asked archly.

“I don’t even know how,” she said and left them not, she hoped, too hurriedly. The two men sat down.

“I’ll come straight to the point, shall I?” Alleyn said. “Can you and if so, will you, tell me anything of Dr. Schramm’s history? Where he qualified, for instance? Why he changed his name? Anything?”

“Are you checking his own account of himself? Or hasn’t he given a satisfactory one? You won’t answer that, of course, and very properly not.”

“I don’t in the least mind answering. I haven’t asked him.”

“As yet?”

“That’s right. As yet.”

“Well,” said Mr. Markos, airily waving his hand, “I’m afraid I’m not much use to you. I know next to nothing of his background except that he took his degree somewhere in Switzerland. I had no idea he’d changed his name, still less why. We met when crossing the Atlantic in the Q.E. Two and subsequently in New York at a cocktail party given at the St. Regis by fellow passengers. Later on that same evening at his suggestion we dined together and afterwards visited some remarkable clubs to which he had the entrée. The entertainment was curious. That was the last time I saw him until he rang me up at Mardling on his way to Greengages. On the spur of the moment I asked him to dinner. I have not seen him since then.”