She looked at him with an air of bewildered friendliness and at once his whole face was lit by his fierce awareness of her. Troy’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. She reached out her hand and touched him.

“I’ll go,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Alleyn drew back. He struck one hand against the palm of the other and said violently:

“For God’s sake, don’t be kind! What is this intolerable love that forces me to do the very things I wish with all my soul to avoid? Yes, Troy, please go now.”

Troy went without another word.

Alleyn walked about the room swearing under his breath. He was found at this employment by Detective-Inspector Fox, who arrived looking solid and respectable.

“Good morning, sir,” said Fox.

“Hullo, Fox. Sit down. I’ve found the will. Everything goes to his sister and her son. The boy’s in debt and has quarrelled with his uncle. He’s living away from home but will be in any moment. I’ve found Lord Robert’s notes on the blackmail case. He told me when he rang up at one o’clock this morning that he’d call here first to get out of his boiled shirt and collect the notes. There they are. Look at ’em.”

Fox put on his spectacles and took the little notebook in his enormous fist. He read solemnly with his head thrown back a little and his eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” he said when he had finished. “Well now, Mr Alleyn, that’s quite an interesting little bit of evidence, isn’t it? It puts this Mr Dimitri in what you might call a very unfavourable light. We can get him for blackmail on this information if the lady doesn’t let us down. This Mrs Halcut-Hackett, I mean.”

“You notice Lord Robert thought she suspected him himself of taking the bag at the concert.”

“Yes. That’s awkward. You might say it gives her a motive for the murder.”

“If you can conceive of Mrs Halcut-Hackett, who is what the drapers call a queenly woman, dressing up as a man during the ball, accosting Lord Robert in the street, getting him to give her a lift, knocking him out, smothering him, and striding home in the light of dawn in somebody’s trousers.”

“That’s right,” said Fox. “I can’t. She might have an accomplice.”

“So she might.”

“Still, I must say Dimitri looks likelier,” Fox plodded on thoughtfully. “If he found out Lord Robert had a line on him. But how would he find out?”

“See here,” said Alleyn. “I want you to listen while I go over that telephone call. I was working late at the Yard on the Temple case. I would have gone north today, as you know, if this hadn’t happened. At one o’clock Lord Robert rang me up from a room at Marsdon House. He told me he had proof positive that Dimitri was our man. Then he said he’d come round to the Yard. And then—” Alleyn shut his eyes and screwed his face sideways. “I want to get his exact words,” he said. “I’m my own witness here. Wait, now, wait. Yes. He said: ‘I’ll come round to the Yard. Upon my soul, it’s worse than murder. Might as well mix his damn brews with poison,’ and then, Fox, he added this phrase: ‘And he’s working with — ’ He never finished it. He broke off and said: ‘Hallo, I didn’t hear you come in.’ I asked if anyone was there and he said yes and pretended he’d rung up about lost property. He must have done that because he realized this new arrival had overheard him mention the Yard. See here, Fox, we’ve got to get the man or woman who overheard that call.”

“If it was Dimitri,” began Fox.

“Yes, I know. If it was Dimitri! And yet, somehow, he sounded as if he was speaking to a friend. ‘Hallo, I didn’t hear you come in.’ Might well have been. But we’ve got to get at it, Fox.”

“ ‘And he’s working with — ’ ” quoted Fox. “What do you reckon he was going to say? Name an accomplice?”

“No. He was too old a hand to use names on the telephone. It might have been ‘with somebody else’, or it might have been ‘with devilish ingenuity’. I wish to God we knew. And now what have you done?”

Fox unhooked his glasses.

“Following your instructions,” he said, “I went to Marsdon House. I got there at eight o’clock. I found two of our chaps in charge, and got a report from them. They arrived there at four-twenty, a quarter of an hour after the taxi got to the Yard and five minutes after you rang up. Dimitri had left the house, but our chaps, having the office from you, sir, telephoned him at his flat to make sure he was there and sent a plain-clothes man round to watch it. He’s being relieved at ten o’clock by that new chap, Carewe. I thought he might take it on. He’s a bit too fanciful for my liking. Well, to go back to Marsdon House. They took statements from the men Dimitri had left to clear up the house, sent them away, and remained in charge until I got there at eight. We’ve located the room where Lord Robert rang you up. The telephone was left switched through there for the whole evening. We’ve sealed it up. I’ve got a guest list. Bit of luck, that. We found it in the buffet. Names and addresses all typed out, very methodical. It’s a carbon copy. I suppose Lady Carrados’s secretary must have done it. I found out from Dimitri’s men some of the people who had left early. The men’s cloakroom attendant was still there and could remember about twenty of them. He managed to recollect most of the men who were the last to go. I started off on them. Rang them up and asked if they noticed Lord Robert Gospell. Several of them remembered him standing in the hall at the very end. Most of the people left in parties and we were able to check up on these at once. We found that Dimitri was in the hall at this time. I called in at his flat just now before I came here. You’ll notice he’s a witness of some importance as well as, on the strength of what you’ve told me, a prime suspect. I’ve got a list, very likely incomplete, of the guests who left alone about the same time as Lord Robert. Here it is. A bit rough. I’ve put it together from notes on my way here.”

Fox took out a fat notebook, opened it and handed it to Alleyn, who read:

Alleyn looked up.

“Where was Dimitri, then?” he asked. “He seems to have faded out.”

“I asked him,” said Fox. “He said he went into the buffet about the time Sir Daniel left and was kept there for some time. The buffet’s at the foot of the stairs.”