“Edith, my dear,” he said loudly, “would you tell these gentlemen about an accident?”

“Which accident?”

“That, I’m afraid, I don’t know, dear. Indeed we are depending upon you to inform us.”

“I don’t understand you, Walter.”

“I don’t understand myself very well, I must admit, Edith. I find it all very puzzling.”

“What?” said his wife. Alleyn now realized that she was slightly deaf.

“Puzzling,” shouted Mr Harris.

“My husband’s memory is not very good,” explained Mrs Harris smiling gently at Alleyn and Fox. “He was greatly shaken by his cycling accident some months ago. I suppose you have called about the insurance.”

Raising his voice Alleyn embarked once more on his recital. This time he was not interrupted, but as neither of the Harrises gave any sign of understanding, it was impossible to tell whether or not he spoke in vain. By the time he had finished, Mr Harris had adopted his former disconcerting glare. Mrs Harris, however, turned to her husband and said:

“You remember the blood on the carpet, Walter? At dear old Falconbridge?”

“Dear me, yes. Now that’s what I was trying to recollect. Of course it was. Poor fellow. Poor fell-oh!”

“Then you do remember?” Alleyn cried.

“Indeed I do,” said Mrs Harris reproachfully. “The poor young wife wrote us such a charming letter, thanking us for the little we had been able to do for him. I would have liked to answer it but unfortunately my husband lost it.”

“Edith, I have discovered dear old Worsley’s letter. It was in my pocket. Fancy!”

“Fancy, dear, yes.”

“Talking of letters,” said Alleyn to Mrs Harris. “Can you by any chance remember anything about a letter that was lost on the occasion of Captain O’Brien’s accident? I think you were asked if it had been found in the vicarage.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch—”

Alleyn repeated it.

“To be sure I do,” said Mrs Harris. “Perfectly.”

“You were unable to give any information about this letter?”

“On the contrary.”

“What!”

“On the contrary,” repeated Mrs Harris firmly. “I sent it after him.”

“After who?” roared Fox so loudly that even Mrs Harris gave a little jump. “I’m sure I beg pardon, sir,” said Fox hastily, “I don’t know what came over me.” He opened his notebook in some confusion.

“Mrs Harris,” said Alleyn, “will you please tell us everything you can remember about this letter?”

“Yes, please do, Edith,” said her husband unexpectedly. “She’ll find it for you,” he added in an aside. “Don’t distress yourselves.”

“Well,” began Mrs Harris. “It’s a long time ago now and I’m afraid I’m rather hazy. It was after they had taken him away, I fancy, that we found it under the couch in the study. That was when we noticed the stain on the carpet you remember, Walter. At first, of course, I thought it was one of my husband’s letters — it was not in an envelope. But when I glanced at it I realized at once that it was not, as it began ‘Dear Daddy’ and we have no children.”

“ ‘Dear Daddy,’ ” repeated Alleyn.

“I decided afterwards that it was perhaps ‘Dear Paddy’ but as my husband’s name is Walter Bernard it didn’t signify. ‘Why,’ I said, or something of that sort. ‘Why, it must have dropped out of that poor fellow’s coat when the ambulance man examined him.’ And — of course, I remember it now as clearly as if it was yesterday — and I said to little Violet: ‘Pop on your bicycle and take it to the hospital as quickly as you can, dear, because they may be looking for it.’ So little Violet—”

“Who was she, please?” asked Alleyn rather breathlessly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who was little Violet?” shouted Alleyn.

“My small niece. My husband’s brother’s third daughter. She was spending her holidays with us. She is grown up now and has a delightful post in London with a Lady Carrados.”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn. “Please go on.”

But there was not much more to tell. Apparently Violet Harris had bicycled off with Paddy O’Brien’s letter and had returned to say she had given it to the gentleman who had brought the lady in the motor-car. The gentleman had been sitting in the motor-car outside the hospital. As far as Mrs Harris could state, and she and her husband went into a mazed avuncular family history to prove their point, little Violet had been fifteen years old at the time. Alleyn wrote out her statement, shorn of its interminable parentheses, and she signed it. Throughout the interview neither she nor her husband gave the faintest sign of any form of curiosity. Apparently it did not strike either of them as singular that the interest in a letter lost eighteen years ago should suddenly be excited to such a pitch that CID officers thought it necessary to seek for signed statements in the heart of Buckinghamshire.

They insisted on taking Alleyn and Fox round their garden. Alleyn hadn’t the heart to refuse and besides he had a liking for gardens. Mrs Harris gave them each a bunch of lavender and rosemary, which flowers, she said, were less conspicuous for gentlemen to carry than the gayer blossoms of summer. The sight of Fox solemnly grasping a posy in his enormous fist and examining a border of transplanted pansies was almost too much for his superior officer. It was two o’clock when the tour of the garden was completed.

“You must come in whenever you are passing,” said Mrs Harris, blinking cordially at Alleyn, “and I shall remember what you say about your mother’s herb garden.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Mr Harris. “Whenever you are passing. Of course. Anybody from dear old Falconbridge is doubly welcome.”

They stood side by side at the gate and waved, rather in the manner of children, as Alleyn turned the car and drove away down Oakapple Lane.

“Well!” ejaculated Fox. “Well!”

“Not another word,” said Alleyn, “until we get to that pub outside Barbicon-Bramley. Do you realize we’ve had no lunch? I refuse to utter another word until I’ve drunk a pint of bitter.”

“And some bread and cheese and pickles,” said Fox. “Pickles with plenty of onions in them.”

“Lord! Lord! Fox, what a choice! Now I come to think of it, though, it sounds damn good. ‘Bread and cheese and pickles,’ Fox, it’s what we need. New white bread, mouse-trap cheese, home-made pickles and bitter.”

“That’s the idea, Mr Alleyn. You’re a great gourmet,” said Fox who had taught himself French, “and don’t think I haven’t enjoyed some of those dinners you’ve given me when everything seemed to sort of slide into something else. I have. But when you’re famished and in the English countryside you can’t beat bread and cheese and pickles.”

The pub provided them with these delicacies. They took about a quarter of an hour over their meal and then set out again.

“Now then,” said Alleyn.

“The thing that beats me,” said Fox, wiping his short moustache with his handkerchief, “is little Violet. We knew she was a niece of this old gentleman’s but, by gum, we didn’t know she was staying there at the time, now, did we?”

“No, Brer Fox, we didn’t.”

“I suppose she may not know it herself,” continued Fox. “I mean to say, Miss Violet Harris may not realize that Lady Carrados was this Mrs O’Brien whose husband was brought into her uncle’s vicarage when she was a kid of fifteen.”

“Quite possible. I hope she remembers the bicycle ride. We’ll have to jog her memory, I dare say.”

“Yes. Now I reckon, on what we’ve heard, that it was Carrados who took that letter from little Violet. Carrados, sitting in the car outside the hospital, while the poor chap who’d got the letter from Australia was dying inside. And then, later on, when there’s all the fuss about a missing letter, what does he do?”

Alleyn knew this question was purely rhetorical and didn’t interrupt.