He followed her back to her drawing-room and she began to tell him about the arrangements for the funeral.

“Broomfield, who as you know is the head of the family, is only sixteen. He’s abroad with his tutor and can’t get back in time. We are not going to alter his plans. So that Donald and I are the nearest. Donald is perfectly splendid. He has been such a comfort all day. Quite different. And then dear Troy has come to stay with me and has answered all the letters and done everything.”

Her voice, still with that special muted note, droned on, but Alleyn’s thoughts had been arrested by this news of Troy and he had to force himself to listen to Mildred. When she had finished he asked her if she wished to know anything about his side of the picture and discovered that she was putting all the circumstances of her brother’s death away from her. Mildred had adopted an ostrich attitude towards the murder and he got the impression that she rather hoped the murderer would never be caught. She wished to cut the whole thing dead and he thought it was rather clever and rather nice of her to be able to welcome him so cordially as a friend and pay no attention to him as a policeman.

After a minute or two there seemed to be nothing more to say to Mildred. Alleyn said good-bye to her, promised to attend the memorial service at eleven and to do his part at the funeral. He went out into the hall.

In the doorway he met Troy.

He heard his own voice saying: “Hullo, you’re just in time. You’re going to save my life.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“It’s nearly five. I’ve had six hours’ sleep in the last fifty-eight hours. That’s nothing for us hardy coppers but for some reason I’m feeling sorry for myself. Will you take tea or a drink or possibly both with me? For God’s sake say you will.”

“Very well, where shall we go?”

“I thought,” said Alleyn, who up to that moment had thought nothing of the sort, “that we might have tea at my flat. Unless you object to my flat.”

“I’m not a débutante,” said Troy. “I don’t think I need coddle my reputation. Your flat let it be.”

“Good,” said Alleyn. “I’ve got mother’s car. I’ll just warn my servant and tell the Yard where to find me. Do you think I may use the telephone.”

“I’m sure you may.”

He darted to telephone and was back in a minute.

“Vassily is tremendously excited,” he said. “A lady to tea! Come on.”

On the way Alleyn was so filled with astonishment at finding himself agreeably alone with Troy that he fell into a trance from which he only woke when he pulled the car up outside his own flat. He did not apologize for his silence: he felt a tranquillity in Troy that had accepted it, and when they were indoors he was delighted to hear her say: “This is peaceful,” and to see her pull off her cap and sit on a low stool before the fireplace.

“Shall we have a fire?” asked Alleyn. “Do say yes. It’s not a warm day, really.”

“Yes, let’s,” agreed Troy.

“Will you light it while I see about tea?”

He went out of the room to give Vassily a series of rather confused orders, and when he returned there was Troy before the fire, bareheaded, strangely familiar.

“So you’re still here,” said Alleyn.

“It’s a nice room, this.”

He put a box of cigarettes on the floor beside her and took out his pipe. Troy turned and saw her own picture of Suva at the far end of the room.

“Oh, yes,” said Alleyn, “there’s that.”

“How did you get hold of it?”

“I got someone to buy it for me.”

“But why—”

“I don’t know why I was so disingenuous about it except that I wanted it so very badly for reasons that were not purely aesthetic and I thought you would see through them if I made a personal business of it.”

“I should have been rather embarrassed, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “Do you remember how I found you that day, painting and cursing? It was just as the ship moved out of Suva. Those sulky hills and that ominous sky were behind you.”

“We had a row, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

Troy’s face became rather pink.

“In fact,” said Alleyn, “there is scarcely an occasion on which we have met when we have not had a row. Why is that, do you suppose?”

“I’ve always been on the defensive.”

“Have you? For a long time I thought you merely disliked me.”

“No. You got under my guard.”

“If it hadn’t been for that damned case, things might have gone better,” said Alleyn. “What a pity it is that we cannot sometimes react to situations like characters in the less honest form of novel. The setting should have been ideal, you know. A murder in your house. You with just enough motive to make a ‘strong situation’ and not enough seriously to implicate you. Me, as the grim detective finding time for a bit of Rochester stuff. You should have found yourself drawn unwillingly into love, Troy. Instead of which I merely acquired a sort of post-mortem disagreeableness. If you painted a surrealist picture of me I would be made of Metropolitan Police notebooks, one eye would be set in a keyhole, my hands would be occupied with somebody else’s private correspondence. The background would be a morgue and the whole pretty conceit wreathed with festoons of blue tape and hangman’s rope. What?”

“Nonsense,” said Troy.

“I suppose so. Yes. The vanity of the male trying to find extraordinary reasons for a perfectly natural phenomenon. You don’t happen to love me. And why the devil should you?”

“You don’t happen to understand,” said Troy shortly, “and why the devil should you.”

She took a cigarette and tilted her face up for him to give her a light. A lock of her short dark hair had fallen across her forehead. Alleyn lit the cigarette, threw the match into the fire and tweaked the lock of hair.

“Abominable woman,” he said abruptly. “I’m so glad you’ve come to see me.”

“I tell you what,” said Troy more amiably. “I’ve always been frightened of the whole business. Love and so on.”

“The physical side?”

“Yes, that, but much more than that. The whole business. The breaking down of all one’s reserves. The mental as well as the physical intimacy.”

“My mind to me a kingdom is.”

“I feel it wouldn’t be,” said Troy.

“I feel it rather terrifyingly still would be. Don’t you think that in the closest possible union there must always be moments when one feels oneself completely separate, completely alone? Surely it must be so, otherwise we would not be so astonished on the rare occasions when we read each other’s thoughts.”

Troy looked at him with a sort of shy determination that made his heart turn over.

“Do you read my thoughts?” she asked.

“Not very clearly, Troy. I dare not wish I could.”

“I do yours, sometimes. That is one of the things that sends my defences up.”

“If you could read them now,” said Alleyn, “you might well be frightened.”

Vassily came in with tea. He had, Alleyn saw at a glance, excitedly rushed out to his favourite delicatessen shop round the corner and purchased caviare. He had made a stack of buttered toast, he had cut up many lemons, and he had made tea in an enormous Stuart pot of Lady Alleyn’s which her son had merely borrowed to show to a collector. Vassily had also found time to put on his best coat. His face was wreathed in smiles of embarrassing significance. He whispered to himself as he set this extraordinary feast out on a low table in front of Troy.

“Please, please,” said Vassily. “If there is anysink more, sir. Should I not perhaps —?”

“No, no,” said Alleyn hastily, “that will do admirably.”

“Caviare!” said Troy. “Oh, how glad I am — a heavenly tea.”

Vassily broke into a loud laugh, excused and bowed himself out, and shut the doors behind him with the stealth of a soubrette in a French comedy.

“You’ve transported the old fool,” said Alleyn.