“You’d better hear what I make of all this on the face of the information we’ve already got. Bailey, you carry on while I’m talking. Go over every inch of the table and surrounding area. You’ve got my case? Good. We’ll want specimens of this unspeakable muck on the floor. I’ll do that.”

“Let me fix it, sir,” said Fox. “I’m out of a job, and we’d like to hear your reconstruction of this business.”

“You’d better rig something over your nose and mouth. Nitric acid fumes are no more wholesome than they are pleasant, are they, Curtis?”

“Not too good,” grunted Curtis. “May as well be careful.”

The doors at the end opened to admit the P.C. whom Alleyn had left on guard.

“What is it?” asked Alleyn.

“Gentleman to see you, sir.”

“Is his name Bathgate?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miserable young perisher,” muttered Alleyn. “Tell him to wait. No. Half a minute. Send him in.”

When Nigel appeared Alleyn asked fiercely: “How did you get wind of this?”

“I was down at the Yard. They’d told me you were out. I saw Fox and the old gang tootle away in a car, then the mortuary van popped out. I followed in a taxi. What’s up? There’s a hell of a stink in here.”

“The only reason I’ve let you in is to stop you pitching some cock-and-bull story to your filthy paper. Sit down in a far corner and be silent.”

“All right, all right.”

Alleyn turned to the others.

“We’ll get on. Don’t move the body just yet, Curtis.”

“Very good,” said Dr. Curtis, who was cleaning his hands with ether. “Speak up, Alleyn. Are you going to tell us this fellow’s swallowed nitric acid?”

“I think so.”

“Bloody loathsome way of committing suicide.”

“He didn’t know it was nitric acid.”

“Accident?”

“No. Murder.”

I think,” said Alleyn, “that we’ll start off with the packing-case.”

He walked over to it and flashed his torch on the swathed shape inside.

“That, I believe, is Garcia’s clay model of the Comedy and Tragedy for the cinema at Westminster. We’ll have a look at it when Bailey has dealt with the case and the wet cloths. The point with which I think we should concern ourselves now is this. How did it get here?”

He lit a cigarette from the stump of his old one.

“In the caravan we looked at this morning?” suggested Fox from behind a white handkerchief he had tied across the lower half of his face. He was doing hideous things on the floor with a small trowel and a glass bottle.

“It would seem so, Brer Fox. We found pretty sound evidence that the caravan had been backed up to the window. Twig on the roof, tyre-tracks under the sill, traces of the little wheeled platform on the ledge and the step and floor of the caravan. The discrepancy in the petrol fits in with this place quite comfortably, I think. Very well. That was all fine and dandy as long as Garcia was supposed to have driven himself and his gear up to London, and himself back to Tatler’s End House. Now we’ve got a different story. Someone returned the caravan to Tatler’s End House, and that person has kept quiet about it.”

“Is it possible,” asked Fox, “that Garcia drove the car back and returned here by some other means?”

“Hardly, Fox, I think. On Friday night Garcia was recovering from a pipe or more of opium, and possibly a jorum of whisky. He was in no condition to get his stuff aboard a caravan, drive it thirty miles, open this place up, manoeuvre the caravan inside, unload it, drive it back, and then start off again to tramp back to London or catch a train or bus. But suppose somebody arrived at the studio on Friday night and found Garcia in a state of semi-recovery. Suppose this person offered to drive Garcia up to London and return the caravan. Does that quarrel with anything we have found? I don’t think it does. Can we find anything here to support such a theory? I think we can. The front part of the floor has been swept. Why the devil should Garcia sweep the floor of this place at midnight while he was in the condition we suppose him to have been in? Bailey, have you dealt with the bottle on the table?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve got a fairly good impression of the deceased’s left thumb, forefinger and second finger.”

“Very good. Will you all look now at the hands?”

Alleyn turned to the shrouded figure. The arms projected from under the sheet. The hands at the far edge of the table were uncovered.

“Rigor mortis,” said Alleyn, “has disappeared. The body is flaccid. But notice the difference between the right hand and the left. The fingers of the right are still curved slightly. If I flash this light on the under-surface of the table, you can see the prints left by the fingers when they clutched it. Bailey has brought them up with powder. You took a shot of these, Thompson, didn’t you? Good. As rigor wore off, you see, the fingers slackened. Now look at the left hand. It is completely relaxed and the fingers are straight. On the under-surface of the table edge, about three inches to the right of the left hand, are four marks made by the fingers. They are blurred, but the impression was originally a strong one, made with considerable pressure. Notice that the blurs do not seem to have been caused by any relaxation of the fingers. It looks rather as if the pressure had not been relaxed at all, but the fingers dragged up the edge while they still clutched it. Notice that the present position of the hand bears no sort of relation to the prints — it is three inches away from them. Did you find any left-hand prints on the top of the table, Bailey?”

“No, sir.”

“No. Now, taking into consideration the nature and direction of the blurs and all the rest of it, in my opinion there is a strong assumption that this hand was forcibly dragged from the edge of the table, possibly while in a condition of cadaveric spasm. At all events, there is nothing here to contradict such an assumption. Now have a look at this cup. It contains dregs of what we believe to be nitric acid and is standing in a stain made, presumably, by nitric acid. It is on the extreme right hand of the body. You’ve tried it for prints, Thompson, and found—?”

“Four left-hand fingerprints and the thumb.”

“Yes, by Jove!” Alleyn bent over the cup. “There’s a good impression of the left hand. Now see here. You notice these marks across the table. It was thickly covered in dust when this man sat down at it. Dust on the under-surface of his sleeves — lots of it. If we measure these areas where the dust has been removed and compare it with the length of the sleeve, we find pretty good evidence that he must have swept his arms across the surface of the table. Something like this.”

Alleyn took the dead arms and moved them across the table. “You see, they follow the marks exactly. Here on the floor are the things he knocked off. Modeller’s tools. A plate — smashed in four pieces. Two dishes that were probably intended for use as etching-baths. There’s almost as much dust under them as there is on the rest of the floor, so they haven’t been there more than a day or two. They themselves are not very dusty — he brushed them with his sleeves. Agreed that there’s a strong likelihood he swept them off?”

“Certainly,” said Fox.

“All right. Now look again at the table. This bottle which held the nitric acid and this cup into which it was poured — these two objects we find bang in the middle of the area he swept with his arms in the violent spasm that followed the moment when he drank. Why were they not hurled to the floor with the plate and the modeller’s tools?”

“By God, because they were put there afterwards,” said Curtis.

“Yes, and why was the cup which he held with his left hand put down on the right of the table with the prints on the far side. To put the cup down where we found it he must have stood where I am now — or here — or perhaps here. Well, say he drank the stuff while he was in such a position. After taking it he put the cup at this end of the table and the bottle, which has a left-hand print, beside it. He then moved to the chair, swept away the other stuff in his death throes, but replaced the bottle and the cup.”