He sent Bailey into Phillida Lee’s room, while he and Fox tackled Valmai Seacliff’s. Miss Seacliff’s walls were chiefly adorned with pictures of herself. Malmsley and Ormerin had each painted her, and Pilgrim had drawn her once and painted her twice.

‘The successful nymphomaniac,’ thought Alleyn, remembering Katti’s letter.

A very clever pencil drawing of Pilgrim, signed ‘Seacliff’, stood on the bedside table. The room was extremely tidy and much more obviously feminine than Troy’s or Katti’s. Seacliff had at least three times as many clothes, and quantities of hats and berets. Alleyn noticed that her slacks were made in Savile Row, and her dresses in Paris. He was amused to find that even the Seacliff painting-bags and smock smelt of Worth. Her weekend case had not been completely unpacked. In it he found three evening dresses, a nightdress and bath-gown, shoes, three pairs of coloured gloves, two day dresses, two berets, and an evening bag containing among other things a half-full bottle of aspirin.

‘Maybe Pilgrim’s,’ said Alleyn, and put them in his case. ‘Now for the correspondence.’

They found more than enough of that. Two of her dressing-table drawers were filled with neatly tied-up packets of letters.

‘Help!’ said Alleyn. ‘We’ll have to glance at these, Fox. There might be something. Here, you take this lot. Very special. Red ribbon. Must be Pilgrim’s, I imagine. Yes, they are.’

Fox put on his spectacles and began impassively to read Basil Pilgrim’s love-letters.

‘Very gentlemanly,’ he said, after the first three.

‘You’re out of luck. I’ve struck a most impassioned series from a young man, who compares her bitterly and obscurely to a mirage. Golly, here’s a sonnet.’

For some time there was no sound but the faint crackle of notepaper. Bailey came in and said he had drawn a blank in Phillida Lee’s room. Alleyn threw a bundle of letters at him.

‘There’s something here you might like to see,’ said Fox. ‘The last one from the Honourable Mr Pilgrim.’

‘What’s he say?’

Fox cleared his throat.