‘Pretty much. She’s spoilt. She’d have been comparatively easy to live with if she hadn’t got that lovely face. She is beautiful, you know.’

‘Oh! magnificent,’ agreed Alleyn absently.

He was looking at Troy, at the delicate sparseness of her head, the straight line of her brows and the generous width between her greygreen eyes.

‘Are you very tired?’ he asked gently.

‘Who, me? I’m all right.’ She sat on the fender holding her thin hands to the fire. ‘Only I can’t get it out of my head.’

‘Small wonder,’ said Alleyn, and to himself he thought: ‘She’s treating me more like a friend this morning. Touch wood.’

‘Oddly enough, it’s not so much Sonia, poor little thing, but Garcia, that I can’t get out of my head. You needn’t bother to be mysterious and taciturn. I know you must suspect Garcia after what Phillida Lee and Malmsley said last night. But you see, in a way, Garcia’s a sort of protégé of mine. He came to me when he was almost literally starving, and I’ve tried to look after him a bit. I know he’s got no conscience at all in the usual sort of way. He’s what they call un-moral. But he has got genius and I never use that word if I can get out of it. He couldn’t do a shabby thing with clay. Wait a moment.’

She went out of the room for a few minutes. When she returned she carried a small bronze head, about half life-size, of an old woman. Troy put the head on a low table and pulled back the curtains. The cold light flooded the little bronze. It looked very tranquil and pure; its simple forms folded it into a great dignity. The lights shone austerely and the shadows seemed to breathe.

‘“All passion spent,”’ said Alleyn after a short pause.

‘That’s it,’ agreed Troy. She touched it delicately with a long finger. ‘Garcia gave me this,’ she said.

‘It wouldn’t be too florid to say it looked as if it had been done by an inspired saint.’

‘Well—it wasn’t. It was done by a lecherous, thieving little guttersnipe who happens to be a superb craftsman. But—’ Troy’s voice wavered. ‘To catch and hang the man who made it—’

‘God—yes, I know—I know.’ He got up and moved restlessly about the room, returning to her.

‘Oh, Troy, you mustn’t cry,’ he said.

‘What the devil’s it got to do with you?’

‘Nothing, nothing, nothing, and don’t I know it!’

‘You’d better get on with your job,’ said Troy. She looked like a boy with her head turned shamefacedly away. She groped in her trousers pocket and pulled out a handkerchief disgracefully stained with paint. ‘Oh blast!’ she said, and pitched it into the waste-paper basket.

‘Have mine.’

‘Thank you.’