‘I see him or her preparing to flood a little of this colour on the drawing. He receives a shock, his hand jerks sideways and the brush streaks across the paper. He jumps up, overturning his stool and jolting the table. He drops the brush on the floor. Look, Fox. There are signs of the same sort of disturbance everywhere. Notice the handful of brushes on the table in front of the big canvas—I think that must be Katti Bostock’s —I remember her work. Those brushes have been put down suddenly on the palette. The handles are messed in paint. Look at this very orderly array of tubes and brushes over here. The student has dropped a tube of blue paint and then trodden on it. Here are traces leading to the throne. It’s a man’s shoe, don’t you think? He’s tramped about all over the place, leaving a blue painty trail. The modern lady—Miss Lee—has overturned a bottle of turpentine, and it’s run into her paintbox. There are even signs of disturbance on the illustrator’s table. He has put a wet brush down on the very clean typescript. The place is like a first lesson in detection.’

‘But beyond telling us they all got a start when the affair occurred, it doesn’t appear to lead us anywhere,’ said Fox. ‘Not on the face of it.’ He turned back to Seacliff’s canvas and examined it with placid approval.

‘You seem very taken with Miss Seacliff’s effort,’ said Alleyn.

‘Eh?’ Fox transferred his attention sharply to Alleyn. ‘Now then, sir, how do you make out the name of this artist?’

‘Rather prettily, Fox. This is the only outfit that is quite in order. Very neat everything is, you’ll notice. Tidy box, clean brushes laid down carefully by the palette, fresh paint-rag all ready to use. I make a long guess that it belongs to Valmai Seacliff, because Miss Seacliff was with the model when she got her quietus. There is no reason why Miss Seacliff’s paraphernalia should show signs of disturbance. In a sense, Miss Seacliff killed Sonia Gluck. She pressed her naked body down on the knife. Not a very pleasant reflection for Miss Seacliff now, unless she happens to be a murderess. Yes, I think this painting is hers.’

‘Very neat bit of reasoning, chief. Lor’, here’s a mess.’ Fox bent over Watt Hatchett’s open box. It overflowed with half-used tubes of oil-colour, many of them without caps. A glutinous mess, to which all sorts of odds and ends adhered, spread over the trays and brushes. Cigarette butts, matches, bits of charcoal, were mixed up with fragments of leaves and twigs and filthy scraps of rag.

‘This looks like chronic muck,’ said Fox.

‘It does indeed.’ From the sticky depths of a tin tray Alleyn picked out a fragment of a dried leaf and smelt it.