‘It’s all right,’ said Troy. ‘This is the class. We were talking— about Sonia.’ She looked round the table. ‘This is Mr Roderick Alleyn,’ she said.

‘Good evening,’ said Alleyn generally. ‘Please don’t move. If you don’t mind, I think Inspector Fox and I will join you for a moment. I shall have to ask you all the usual sort of things, you know, and we may as well get it over. May we bring up a couple of chairs?’

Basil Pilgrim jumped up and brought a chair to the head of the table.

‘Don’t worry about me, sir,’ said Fox. ‘I’ll just sit over here, thank you.’

He settled himself in a chair by the sideboard. Alleyn sat at the head of the table, and placed his notebook before him.

‘The usual thing,’ he said, looking pleasantly round the table, ‘is to interview people severally. I think I shall depart from routine for once and see if we can’t work together. I have got your names here, but I don’t know which of you is which. I’ll just read them through, and if you don’t mind—’

He glanced at his notes.

‘Reminiscent of a roll-call, I’m afraid, but here goes. Miss Bostock?’

‘Here,’ said Katti Bostock.

‘Thank you. Mr Hatchett?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Miss Phillida Lee?’

Miss Lee made a plaintive murmuring sound. Malmsley said: ‘Yes.’ Pilgrim said: ‘Here.’ Valmai Seacliff merely turned her head and smiled.

‘That’s that,’ said Alleyn. ‘Now then. Before we begin I must tell you that in my opinion there is very little doubt that Miss Sonia Gluck has been deliberately done to death. Murdered.’

They seemed to go very still.

‘Now, as you all must realize, she was killed by precisely the means which you discussed and worked out among yourselves ten days ago. The first question I have to put to you is this. Has any one of you discussed the experiment with the dagger outside this class? I want you to think very carefully. You have been scattered during the weekend and it is possible, indeed very likely, that you may have talked about the pose, the model, and the experiment with the knife. This is extremely important, and I ask you to give me a deliberated answer.’

He waited for quite a minute.

‘I take it that none of you have spoken of this matter, then,’ said Alleyn.

Cedric Malmsley, leaning back in his chair, said: ‘Just a moment.’

‘Yes, Mr Malmsley?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure, if it’s of any interest,’ drawled Malmsley, ‘but Garcia and I talked about it on Friday afternoon.’

‘After the others had gone up to London?’

‘Oh, yes. I went down to the studio, you see, after lunch. I did some work there. Garcia was messing about with his stuff. He’s usually rather sour when he’s working, but on Friday he babbled away like the brook.’

‘What about?’