‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I didn’t kill that girl. I couldn’t have killed her. The Parkers and Valmai will tell you I spent Friday night with them. My father and everyone else at Ankerton knows I was there on Saturday. I hadn’t a chance to rig the knife. I suppose there’s no reason why I should shy off talking about this business with Sonia except that— well, when there’s a crime like this in the air one’s apt to get nervous.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘You know all about by father, I expect. He’s been given a good deal of publicity. Some bounder of a journalist wrote a lot of miserable gup in one of the papers the other day. The Methodist Peer and all that. Everyone knows he’s a bit fanatic on the subject of morals, and if he ever got to hear of this business there’d be a row of simply devastating magnitude. That’s why I didn’t want it to leak out. He’d do some tremendous heavy-father stuff at me, and have a stroke on top of it as likely as not. That’s why I didn’t want to say any more about it than I could possibly help. I see now that I’ve been a fool not to tell you the whole thing.’

‘Good,’ said Alleyn.

‘As a matter of fact I did give Sonia a cheque for a hundred, and she promised she’d make no more scenes. In the end she practically admitted the child was not mine, but,’ he smiled ruefully, ‘as she pointed out, she had a perfectly good story to tell my father or Valmai if she felt inclined to do so.’

‘Have you made a clean breast of this to Miss Seacliff?’

‘No, I—I—couldn’t do that. It seems so foul to go to her with a squalid little story when we were just engaged. You see, I happen to feel rather strongly about—well, about some things. I rather disliked myself for what had happened. Valmai’s so marvellous.’ His face lit up with a sudden intensity of emotion. He seemed translated. ‘She’s so far beyond all that kind of thing. She’s terribly, terribly attractive —you only had to see how the other men here fell for her—but sheremains quite aloof from her own loveliness. Just accepts it as something she can’t help and then ignores it. It’s amazing that she should care—’ He stopped short. ‘I don’t know that we need discuss all this.’

‘I don’t think we need. I shall ask you later on to sign a statement of your own movements from Friday to Sunday.’

‘Will the Sonia business have to come out, sir?’