‘A little time before Foljambe arrived in England the real Caley Bard, who is a gifted amateur of the net and killing-bottle, had advertised in The Times for a fellow-lepidopterist who would share expenses on a butterfly hunt in South America. Foljambe’s agents in England—Messrs. Dinky Dickson alias the Reverend Mr Lazenby and Stanley Pollock—noted this circumstance. Further discreet inquiries satisfied them that Mr Bard had left for a protracted visit to South America, that he was something of a recluse and had private means fortified by occasional coaching in mathematics for tutorial organizations. So it was decided that the mantle of Lepidoptery should descend upon the Jampot’s shoulders, lepidoptery was his hobby as a schoolboy and he knew enough to pass muster with a casual enthusiast. If, by an outlandish chance, he had encountered an expert or an acquaintance of his original he would have exclaimed: “Me? oh, no, not that Caley Bard. I wish I were!” or words to that effect. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was that the real Caley Bard should return, two months before his time, having picked up an unpleasant bug in the country beyond La Paz.

‘So that when, at my suggestion, one of our chaps called at the address they found the house occupied by an extremely irate little man whom they promptly flew by helicopter to Tollardwark for what I am obliged to call a confrontation.

‘There was, of course, no doubt about his identity and guilt, once we had established alibis for the others in the Andropulos business. However, he did make a mistake. He talked about Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s bit of Fabergé before he should have known it was anything of the sort. A rare thing, though, for him to slip up. He’s a brilliant villain.

‘He presented himself to my wife in exactly the light best calculated to produce a tolerant and amused acceptance. She was not likely, as he realized, to succumb to his well-tested but, to a man, inexplicable charms but she found him companionable and entertaining. I am told that a swivel-eye is, to many people, sexually alluring. The Jampot’s swivel-eye was the result of a punch-up, or a jab-up, with a rival gang in Santa Cruz. He subsequently underwent a bit of very efficient plastic surgery. Lazenby—Dickson to you—had lost his eye, by the way, in the Second World War where he was an Australian army chaplain until they found him out. He was born in the West Indies, went to a European mission-school and had in fact been ordained and unfrocked. He had no difficulty at all in passing himself off to the Bishop of Norminster who was very cross about it.

‘That, more or less, is it. I’ll be glad to answer questions.’

Carmichael’s instant boots had already scraped the floor when Alleyn caught the eye of a quiet-looking type in the back row.

‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Something?’