‘He was never told that story. According to Smith, Questing drove him to the crossing and showed him the light through the screen, which Smith said was green but which, as you see, is yellow. He’s not colour blind, you know; he knew Questing wrote with green ink. The sun screen story was invented after the murder, for our benefit. He had to explain why he had suddenly become friendly with Questing. He had to produce his precious letter. Above all things, we mustn’t know of Questing’s defective sight. His insistence, this morning, that Questing must have been right about the colour of Eru Saul’s shirt is only explicable in that light. Of course Questing gave Smith the real explanation of his failure to see the signal. Questing agreed to keep him quiet, and incidentally used him as a go-between in his curio hunts. All went well until Questing discovered him on the Peak and accused him of espionage. The goose that laid the golden eggs had to be killed.’

‘Then the Maori theme,’ said Dikon. ‘Eru Saul, the stolen adze, and the violation of tapu, were all subsidiary factors?’

‘In a way, yes. Eru Saul told me that when he returned to the concert, after going for a drink with Smith, he heard Mr Gaunt recite a speech about “old dug-outs being asleep while him and the boys waited for the balloon to go up”. This seemed to me to be a recognizable paraphrase of “gentlemen in England now a-bed”, which is part of the Saint Crispin speech. But Smith told us that as he returned to the hall he heard Mr Gaunt shout a sentence which he rendered as: “Once more into the blasted breeches, pals.” Unmistakably the opening line of the Agincourt speech, the last item in Mr Gaunt’s recital, which he gave only after prolonged and enthusiastic demands for an encore.’

‘Bert wouldn’t know,’ Simon said. ‘He wouldn’t know. It’s all one to Bert.’

‘There is a time lag of some five or six minutes between the beginning of the Crispian speech and the beginning of the Agincourt speech. Would you put it at that, Gaunt?’

‘I think so,’ said Gaunt automatically.

‘Time enough for Smith to re-enter the doorway with his companions and, while all eyes were focused on you, to slip out again and run to the reserve. Time enough, when he could not wrench it out, for him to kick the standard until it was loosened, and then drop it over the edge. Time enough to think of the evidence left by his boots and throw them overboard. Time enough to run back to the hall and be standing there, close by his friends, when the lights went up.’ He turned to Simon. ‘You were with him after the concert?’ Simon nodded. ‘Did you notice his feet?’ Simon shook his head.

‘Mr Gaunt’s man was with you, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’