She left Alleyn in her sitting-room with injunctions to turn on the heater and dry himself while she retired to change.

He looked about him. The plastic Green Lady, still wearing its infamous legend round its neck, had been placed defiantly in a glass fronted wall cupboard. He looked closely at it without touching it. A stack of London telephone directories stood near the instrument on the writing desk.

Miss Emily called from her bedroom. ‘You will find cognac and soda-water in the small cupboard. Help yourself, I beg you. And me. Cognac, simplement.’ She sounded quite gay. Alleyn poured two double brandies.

‘Don’t wait for me,’ Miss Emily shouted. ‘Drink at once. Remove and dry your shoes. Have you engaged the heater?’

He did everything she commanded and felt that he was putting himself at a disadvantage.

When Miss Emily reappeared, having changed her skirt, shoes and stockings, she looked both complacent and stimulated. It occurred to Alleyn that she got a sort of respectable kick out of entertaining him so dashingly in her suite. She sat in an armchair and jauntily accepted her brandy.

‘First of all, you must understand that I am extremely angry with you,’ she said. She was almost coquettish. ‘Ah – ah-ah! And now you have the self-conscious air?’ She shook her finger at him.

‘I may look sheepish,’ he rejoined, ‘but I assure you I’m in a devil of a temper. You are outrageous, Miss Emily.’

‘When did you leave and how is your dear Troy?’

‘At seven o’clock this morning and my dear Troy is furious.’

‘Ah, no!’ She leaned forward and tapped his hand. ‘You should not have come, my friend. I am perfectly able to look after myself. It was kind but it was not necessary.’

‘What were you going to say to that crowd if you hadn’t been cut off by a cloud-burst? No, don’t tell me. I know. You must be mad, Miss Emily.’

‘On the contrary, I assure you. And why have you come, Roderique? As you see, I have taken no harm.’

‘I want to know, among other matters, the full story of that object over there. The obscene woman with the label.’

Miss Emily gave him a lively account of it.

‘And where, precisely, was it planted?’

‘Behind one of the London telephone directories which had been placed on its edge, supported by the others.’

‘And you knocked the book over while you were speaking to me?’

‘That is correct. Revealing the figurine.’

He was silent for some time. ‘And you were frightened,’ Alleyn said at last.

‘It was a shock. I may have been disconcerted. It was too childish a trick to alarm me for more than a moment.’

‘Do you mind if I take possession of this object?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Has anybody but you touched it, do you know?’

‘I think not. Excepting of course the culprit.’