Fox waited, his hands on his knees. He heard a tap turned on. Water pipes gurgled. In a distant room someone began to snore in two keys. Presently Fox heard the pad of feet in the passage and Alleyn returned.

His towel was round his neck. His hair was rumpled and damp and hung comically over his eyes. He looked like a rather distinguished faun who had chosen to disguise himself in pyjamas and a dressing-gown. Between thumb and forefinger he held a piece of folded paper.

‘Crikey, Fox!’ said Alleyn.

‘What have you got there, sir?’

‘Lord knows. A threat? A billet dowx? Find my case, please, Fox, and get out a couple of tweezers. We’ll open it carefully. At least it may have his prints. Thank the Lord I brought that camera.’

Fox produced the tweezers. Alleyn dropped his paper on the glass top of the washstand. Using the tweezers, he opened it delicately. Fox looked over his shoulder and read ten words written in pencil.

‘Implore you usual place immediately. Most important. Destroy at once.’

‘Crikey again,’ said Alleyn. ‘An assignation.’

‘Where did you get it, Mr Alleyn?’

‘Under the door. I fished for it with a hairpin I found in the bathroom. Luckily there was a good gap.’

‘Will Pomeroy’s door?’

‘Does Will Pomeroy wear high-heeled shoes, size four and a half, made by Rafferty, Belfast?’

‘Lor’,’ said Fox. ‘The Honourable Violet.’

CHAPTER 13
Miss Darragh Stands firm

The summer sun shines early on the Coombe, and when Alleyn looked out of his window at half-past five it was at a crinkled and sparkling sea. The roofs of Fish Lane were cleanly pale. A column of wood smoke rose delicately from a chimney-pot. Someone walked, whistling, down Ottercombe Steps.

Alleyn had been dressed for an hour. He was waiting for Mr Robert Legge. He supposed that the word ‘immediately’ in the note for Miss Darragh might be interpreted as ‘the moment you read this’, which no doubt would be soon after Miss Darragh awoke.

Fox and Alleyn had been very industrious before they went to bed. They had poured iodine into a flat dish and they had put Mr Legge’s letter into the dish but not into the iodine. They had covered the dish and left it for five minutes, and then set up an extremely expensive camera by whose aid they could photograph the note by lamplight. They might have spared themselves the trouble. There were no fingerprints on Mr Legge’s note. Fox had gone to bed in high dudgeon. Alleyn had refolded the note and pushed it under Miss Darragh’s door. Four minutes later he had slipped peacefully into sleep.

The morning smelt fresh. Alleyn leant over the window-sill and glanced to his left. At the same moment three feet away Fox leant over his window-sill and glanced to his right. He was fully dressed and looked solidly prepared to take up his bowler hat and go anywhere.