‘You’d better go down with them, Nick,’ said Alleyn. ‘Tell Oates to watch our man like a lynx. Abel will show you a decanter. Bring it up here. Here’s the key. Use my gloves. You’d better search them. You won’t find anything but you’d better do it. Leave Miss Darragh for the moment.’

Harper went out.

‘Did you take any sherry, Alleyn?’ asked Dr Shaw sharply.

‘I? No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Perfectly. Why?’

‘You look a bit dicky.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Mr Alleyn has just saved my life for me,’ whispered Fox.

‘You come along,’ said Dr Shaw, and led him out.

Alleyn took an envelope from his pocket and put it over the glass from which Fox had drunk. He weighted the envelope with the saucer from his wash-hand stand. He got his bag and took out an empty bottle and a funnel. He smelt the sherry in his own glass and then poured it into the bottle, stoppered it, and wrote on the label. He was annoyed to find that his hands shook. His heart thumped intolerably. He grimaced and took another mouthful of brandy.

Harper came back.

‘Oates and my other chap are searching them,’ said Harper. ‘They made no objections.’

‘They wouldn’t. Sit down, Nick,’ said Alleyn, ‘and listen. Put Fox’s sick out of the way first, for the Lord’s sake. Give it to Shaw. I’ve got palsy or something.’

Harper performed this office and sat down.

‘Yesterday evening,’ said Alleyn, ‘Abel Pomeroy opened a bottle of a very sound sherry. Fox and I had a glass each. At a quarter to one today Abel decanted the sherry. He, Fox and I had a glass each after it was decanted. George Nark was in the bar. Later on, Miss Darragh, Legge, Parish, Cubitt, and Will Pomeroy came in and we talked about the sherry. They all knew it was for our private use. Some forty minutes ago, Abel poured out two glasses. Fox drank his and within half a minute he was taken very ill. The symptoms were those of cyanide poisoning. I’ll swear Abel didn’t put anything in the glasses. There’s Fox’s glass. We’ll do our stuff with what’s left. I’ve covered it but we’d better get the dregs into an airtight bottle. You’ll find one in my bag there. There’s a funnel on the dressing-table. D’you mind doing it? Clean the funnel out first. I used it for the stuff in my glass.’

Harper did this.

‘It’s a bad blunder,’ he said. ‘What good would it do him? Suppose you’d both been killed? I mean, it’s foolish. Is it panic or spite or both?’

‘Neither, I imagine. I see it as a last attempt to bolster up the accident theory. The idea is that in the same mysterious way as cyanide got on the dart so it got into the decanter. The decanter, you see, was brought out from the corner cupboard. Mrs Ives had washed it in about two dozen changes of boiling water. I don’t think anybody but Nark and Abel were aware of this. We were no doubt supposed to think the decanter was tainted by being in the cupboard.’