‘Good. He’d better stay with him and you’d better dip your nose in cold water before you resume duty. Then come and relieve Mr Harper.’

Oates went into the bathroom. Alleyn opened Fox’s door and listened. Fox was snoring deeply and rhythmically. Alleyn closed the door softly and returned to the taproom.

III

It was the last time that he was to see that assembly gathered together in the private taproom of the Plume of Feathers. He had been little over twenty-four hours in Ottercombe but it seemed more like a week. The suspects in a case of murder become quickly and strangely familiar to the investigating officer. He has an aptitude for noticing mannerisms, tricks of voice and of movement. Faces and figures make their impression quickly and sharply. Alleyn expected, before he saw them, Cubitt’s trick of smiling lop-sidedly, Parish’s habit of sticking out his jaw, Miss Darragh’s look of inscrutability, Will Pomeroy’s mulish blushes, and his father’s way of opening his eyes very widely. The movement of Nark’s head, slanted conceitedly, and his look of burning self-importance, seemed to be memories of a year rather than of days. Alleyn felt a little as if they were marionettes, obeying a few simple jerks of their strings and otherwise inert and stupid. He felt wholeheartedly bored with the lot of them, the thought of another bout of interrogation was almost intolerable. Fox might have been killed. Reaction had set in, and Alleyn was sick at heart.

‘Well,’ he said crisply, ‘you may as well know what has happened. Between a quarter to one and five past seven somebody put poison in the decanter of sherry that was kept for our use. You will readily understand that we shall require a full account from each one of you of your movements after a quarter to one. Mr Harper and I will see you in turn in the parlour. If you discuss the matter among yourselves it will be within hearing of Constable Oates who will be on duty in this room. We’ll see you first if you please, Mr Cubitt.’