A car drew up in the yard. The side door opened noisily, and Colonel Brammington’s voice sounded in the passage. He came in with Harper and Oates at his heels. The colonel was dressed in a dinner suit. He wore a stiff shirt with no central stud. It curved generously away from his person and through the gaping front could be seen a vast expanse of pink chest. Evidently he had at some earlier hour wetted his hair and dragged a comb through it. His shoelaces were untied and his socks unsupported. Over his dinner jacket he wore a green tyrolese bicycling cape.

‘I can’t apologize enough, sir,’ Alleyn began, but the chief constable waved him aside.

‘Not at all, Alleyn. A bore, but it couldn’t be helped. I am distended with rich food and wines. Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age. I freely confess I outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine. It was, I flatter myself, a good dinner, but I shall not taunt you with a recital of its virtues.’

‘I am sure it was a dinner in a thousand,’ said Alleyn. ‘I hope you didn’t mind coming here, sir. Fox was still—’

‘By heaven!’ interrupted Colonel Brammington, ‘this pestilent poisoner o’er tops it, does he not? The attempt, I imagine, was upon you both. Harper has told me the whole story. When will you make an arrest, Alleyn? May we send this fellow up the ladder to bed, and that no later than the Quarter Sessions! Let him wag upon a wooden nag. A pox on him! I trust you are recovered, Fox? Sherry, wasn’t it? Amontillado, I understand. Double sacrilege, by the Lord!’

Colonel Brammington hurled himself into a chair and asked for a cigarette. When this had been given him, he produced from his trousers’ pocket a crumpled mass of typescript which Alleyn recognized as the carbon copy of his report.

‘I have been over the report, Alleyn,’ said Colonel Brammington, ‘and while you expended your energies so happily in resuscitating the poisoned Fox (and by the way, our murderer carries the blacker stigma of a fox-poisoner!) I read this admirable digest. I congratulate you. A masterly presentation of facts, free from the nauseating redundancies of most bureaucratic documents. I implored you to allow me to be your Watson. You consented. I come, full of my theory, ready to admit my blunders. Is there by any chance some flask of fermented liquor in this house to which cyanide has not been added? May we not open some virgin bottle?’

Alleyn went into the bar, found three sealed bottles of Treble Extra, chalked them up to himself and took them with glasses into the parlour.

‘We should have a taster,’ said Colonel Brammington. ‘Some Borgian attendant at our call. What a pity the wretched Nark is not here.’