‘Well, then he took up the bottle and corked it. I suppose,’ said Harper, ‘I should have had the stuff analysed but we’ve no call to suspect Abel Pomeroy. There was none missing from the jar and there are only his prints on it, and there’s the extra quarter ounce missing from the bottle. No, it’s gone from the bottle. Must have. And, see here, Mr Alleyn, the stuff was found on the dart and nowhere else. What’s more, if it was the dart that did the trick and it’s murder, then Legge’s our bird because only Legge controlled the flight of the dart.’

‘Silly sort of way to kill a man,’ said Fox, suddenly. ‘It’d be asking for a conviction, Super, now wouldn’t it?’

‘Maybe he reckoned he’d get a chance to wipe the dart,’ said Harper.

‘He had his chance,’ said Alleyn quickly. ‘Wasn’t it brought out that Legge helped the constable—Oates isn’t it?—to find the dart? He had his chance, then, to wipe it.’

‘And if he was guilty, why didn’t he?’ ended Fox.

‘You’re asking me,’ said Superintendent Harper. ‘Here’s the colonel.’

III

The chief constable was an old acquaintance of Alleyn’s. Alleyn liked Colonel Brammington. He was a character, an oddity, full of mannerisms that amused rather than irritated Alleyn. He was so unlike the usual county-minded chief constable that it was a matter for conjecture how he ever got the appointment, for he spent half his life in giving offence and was amazingly indiscreet. He arrived at Illington Police Station in a powerful racing car that was as scarred as a veteran. It could be heard from the moment it entered the street and Harper exclaimed agitatedly:

‘Here he comes! He knows that engine’s an offence within the meaning of the Act and he doesn’t care. He’ll get us all into trouble one of these days. There are complaints on all sides. On all sides!’

The screech of heavy tyres and violent braking announced Colonel Brammington’s arrival and in a moment he came in. He was a vast red man with untidy hair, prominent eyes, and a loud voice. The state of his clothes suggested that he’d been dragged by the heels through some major disaster.

He shouted an apology at Harper, touched Alleyn’s hand as if it was a bomb, stared at Fox, and then hurled himself into a seagrass chair with such abandon that he was like to break it.

‘I should have been here half an hour ago,’ shouted Colonel Brammington, ‘but for my car, my detestable, my abominable car.’

‘What was the matter, sir?’ asked Harper.

‘My good Harper, I have no notion. Fortunately I was becalmed near a garage. The fellow thrust his head among her smoking entrails, uttered some mumbo-jumbo, performed suitable rites with oil and water, and I was enabled to continue.’