‘You little egoist,’ he said, ‘I’ve listened to you for the last ten minutes and all you want to talk about is yourself and your young man. Quite right too, but not the policeman’s cup of tea. You take care of your mother who needs you rather badly just now, encourage your young man to renew his studies and, if you can, wean him from Withers. Good-bye, now, I’m off.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Predicament of a Secretary

WHEN HE HAD CLOSED the nursery door behind him, Alleyn made for the stairs. If Fox was still closeted in the library with Carrados conversation must be getting a bit strained. He passed Lady Carrados’s room and heard a distant noise.

‘It’s insufferable, my dear Evelyn, that—’

Alleyn grimaced and went on downstairs.

He found Fox alone in the library.

‘Hullo, Brer Fox,’ said Alleyn. ‘Lost the simple soldier-man?’

‘Gone upstairs,’ said Fox. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry. I had a job to keep him here at all after you went.’

‘How did you manage it?’

‘Asked him if he had any experience of police investigation. That did it. We went from there to how he helped the police catch a footman that stole somebody’s pearls in Tunbridge and how if he just hadn’t happened to notice the man watching the vase on the piano nobody would ever have thought of looking in the Duchess’s potpourri. Funny how vain some of these old gentlemen get, isn’t it?’

‘Screamingly. As we seem to have this important room all to ourselves we’d better see if we can get hold of Miss Harris. You might go and ask—’

But before Fox got as far as the door it opened and Miss Harris herself walked in.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said crisply, ‘I believe you wished to see me. Lady Carrados’s secretary.’

‘We were on the point of asking for you, Miss Harris,’ said Alleyn. ‘Won’t you sit down? My name is Alleyn and this is Inspector Fox.’

‘Good afternoon,’ repeated Miss Harris and sat down.

She was neither plain nor beautiful, short nor tall, dark nor fair. It crossed his mind that she might have won a newspaper competition for the average woman, that she represented the dead norm of femininity. Her clothes were perfectly adequate and completely without character. She was steeped in nonentity. No wonder that few people had noticed her at Marsdon House. She might have gone everywhere, heard everything like a sort of upper middle-class Oberon at Theseus’s party. Unless, indeed, nonentity itself was conspicuous at Marsdon House last night.

He noticed that she was not in the least nervous. Her hands rested quietly in her lap. She had laid a pad and pencil on the arm of her chair exactly as if she was about to take notes at his dictation. Fox took his own notebook out and waited.

‘May we have your name and address?’ asked Alleyn.