She glanced up at Alleyn with the impersonal attentive air proper to her position. He felt so precisely that she was indeed his secretary that there was no need for him to repress a smile. But he did glance at Fox, who for the first time in Alleyn’s memory, looked really at a loss. His large hand hovered uncertainly over his own notebook. Alleyn realized that Fox did not know whether to take down Miss Harris’s shorthand in his own shorthand.

Alleyn said: ‘Thank you, Miss Harris. Anything else?’

Miss Harris turned a page.

‘Details of conversation,’ she began. ‘I have not made memos of all the remarks I have remembered. Many of them were merely light comments on suitable subjects. For instance, Lord Robert spoke of Lady Carrados and expressed regret that she seemed to be tired. That sort of thing.’

‘Let us have his remarks under this heading,’ said Alleyn with perfect gravity.

‘Certainly, Mr Alleyn. Lord Robert asked me if I had noticed that Lady Carrados had been tired for some time. I said yes I had, and that I was sorry because she was so nice to everybody. He asked if I thought it was entirely due to the season. I said I expected it was, because many ladies I have had posts with have found the season very exhausting, although in a way Lady Carrados took the entertaining side very lightly. Lord Robert asked me if I liked being with Lady Carrados. I replied that I did, very much. Lord Robert asked me several questions about myself. He was very easy to talk to. I told him about the old days at the rectory and how we ought to have been much better off, and he was very nice, and I told about my father’s people in Bucks and he seemed quite interested in so many of them being parsons and what an old Buckinghamshire family we really are.’

‘Oh, God,’ thought Alleyn on a sudden wave of painful compassion. ‘And so they probably are and because for the last two or three generations they’ve had to haul down the social flag inch by inch their children are all going to talk like this and nobody’s going to feel anything but uncomfortably incredulous.’

He said: ‘You come from Barbicon-Bramley? That’s not far from Bassicote, is it? I know that part of Bucks fairly well. Is your father’s rectory anywhere near Falconbridge?’

‘Oh, no. Falconbridge is thirty miles away. My uncle Walter was rector at Falconbridge.’

Alleyn said: ‘Really? Long ago?’

‘When I was a small girl. He’s retired now and lives in Barbicon-Bramley. All the Harrises live to ripe old ages. Lord Robert remarked that many of the clergy do. He said longevity was one of the more dubious rewards of virtue,’ said Miss Harris with a glance at her notes.

Alleyn could hear the squeaky voice uttering this gentle epigram.

‘He was amusing,’ added Miss Harris.