‘But there is no need to be terrified, none at all. Don’t you see that if you can give me proof that you and Captain Withers motored straight from Marsdon House to the Matador, it clears you at once from any hint of complicity in Lord Robert’s death?’

He waited. She began to rock backwards and forwards, beating her hands together and moving her head from side to side like a well-preserved automaton.

‘I can’t. I just can’t. I won’t say anything more. I just won’t say another thing. It’s no good. I won’t say another thing.’

‘Very well,’ said Alleyn, not too unkindly. ‘Don’t try. I’ll get at it another way. This is a very magnificent case. The medallion is an old one. Italian Renaissance, I should think. It’s most exquisitely worked. It might almost be Benvenuto himself who formed those minute scrolls. Do you know its history?’

‘No. Maurice picked it up somewhere and had it put on the case. I’m crazy about old things,’ said Mrs Halcut-Hackett with a dry sob. ‘Crazy about them.’

Alleyn opened the lid. An inscription read ‘E. from M.W.’ He shut the case but did not return it to her.

‘Don’t lose it, Mrs Halcut-Hackett. The medal is a collector’s piece. Aren’t you afraid to carry it about with you?’

She seemed to take heart of grace at his interest. She dabbed again at her eyes and said: ‘I’m just terribly careless with my things. Perhaps I ought not to use it. Only last night I left it lying about.’

‘Did you? Where?’

She looked terrified again the moment he asked her a question.

‘Some place at the ball,’ she said.

‘Was it in the green sitting-room on the top landing?’

‘I—yes—I think maybe it was.’

‘At what time?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘During the supper hour didn’t you sit in that room with Captain Withers?’

‘Yes. Why not? Why shouldn’t I?’ She twisted the handkerchief round her hands and said: ‘How do you know that? My husband—I’m not—he’s not having me watched?’

‘I don’t for a moment suppose so. I simply happened to know that you sat in this room some time just before one o’clock. You tell me you left your cigarette-case there. Now when you came out of that room what did you do?’

‘I went into the cloakroom to tidy. I missed the case when I opened my bag in the cloakroom.’

‘Right. Now as you went from the green sitting-room to the cloakroom two doors away, did you happen to notice Lord Robert on the landing? Please don’t think I am trying to entrap you. I simply want to know if you saw him.’

‘He was coming upstairs,’ she said. Her voice and manner were more controlled now.