‘Vindictive little devil! Can’t you get on top of it all and see it as something intensely disagreeable that won’t last for ever? Have you tried drawing as a counter-irritant?’

‘I’ve done a caricature of Her. When I get away from here I’ll send it to her if she’s not in gaol by that time.’

‘Do you know Sarah Alleyn?’

‘She’s one of the successes. Yes, I know her.’

‘Do you like her?’

‘She’s not bad. She actually remembers who I am when she sees me.’

Alleyn decided to abandon his niece for the moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I dare say you’re nearer to escape than you imagine. I’ll be off now. I hope we meet again.’

‘So do I. I suppose you think I’m pretty ghastly.’

‘That’s all right. Make up your mind everybody hates you and you’ll always be happy.’

Miss Birnbaum grinned.

‘You think you’re clever,’ she said, ‘don’t you? Good-bye.’

They shook hands in a friendly manner, and she saw them out into the hall. Alleyn had a last glimpse of her standing stocky, dark and truculent against a background of restrained and decorous half-tones and beautiful pseudo-Empire curtains.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Statement by Lucy Lorrimer

IT WAS NEARLY SIX O’CLOCK in the evening when Alleyn and Fox returned to Scotland Yard. They went to Alleyn’s room. Fox got to work on his notes, Alleyn tackled the reports that had come in while they were away. They both lit pipes and between them was established that pleasant feeling of unexpressed intimacy that comes to two people working in silence at the same job.

Presently Alleyn put down the reports and looked across at his friend. He thought: ‘How often we have sat like this, Fox and I, working like a couple of obscure clerks in the offices of the Last Judgment concern, filing and correlating the misdeeds of men. Fox is getting quite grizzled and there are elderly purple veins in his cheeks. I shall go home later on, a solitary fellow, to my own hole.’ And into his thoughts came the image of a woman who sat in a tall blue chair by his fire, but that was too domestic a picture. Rather, she would sit on the hearth-rug. Her hands would be stained with charcoal and they would sweep beautiful lines across a white surface. When he came in she would look up from her drawing and Troy’s eyes would smile or scowl. He jerked the image away and found that Fox was looking at him with his usual air of bland expectancy.

‘Finished?’ said Alleyn.