‘Not another word,’ said Alleyn, ‘until we get to that pub outside Barbicon-Bramley. Do you realize we’ve had no lunch? I refuse to utter another word until I’ve drunk a pint of bitter.’

‘And some bread and cheese and pickles,’ said Fox. ‘Pickles with plenty of onions in them.’

‘Lord! Lord! Fox, what a choice! Now I come to think of it, though, it sounds damn good. “Bread and cheese and pickles,” Fox, it’s what we need. New white bread, mouse-trap cheese, home-made pickles and bitter.’

‘That’s the idea, Mr Alleyn. You’re a great gourmet,’ said Fox who had taught himself French, ‘and don’t think I haven’t enjoyed some of those dinners you’ve given me when everything seemed to sort of slide into something else. I have. But when you’re famished and in the English countryside you can’t beat bread and cheese and pickles.’

The pub provided them with these delicacies. They took about a quarter of an hour over their meal and then set out again.

‘Now then,’ said Alleyn.

‘The thing that beats me,’ said Fox, wiping his short moustache with his handkerchief, ‘is little Violet. We knew she was a niece of this old gentleman’s but, by gum, we didn’t know she was staying there at the time, now, did we?’

‘No, Brer Fox, we didn’t.’

‘I suppose she may not know it herself,’ continued Fox. ‘I mean to say, Miss Violet Harris may not realize that Lady Carrados was this Mrs O’Brien whose husband was brought into her uncle’s vicarage when she was a kid of fifteen.’

‘Quite possible. I hope she remembers the bicycle ride. We’ll have to jog her memory, I dare say.’

‘Yes. Now I reckon, on what we’ve heard, that it was Carrados who took that letter from little Violet. Carrados, sitting in the car outside the hospital, while the poor chap who’d got the letter from Australia was dying inside. And then, later on, when there’s all the fuss about a missing letter, what does he do?’

Alleyn knew this question was purely rhetorical and didn’t interrupt.

‘He tells the widow,’ said Fox; ‘he tells the widow that he’s made every inquiry and there isn’t a letter to be found.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘No doubt he tells her that.’