He said: ‘That great fat bag you had noticed earlier in the evening?’

‘Yes. But it wasn’t so fat this time,’ said Troy quickly. ‘Now I think of it, it was quite limp and flat. You see, I was looking at her hands again. I remember thinking subconsciously that it seemed such a large bag for a ball-dress. Mildred came up and we left soon after that. I’m afraid that’s all.’

‘Afraid? Troy, you don’t know what an important person you are.’

‘Don’t I?’

She looked at him with an air of bewildered friendliness and at once his whole face was lit by his fierce awareness of her. Troy’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. She reached out her hand and touched him.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Alleyn drew back. He struck one hand against the palm of the other and said violently:

‘For God’s sake, don’t be kind! What is this intolerable love that forces me to do the very things I wish with all my soul to avoid? Yes, Troy, please go now.’

Troy went without another word.

CHAPTER NINE

Report from Mr Fox

ALLEYN WALKED about the room swearing under his breath. He was found at this employment by Detective-Inspector Fox, who arrived looking solid and respectable.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said Fox.

‘Hullo, Fox. Sit down. I’ve found the will. Everything goes to his sister and her son. The boy’s in debt and has quarrelled with his uncle. He’s living away from home but will be in any moment. I’ve found Lord Robert’s notes on the blackmail case. He told me when he rang up at one o’clock this morning that he’d call here first to get out of his boiled shirt and collect the notes. There they are. Look at ’em.’

Fox put on his spectacles and took the little notebook in his enormous fist. He read solemnly with his head thrown back a little and his eyebrows raised.

‘Yes,’ he said when he had finished. ‘Well now, Mr Alleyn, that’s quite an interesting little bit of evidence, isn’t it? It puts this Mr Dimitri in what you might call a very unfavourable light. We can get him for blackmail on this information if the lady doesn’t let us down. This Mrs Halcut-Hackett, I mean.’

‘You notice Lord Robert thought she suspected him himself of taking the bag at the concert.’

‘Yes. That’s awkward. You might say it gives her a motive for the murder.’

‘If you can conceive of Mrs Halcut-Hackett, who is what the drapers call a queenly woman, dressing up as a man during the ball, accosting Lord Robert in the street, getting him to give her a lift, knocking him out, smothering him, and striding home in the light of dawn in somebody’s trousers.’

‘That’s right,’ said Fox. ‘I can’t. She might have an accomplice.’