‘We have lost a great figure then,’ said Alleyn.

‘That’s very graceful. But it’s untrue, I’m afraid. I am too impatient and altogether too much of a partisan. As in this case. Lord Robert was a friend of mine. It would be impossible for me to look at this case with an equal eye.’

‘If you mean,’ said Alleyn, ‘that you do not feel kindly disposed towards his murderer, no more do we. Do we, Fox?’

‘No, sir, that we do not,’ said Fox.

Davidson’s brilliant eyes rested for a moment on Fox. With a single glance he seemed to draw him into the warm circle of his confidence and regard. ‘All the same,’ thought Alleyn, ‘he’s uneasy. He doesn’t quite know where to begin.’ And he said:

‘You very kindly rang up to say you might be able to help us.’

‘Yes,’ said Davidson, ‘yes, I did.’ He lifted a very beautiful jade paperweight and put it down. ‘I don’t know how to begin.’ He darted a shrewd and somehow impish glance at Alleyn. ‘I find myself in the unenviable position of being one of the last people to see Lord Robert.’

Fox took out his notebook. Davidson looked distastefully at it.

‘When did you see him?’ Alleyn asked.

‘In the hall. Just before I left.’

‘You left, I understand, after Mrs Halcut-Hackett, Captain Withers and Mr Donald Potter, who went away severally about three-thirty.’

Davidson’s jaw dropped. He flung up his beautiful hands.

‘Believe it or not,’ he said, ‘I had a definite struggle with my conscience before I made up my mind to admit it.’

‘Why was that?’ asked Alleyn.

Again that sideways impish glance.

‘I didn’t want to come forward at all. Not a bit. It’s very bad for us parasites to appear in murder trials. In the long run, it is very bad indeed. By the way, I suppose it is a case of homicide. No doubt about it? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘Of course you can ask. There seems to be no doubt at all. He was smothered.’

‘Smothered!’ Davidson leant forward, his hands clasped on the desk. Alleyn read in his face the subtle change that comes upon all men when they embark on their own subject. ‘Good God!’ he said, ‘he wasn’t a Desdemona! Why didn’t he make a rumpus? Is he marked?’

‘There are no marks of violence.’

‘None? Who did the autopsy?’

‘Curtis. He’s our expert.’

‘Curtis, Curtis?—yes, of course. How does he account for the absence of violence? Heart? His heart was in a poor condition.’

‘How do you know that, Sir Daniel?’

‘My dear fellow, I examined him most thoroughly three weeks ago.’

‘Did you!’ exclaimed Alleyn. ‘That’s very interesting. What did you find?’

‘I found a very unpleasant condition. Evidence of fatty degeneration. I ordered him to avoid cigars like the plague, to deny himself his port and to rest for two hours every day. I am firmly persuaded that he paid no attention whatsoever. Nevertheless, my dear Mr Alleyn, it was not a condition under which I would expect an unprovoked heart attack. A struggle certainly might induce it and you tell me there is no evidence of a struggle.’