‘I can’t imagine, I must confess, how Lady Carrados’s indisposition can have any possible connection with Lord Robert Gospell’s death. She is nervously exhausted and felt the strain of her duties.’ Davidson added as if to himself: ‘This business will do her no good, either.’

‘You see,’ said Alleyn, ‘in a case of this sort we have to look for any departure from the ordinary or the expected. I agree that this particular departure seems quite irrelevant. So, alas, will many of the other facts we bring to light. If they cannot be correlated they will be discarded. That is routine.’

‘No doubt. Well, all I can tell you is that I noticed Lady Carrados was unwell, told her to go and lie down in the ladies’ cloakroom, which I understand was on the top landing, and to send her maid for me if she needed me. Getting no message, I tried to find her, but couldn’t. She reappeared later on and told me she felt a little better and not to worry about her.’

‘Sir Daniel, did you happen to see the caterer, Dimitri, return her bag to Lady Carrados?’

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

‘I’ve heard that for a time last night she thought she had lost it and was very distressed.’

‘She said nothing to me about it. It might account for her upset. I noticed that bag. It has a very lovely emerald and ruby clasp—an old Italian setting and much too choice a piece to bedizen a bit of tinsel nonsense. But nowadays people have no sense of congruity in ornament. None.’

‘I have been looking at your horse. You, at least, have an appreciation of the beautiful. Forgive me for forgetting my job for a moment but—a ray of sunshine has caught that little horse. Rose red and ochre! I’ve a passion for ceramics.’

Davidson’s face was lit from within. He embarked eagerly on the story of how he acquired his little horse. His hands touched it as delicately as if it was a rose. He and Alleyn stepped back three thousand centuries into the golden age of pottery and Inspector Fox sat as silent as stout Cortez with his official notebook open on his knees and an expression of patient tolerance on his large solemn face.

‘—and speaking of Benvenuto,’ said Davidson who had talked himself into the Italian Renaissance, ‘I saw in a room at Marsdon House last night, unless I am a complete nincompoop, an authentic Cellini medallion. And where, my dear Alleyn, do you suppose it was? To what base use do you imagine it had been put?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Alleyn, smiling.

‘It had been sunk; sunk, mark you, in a machine-turned gold case with a devilish diamond clasp and it was surrounded with brilliants. Doubtless this sacrilegious abortion was intended as a receptacle for cigarettes.’

‘Where was this horror?’ asked Alleyn.

‘In an otherwise charming green sitting-room.’

‘On the top landing?’