‘Well, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I don’t think that’s a remark to get you or anyone else much further. Lord Robert wouldn’t have thanked you for it and that’s a fact. We don’t feel obliged to warn everybody who helps in a blackmail case that it’s liable to turn to murder. And why?’ continued Fox with the nearest approach to animation that Alleyn had ever seen in him. ‘Because up to now it never has.’

‘All right, Brer Fox,’ said Alleyn. ‘I’ll pipe down.’

And for the rest of the way to Marsdon House they were both silent.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Simple Soldier-man

MARSDON HOUSE had been put into a sort of cold-storage by the police. Dimitri’s men had done a certain amount of clearing up before Alleyn’s men arrived, but for the most part the great house seemed to be suffering from a severe form of carry-over. It smelt of stale cigarette butts. They were everywhere, bent double, stained red, stained brown, in ash-trays, fireplaces and waste-paper boxes; ground into the ballroom floor, dropped behind chairs, lurking in dirty cups and floating in a miserable state of disintegration among the stalks of dying flowers. Upstairs in the ladies’ dressing-room they lay in drifts of spilt powder, and in the green boudoir someone had allowed a cigarette to eat a charred track across the margin of a pie-crust table.

Alleyn and Fox stood in the green boudoir and looked at the telephone.

‘There he sat,’ said Alleyn, and once more he quoted: ‘“The cakes-and-ale feller. Might as well mix his damn brews with poison. And he’s working with—” Look, Fox, he must have sat in this chair, facing the door. He wouldn’t see anybody coming because of that very charming screen. Imagine our interloper sneaking through the door. He catches a word that arrests his attention, stops for a second and then, realising what Lord Robert is doing, comes round the screen. Lord Robert looks up: “Hullo, I didn’t see you,” and knowing he has just mentioned the Yard, pitches his lost property story and rings off. I’ve left word at the Yard that every name on that guest list is to be traced and each guest asked as soon as possible if he or she butted in on that conversation. I’m using a lot of men on this case, but the AC’s behaving very prettily, thank the Lord. Get that PC, will you?’

The constable who had been left in charge reported that Detective-Sergeant Bailey had been all over the room for prints and had gone to the Yard before lunch.

‘Is the telephone still switched through to this room?’

‘I believe so, sir. Nothing’s been touched.’

‘Fox, ring up the Yard and see if there’s anything new.’

While Fox was at the telephone Alleyn prowled about the room looking with something like despair at the evidence of so many visitors. It was useless to hope that anything conclusive would be deduced from Bailey’s efforts. They might find Lord Robert’s prints on the telephone but what was the good of that? If they could separate and classify every print that had been left in the room it would lead them exactly nowhere.