‘All right. Now the bale with which I’m concerned was the first one you handled that morning. When you started work, it was full of wool that apparently had been trampled down but not pressed. You pressed it. You told the police you noticed no change whatever, nothing remarkable or unusual in the condition of the bale. It was exactly as you’d left it the night before.’

‘So it was the same. Wouldn’t I of noticed if it hadn’t been?’

‘I should have thought so, certainly. The floor, for instance, round the press.’

‘What about it?’ Merrywether began on a high note. Alleyn saw his hands contract. He blinked, his sandy lashes moving like shutters over his light eyes. ‘What about the floor?’ he said, less truculently.

‘I notice how smooth the surface is. Would that be the natural grease in the fleeces? It’s particularly noticeable on the shearing-board and round the press where the bales may act as polishing agents when they are shoved across the floor.’ He glanced at Merrywether’s feet. ‘You wear ordinary boots. The soles must get quite glassy in here, I should have thought.’

‘Not to notice,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘The floor was in its normal condition that morning, was it? No odd pieces of wool lying about?’

‘I told you—’ Merrywether began, but Alleyn interrupted him. ‘And as smooth as ever?’ he said. Merrywether was silent. ‘Come now,’ said Alleyn, ‘haven’t you remembered something that escaped your memory before, when Sub-Inspector Jackson talked to you?’

‘I couldn’t be expected—I was crook. The way he kept asking me how could I of shifted a pack with you-know-what inside it. It turned my stomach on me.’

‘I know. But the floor. Thinking back, now. Was there anything about the floor, round the press, when you arrived here that morning? Was it swept and polished as usual?’

‘It was swept.’

‘And polished?’

‘All right, all right, it wasn’t. How was I to remember, three weeks later? The way I’d got churned up over what, in all innocence, I done? It never crossed me mind till just now when you brought it up. I noticed it and yet I never noticed it if you can understand.’

‘I know,’ said Alleyn.

‘But, in pity’s name, Jack,’ cried Fabian, who had been silent throughout the entire interview, ‘what did you not notice?’

‘The floor was kind of smudged,’ said Merrywether.

In the men’s midday dinner hour, Fabian brought Cliff Johns to the study. Alleyn felt curious about this boy who had so unexpectedly refused the patronage of Florence Rubrick. He had asked Fabian to leave them alone together and now, as he watched the uncoordinated movements of the youth’s hands, he wondered if Cliff knew that, in defiance of his alibi, he was Sub-Inspector Jackson’s pet among the suspects.