After perhaps a minute she began to speak slowly and carefully. ‘What I am going to tell you is the exact truth. Until an hour ago I would have been afraid to let you see it. There is something written there that you would have misinterpreted. Now, you would not misinterpret it. There is nothing in it that could help you. It is because the thought of your reading it is distasteful to me that I want to keep it from you. I swear that is all. I solemnly swear it.’

‘You must know,’ he said, ‘that I can’t act on an assurance of that sort. Surely you must know.’ She leant forward, resting her forehead on her hand and pushing her hair back from it. ‘If it is as you say,’ Alleyn continued, ‘you must try to think of me as something quite impersonal, as indeed I am. I have read many scores of such documents, written for one reader only, and have laid them aside and put them from my mind. But I must see it or, if I don’t, the police must do so. Which is it to be?’

‘Does it matter?’ she said harshly. ‘You then. You know where it is. Go and get it, but don’t let me see it in your hands.’

‘Before I go, there is one question. Why, when we discussed the search for the brooch, did you tell us you didn’t meet Arthur Rubrick in the long walk below the tennis court?’

‘I still say so.’

‘No, no. You’re an intelligent person. You heard what Losse and Grace said about the search. It was obvious you must have met him.’ He paused, and the memory returned to him of Fabian muttering: ‘Terry! Oh Lord, I do wish I hadn’t got up here. Silly old man!’ He sat on the wooden fender, facing Terence Lynne. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘there was an encounter, wasn’t there? A significant encounter? Something happened that would speak for itself to an observer at some distance.’

‘Who was it? Was it Douglas? Ursula?’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘If you know as much as this,’ she said, ‘you know, unless you’re trying to trap me, that he—he put his arms about me and kissed me. There’s nothing left. Everything has been coarsened now, and made common.’

‘Isn’t there something unsound in a happiness that fades in the light? I know this particular light is harsh and painful for you, but it is a passing thing. When it’s gone you will have your remembrances—’ He broke off for a moment and then added deliberately, ‘Whatever happens.’

She said impatiently: ‘Within the last hour, everything has altered. I told you. You don’t understand.’