‘Auntie Floss, please listen to me!’

‘I thought I told you—’

Appalled at his own handiwork, he left her.

At this point in his narrative Douglas rose and straddled the hearth-rug.

‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he said, ‘that we weren’t the same after it. She got the huff and treated me like a kid.’

‘We noticed,’ Fabian said, ‘that your popularity had waned a little. Poor Flossie! You’d hoist her with the petard of her own conscience. A maddening and unforgivable thing to do, of course. Obviously she would hate your guts for it.’

‘There’s no need to put it like that,’ said Douglas grandly.

‘With a little enlargement,’ Fabian grinned, ‘it might work up into quite a pretty motive against you.’

‘That’s a damned silly thing to say, Fabian,’ Douglas shouted.

‘Shut up, Fab,’ said Ursula. ‘You’re impossible.’

‘Sorry, darling.’

‘I still don’t see,’ Douglas fumed, ‘that I could have taken any other line. After all, as she pointed out, it was her house and he was her servant.’

‘You didn’t think of that when you picked his door lock,’ Fabian pointed out.

‘I didn’t pick the lock, Fabian, and anyhow that was entirely different.’

‘Did Mrs Rubrick tackle him?’ Alleyn asked.

‘I presume so. She said nothing to me, and I wasn’t going to ask and be ticked off again.’

Douglas lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Obviously,’ Alleyn thought, ‘he still has something up his sleeve.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Douglas lightly, ‘I’m quite positive she did tackle him, and I believe it’s because of what she said that Markins killed her.’

‘And there,’ said Fabian cheerfully, ‘you have it. Flossie says to Markins, “I understand from my nephew that you’re an enemy agent. Take a week’s wages in lieu of notice and expect to be arrested and shot when you get to the railway station!” “No, you don’t,” says Markins to himself. He serves up the soup with murder in his heart, takes a stroll past the wool-shed, hears Flossie in the full spate of her experimental oratory, nips in and—does it. To me it just doesn’t make sense.’

‘You deliberately make it sound silly,’ said Douglas hotly.

‘It is silly. Moreover, it’s not in her character, as I read it, to accuse Markins. It would have been the action of a fool and, bless my soul, Flossie was no fool.’

‘It was her deliberately expressed intention.’

‘To “tackle Markins.” That was, her phrase, wasn’t it? That is, to tackle l’affaire Markins. She wanted to get rid of you and think. And, upon my soul, I don’t blame her.’

‘But how would she tackle Markins?’ Terence objected, ‘except by questioning him?’ She spoke so seldom that the sound of her voice, cool and incisive, came as a little shock.