He moved away a little from Ursula and looked up at her with a singularly sweet smile. ‘Except by Ursula,’ he said. ‘She appeared to have noted the resemblance to a dead fish and she tackled me about it the next morning. So I told her that I’d had another of my Turns as poor Flossie called them.’

‘It’s so silly,’ Ursula whispered. ‘The whole thing’s so silly. Mr Alleyn is going to laugh at you.’

‘Is he? I hope he is. I must say it’d be a great relief to me if Mr Alleyn began to rock with professional laughter, but at the moment I see no signs of it. Of course, you know where all this is leading, sir, don’t you?’

‘I think so,’ said Alleyn. ‘You wonder, don’t you, if in a condition of amnesia or automatism or unconscious behaviour or whatever it should be called, you could have gone to the wool-shed and committed this crime?’

‘That’s it.’

‘You say you heard Miss Harme and Miss Lynne talking in the bottom path?’

‘Yes. I heard Terry say, “Why not just do what we’re asked. It would be so much simpler.” ’

‘Did you say that, Miss Lynne?’

‘Something like it, I believe.’

‘Yes,’ said Ursula. ‘She said that. I remember.’

‘And then I blacked out,’ said Fabian.

‘Soon after you came to yourself again you heard Mr Rubrick call out that he had found the diamond clip?’

‘Yes. It’s the first thing I was fully aware of. His voice.’

‘And how long,’ Alleyn asked Terence Lynne, ‘was the interval between your remark and the discovery of the brooch?’

‘Perhaps ten minutes. No longer.’

‘I see. Mr Losse,’ said Alleyn, ‘you seem to me to be a more than usually intelligent young man.’

‘Thank you,’ said Fabian, ‘for those few unsolicited orchids.’

‘So why on earth, I wonder, have you produced this ridiculous tarradiddle?’

‘There!’ cried Ursula. ‘There! What did I tell you.’

‘All I can say,’ said Fabian stiffly, ‘is that I am extremely relieved that Mr Alleyn considers pure tarradiddle a statement upon which I found it difficult to embark and which was, in effect, a confession.’

‘My dear chap,’ said Alleyn, ‘I don’t doubt for a moment that you’ve had these beastly experiences. I spoke carelessly and I apologize. What I do suggest is that the inference you have drawn is quite preposterous. I don’t say that, pathologically speaking, you were incapable of committing this crime, but I do say that, physically speaking, on the evidence we’ve got, you couldn’t possibly have done so.’

‘Ten minutes,’ said Fabian.