‘Exactly. Ten minutes. Ten minutes in which to travel about a fifth of a mile, strike a blow, and—I’m sorry to be specific over unpleasant details but it’s as well to clear this up—suffocate your victim—remove a great deal of wool from the press, bind up the body, dispose of it, and refill the press. You couldn’t have done it during the short time you were conscious and I don’t imagine you are going to tell me you returned later, master of yourself, to tidy up a crime you didn’t remember committing. As you know, those must have been the circumstances. You wore white flannels, I understand? Very well, what sort of state were they in when you came to yourself?’

‘Loamy,’ said Fabian. ‘Don’t forget the vegetable marrows. Evidently I’d collapsed into them.’

‘But not woolly? Not stained in any other way?’

Ursula got up quickly and walked over to the window.

‘Need we?’ asked Fabian, watching her.

‘Certainly not. It can wait.’

‘No,’ said Ursula. ‘We asked for it; let’s get on with it. I’m all right. I’m only getting a cigarette.’

Her back was towards them. Her voice sounded remote and it was impossible to glean from it the colour of her thoughts. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ she repeated.

‘You may remember,’ said Fabian, ‘that the murderer was supposed to have used a suit of overalls, belonging to Tommy Johns and a pair of working gloves out of one of the pockets. The overalls hung on a nail near the press. Next morning when Tommy put them on he found a seam had split and he noticed—other details.’

‘If that theory is correct,’ said Alleyn, ‘and I think that very probably it is, another minute or two is added to the timetable. You know, you must have thought all this out for yourself. You must have thrashed it out a great many times. To reach the wool-shed and escape the notice of the rest of the party in the garden, you would have had to go round about, either through the house or by way of the side lawn and the yards at the back. You couldn’t have used the bottom path because Miss Lynne or Miss Harme would have seen you. Now, before dinner I ran by the most direct route from the vegetable garden to the wool-shed and it took me two minutes. In your case the direct route is impossible. By the indirect routes it took three and four minutes respectively. That leaves a margin, at the best, of about four minutes in which to commit the crime. Can you wonder that I described your theory, inaccurately perhaps but with some justification, as a tarradiddle?’