‘I don’t mean to show off and be tiresome, darling, I promise you, I don’t. You can’t deny that she was different during that last week. As sour as a lemon with all of us, and suddenly so, so keen on Uncle Arthur. She watched him too. Indeed she looked at him as if he was some objet d’art that she’d forgotten she possessed until someone else came along and saw that it was—well, rare, and in its way rather beautiful. Wasn’t it like that?’

‘I don’t know. I thought she was horrible, baiting him about his illness. That’s what it amounted to, and that’s what I saw,’ said Terence.

‘But don’t you agree,’ Fabian persisted, ‘that along with that there was a definite—what shall I call it—why, damn it, she made advances. She was kittenish. She shook her curls and did the little devil number. Didn’t she, now?’

‘I didn’t watch her antics,’ said Terence coldly.

‘But you did, Terry. You watched. Listen to me, Terry,’ said Fabian very earnestly, ‘don’t get it into your head that I’m an enemy. I’m not. I’m sorry for you and I realize now that I’ve misjudged you. You see, I thought you were merely doing your line of oomph with Uncle Arthur out of boredom. I thought you just sat round being a cryptic woman at him to keep your hand in. I know this sounds insufferable but he was so very much older and, well, as I thought, so definitely not your cup of tea. It was perfectly obvious that he was losing his heart to you and I resented what I imagined was merely a bit of practice technique on your part. I don’t suppose you give two tuppenny damns for what I thought, Terry, but I am sorry. All right. Now, when I suggested that we should ask Mr Alleyn to come, we all agreed that rather than carry on as we were, with this unspeakable business festering in our minds, we would, each of us, risk becoming an object of suspicion. We agreed that none of us suspected any of the other three and, even with the terrifying example of the local detective force to daunt us, we said we didn’t believe that the truth, the whole truth, although it might be unpalatable, could do us any harm. Were we right in that, Mr Alleyn?’