‘There’s no need,’ Warrender muttered, ‘to put it like that.’

‘Poor Charles!’ Richard said and then suddenly: ‘Did he know?’

Warrender turned a painful crimson. ‘No.’ he said. ‘It was – it was all over by then.’

‘Did he believe in the Dakers story?’

‘I think,’ Warrender said after a pause, ‘he believed everything Mary told him.’

‘Poor Charles!’ Richard repeated, and then turned on Alleyn. ‘He’s not going to be told? Not now! It’d kill him. There’s no need – is there?’

‘None,’ Alleyn said, ‘that I can see.’

‘And you!’ Richard demanded of Warrender.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dicky!’

‘No, Naturally. Not you.’

There was a long silence.

‘I remember,’ Richard said at last, ‘that she once told me it was you who brought them together. What ambivalent roles you both contrived to play. Restoration Comedy at its most elaborate.’

Evidently they had forgotten Alleyn. For the first time they looked fully at each other.

‘Funny,’ Richard said. ‘I have wondered if Charles was my father. Some pre-marital indiscretion, I thought it might have been. I fancied I saw a likeness – the family one, of course. You and Charles are rather alike, aren’t you? I must say I never quite believed in the Dakers. But why did it never occur to me that she was my mother? It really was very clever of her to put herself so magnificently out of bounds.’

‘I don’t know,’ Warrender exclaimed, ‘what to say to you. There’s nothing I can say.’

‘Never mind.’

‘It need make no difference. To your work. Or to your marrying.’

‘I really don’t know how Anelida will feel about it. Unless …’ He turned, as if suddenly aware of him, to Alleyn. ‘Unless, of course Mr Alleyn is going to arrest me for matricide, which will settle everything very neatly, won’t it?’

‘I shouldn’t,’ Alleyn said, ‘depend upon it. Suppose you set about clearing yourself if you can. Can you?’

‘How the hell do I know? What am I supposed to have done?’

‘It’s more a matter of finding out what you couldn’t have done. Where did you lunch? Here?’

‘No. At the Garrick. It was a business luncheon.’

‘And after that?’

‘I went to my flat and did some work. I’d got a typist in.’

‘Until when?’

‘Just before six. I was waiting for a long-distance call from Edinburgh. I kept looking at the time because I was running late. I was meant to be here at six to organize the drinks. At last I fixed it up for the call to be transferred to this number. As it was I ran late and Mary – and she was coming downstairs. The call came through at a quarter to seven just as I arrived.’

‘Where did you take it?’