‘Curtis, if you’ve finished here I think you’ll find your colleague in reasonably working order downstairs.’

‘He’d better be. Everything is fixed now. I’ll do the PM tonight.’

‘Good. Fox, you and I had better press on. We’ve got an office. Third on the right from here.’

They found Gracefield outside the door looking scandalized.

‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir,’ he said, ‘but the keys on this landing appear to have been removed. If you require to lock up …’

‘ ’T, ’t! ’ Fox said, and dived in his pocket. ‘Thoughtless of me! Try this one.’

Gracefield coldly accepted it. He showed Alleyn into a small pleasantly furnished study and left Fox to look after himself, which he did very comfortably.

‘Will there be anything further, sir?’ Gracefield asked Alleyn.

‘Nothing. This will do admirably.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Here,’ Fox said, ‘are the other keys. They’re interchangeable which is why I took the liberty of removing them.’

Gracefield received them without comment and retired.

‘I always seem to hit it off better,’ Fox remarked, ‘with the female servants.’

‘No doubt they respond more readily to your unbridled body-urge,’ said Alleyn.

‘That’s one way of putting it, Mr Alleyn,’ Fox primly conceded.

‘And the other is that I tipped that antarctic monument. Never mind: you’ll have full play in a minute with Florence. Take a look at this room. It was Mr Richard Dakers’s study. I suppose he now inhabits a bachelor flat somewhere, but he was adopted and brought up by the Templetons. Here you have his boyhood, adolescence and early maturity in microcosm. The usual school groups on one wall. Note the early dramatic interest. On the other three, his later progress. O.U.D.S. Signed photographs of lesser lights succeeded by signed photographs of greater ones. Sketches from unknown designers followed by the full treatment from famous designers and topped up by Saracen. The last is for a production that opened three years ago and closed last week. Programme of Command Performance. Several framed photographs of Miss Mary Bellamy, signed with vociferous devotion. One small photograph of Mr Charles Templeton. A calendar on the desk to support the theory that he left the house a year ago. Books from E. Nesbit to Samuel Beckett. Who’s Who in the Theatre and Spotlight and cast an eye at this one, will you?’