‘He was coping with a clutch of pressmen at the front door and I nipped up the back stairs.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘you’d better nip down again to where you came from and if you’re sick of the drawing-room, you can join the party next door. Unless, of course, you’d like to stay and tell us your real object in coming up here.’

Richard opened his mouth and shut it again. He then turned on his heels and went downstairs. He was followed by Fox, who returned looking portentous. ‘I gave that chap in the hall a rocket,’ he said. ‘They don’t know the meaning of keeping observation these days. Mr Dakers is back in the drawing-room. Why do you reckon he broke out, sir?’

‘I think,’ Alleyn said, ‘he may have remembered the blotting-paper.’

‘Ah, there is that. May be. Mrs Plumtree wasn’t bad value, though, was she?’

‘Not bad. But none of it proves anything, of course,’ Alleyn said. ‘Not a damn’ thing.’

‘Floy getting the sack’s interesting. If true.’

‘It may be a recurrent feature of their relationship for all we know. What about the sounds they both heard in the bedroom?’

‘Do we take it,’ Fox asked, ‘that Floy’s crash came before Mrs Plumtree’s hiss?’

‘I suppose so. Yes.’

‘And that Florence retired after the crash?’

‘While Ninn remained for the hiss. Precisely.’

‘The inference being,’ Fox pursued, ‘that as soon as Mr Dakers left her, the lady fell with a deafening crash on the four-pile carpet.’

‘And then sprayed herself all over with Slaypest.’

‘Quite so, Mr Alleyn.’

‘I prefer a less dramatic reading of the evidence.’

‘All the same, it doesn’t look very pleasant for Mr Dakers.’ And as Alleyn didn’t reply: ‘D’you reckon Mrs Plumtree was talking turkey when she let out about his parentage?’

‘I think it’s at least possible that she believes it.’

‘Born,’ Fox speculated, ‘out of wedlock and the parents subsequently married?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Wait a bit.’ He took down the copy of Who’s Who in the Theatre. ‘Here we are. Bellamy. Sumptuous entry. Birth, not given. Curtis says, fifty. Married 1932, Charles Gavin Templeton. Now, where’s the playwright. Dakers. Richard. Very conservative entry. Born 1931. Educated Westminster and Trinity. List of three plays. That’s all. Could be, Foxkin. I suppose we can dig it out if needs must.’

Fox was silent for a moment. ‘There is this,’ he then said. ‘Mrs Plumtree was alone on the landing after Florence went downstairs?’

‘So it seems.’

‘And she says she heard deceased using the Slaypest. What say she went in and used it herself? On deceased.’

‘All right. Suppose she did. Why?’

‘Because of the way deceased treated her ward or son or whatever he is? Went in and let her have it and then made off before Florence came back.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Not much,’ Fox grunted. ‘What about this story of Mrs Plumtree going into the bedroom and rearranging the remains?’