Many of Octavius’s customers were also his friends and it was not unusual for them to call after hours. Anelida supposed that Alleyn’s was that sort of visit and so did Octavius, who was delighted to see him. Alleyn sat down between them, disliking his job.

‘You look so unrepentantly cosy and Dickensian,’ he said, ‘both of you, that I feel like an interloper.’

‘My dear Alleyn, I do hope your allusion is not to that other and unspeakable little Nell and her drooling grandparent. No, I’m sure it’s not. You are thinking of Bleak House, perhaps, and your fellow-investigator’s arrival at his friend’s fireside. I seem to remember, though, that his visit ended uncomfortably in an arrest. I hope you’ve left your manacles at the Yard.’

Alleyn said: ‘As a matter of fact, Octavius, I am here on business, though not, I promise, to take either of you into custody.’

‘Really? How very intriguing! A bookish reference perhaps? Some malefactor with a flair for the collector’s item?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Alleyn said. ‘It’s a serious business, Octavius, and indirectly it concerns you both. I believe you were at Miss Mary Bellamy’s birthday party this evening, weren’t you?’

Anelida and her uncle both made the same involuntary movement of their hands. ‘Yes,’ Octavius said. ‘For a short time. We were.’

‘When did you arrive?’

‘At seven. We were asked,’ Octavius said, ‘for six-thirty, but Anelida informed me it is the “done thing” nowadays to be late.’

‘We waited,’ Anelida said, ‘till other people had begun to stream in.’

‘So you kept an eye on the earlier arrivals?’

‘A bit. I did. They were rather intimidating.’

‘Did you by any chance see anybody go in with a bunch of Parma violets?’

Octavius jerked his leg. ‘Damn you, Hodge,’ he ejaculated and added mildly: ‘He makes bread on one’s thigh. Unconscionable feline, be gone.’

He cuffed the cat and it leapt indignantly to the floor.

Alleyn said: ‘I know you left early. I believe I know why.’

‘Mr Alleyn,’ Anelida said. ‘What’s happened? Why are you talking like this?’

Alleyn said: ‘It is a serious matter.’

‘Has Richard …?’ she began and stopped. ‘What are you trying to tell us?’

‘He’s all right. He’s had a shock but he’s all right.’

‘My dear Alleyn …’

‘Unk,’ she said, ‘we’d better just listen.’

And Alleyn told them, carefully and plainly, what had happened. He said nothing of the implications.

‘I wonder,’ he ended, ‘that you haven’t noticed the comings and goings outside.’

‘Our curtains are drawn as you see,’ Octavius said. ‘We had no occasion to look out. Had we, Nelly?’

Anelida said: ‘This will hurt Richard more than anything else that has ever happened to him.’ And then with dismay: ‘I wouldn’t see him when he came in. I turned him away. He won’t forgive me and I won’t forgive myself.’