‘And Dessy. My unmarried sister, Desdemona. We all opened our letters yesterday morning at breakfast. Can you imagine? I got down first and really—such a shock! I was going to throw it on the fire, but just then Fenella came in, so I folded it up very small under the table. You can see which is mine by the creases. Paul’s is the one that looks as if it had been chewed. He crunched it up, don’t you know, in his agitation. Well, then I noticed that there were the same kind of envelopes in front of everybody’s plate. Sonia has breakfast in her room, but I asked Barker if there were any letters for her. Fenella was by that time looking rather odd, having opened hers. Pauline said: “What an extraordinary looking letter I’ve got. Written by a child, I should think,” and Milly said: “Panty again, perhaps,” and there was a row, because Pauline and Milly don’t see eye to eye over Panty. And then everybody said: “I’ve got one too,” and then you know they opened them. Well, Pauline swooned away, of course, and Dessy said: “O, my prophetic soul,” and began to get very excitable, and Milly said: “I think people who write anonymous letters are the end,” and Jenetta (my sister-in-law), Fenella’s mother (who is married to my brother Claude), said: “I agree, Milly.” Then the next thing was, let me see—the next thing was everybody suspecting everybody else of writing the letter, until Paul got the idea—you must excuse me—that perhaps Mrs Alleyn being married to—’

Alleyn, catching sight of Fox’s scandalized countenance, didn’t answer, and Thomas, rather pink in the face, hurried on. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘the rest of us pooh-poohed the notion; quite howled it down, in fact. “The very idea,” Fenella, for instance, said, “of Mrs Alleyn writing anonymous letters is just so bloody silly that we needn’t discuss it,” which led directly into another row, because Pauline made the suggestion and Fenella and Paul are engaged against her wish. It ended by my nephew Cedric, who is now the head of the family, saying that he thought the letter sounded like Pauline herself. He mentioned that a favourite phrase of Pauline’s is: “I have reason to believe.” Milly, Cedric’s mother, you know, laughed rather pointedly, so naturally there was another row.’

‘Last night,’ Alleyn said, ‘you told me you had made a discovery at Ancreton. What was it?’

‘Oh, yes. I was coming to that some time. Now, actually, because it happened after lunch. I really don’t care at all for this part of the story. Indeed, I quite forgot myself, and said I would not go back to Ancreton until I was assured of not having to get involved in any more goings on.’