‘I’m afraid—’ Alleyn began, but Thomas at once interrupted him. ‘You don’t follow? Well, of course you wouldn’t, would you, because I haven’t told you? Still, I suppose I’d better.’

Alleyn waited without comment.

‘Well,’ said Thomas at last. ‘Here, after all, we go.’

‘All yesterday morning,’ Thomas said, ‘after reading the letters, the battle, as you might put it, raged. Nobody really on anybody else’s side except Paul and Fenella and Jenetta wanting to burn the letters and Pauline and Desdemona thinking there was something in it and we ought to keep them. And by lunch-time, you may depend on it, feeling ran very high indeed. And then, you know—’

Here Thomas paused and stared meditatively at a spot on the wall somewhere behind Fox’s head. He had this odd trick of stopping short in his narratives. It was as if a gramophone needle was abruptly and unreasonably lifted from the disc. It was impossible to discover whether Thomas was suddenly bereft of the right word or smitten by the intervention of a new train of thought, or whether he had merely forgotten what he was talking about. Apart from a slight glazing of his eyes, his facial expression remained uncannily fixed.

‘And then,’ Alleyn prompted after a long pause.

‘Because, when you come to think of it,’ Thomas’s voice began, ‘it’s the last thing one expects to find in the cheese-dish. It was New Zealand cheese, of course. Papa was fortunate in his friends.’

‘What,’ Alleyn asked temperately, ‘is the last thing, Fox, that one would expect to find in the cheese-dish?’

Before Fox could reply Thomas began again.

‘It’s an old piece of Devonport. Rather nice, really. Blue, with white swans sailing round it. Very large. In times of plenty we used to have a whole Stilton in it, but now, of course, only a tiny packet. Rather ridiculous, really, but it meant there was plenty of room.’

‘For what?’

‘It was Cedric who lifted the lid and discovered it. He gave one of his little screams, but beyond feeling rather irritated, I dare say nobody paid much attention. Then he brought it over to the table—did I forget to say it’s always left on the sideboard?—and dropped it in front of Pauline, who is in a very nervous condition anyway, and nearly shrieked the place down.’

‘Dropped the cheese-dish? Or the cheese?’

‘The cheese? Good heavens,’ cried the scandalized Thomas, ‘what an idea! The book, to be sure.’

‘What book?’ Alleyn said automatically.

‘The book, you know. The one out of the glass thing in the drawing-room.’

‘Oh,’ said Alleyn after a pause. ‘That book. On embalming?’