‘And arsenic and all the rest of it. Too awkward and beastly, because, you know, Papa, by special arrangement, was. It upset everybody frightfully. In such very bad taste, everybody thought, and, of course, the cry of “Panty” went up immediately on all sides, and there was Pauline practically in a dead faint for the second time in three days.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes, and then Milly remembered seeing Sonia look at the book, and Sonia said she had never seen it before, and then Cedric read out some rather beastly bits about arsenic, and everybody began to remember how Barker couldn’t find the rat poison when it was wanted for Bracegirdle. Then Pauline and Desdemona looked at each other in such a meaning sort of way that Sonia became quite frantic with rage, and said she’d leave Ancreton there and then, only she couldn’t, because there wasn’t a train, so she went out in the rain and the governess-cart, and is now in bed with bronchitis, to which she is subject.’

‘Still at Ancreton?’

‘Yes, still there. Quite,’ said Thomas. His expression became dazed, and he went off into another of his silences.

‘And that,’ Alleyn said, ‘is, of course, the discovery you mentioned on the telephone?’

‘That? Discovery? What discovery? Oh, no!’ cried Thomas. ‘I see what you mean. Oh, no, indeed, that was nothing compared to what we found afterwards in her room!’

‘What did you find, Mr Ancred, and in whose room?’

‘Sonia’s,’ said Thomas. ‘Arsenic.’

‘It was Cedric and the girls’ idea,’ Thomas said. ‘After Sonia had gone out in the governess-cart they talked and talked. Nobody quite liked to say outright that perhaps Sonia had put rat poison in Papa’s hot drink, but even Milly remarked that Sonia had recently got into the way of making it. Papa said she made it better than any of the servants or even than Milly herself. She used to take it in and leave it at his bedside. Cedric remembered seeing Sonia with the Thermos flask in her hands. He passed her in the passage on his way to bed that very night.

‘It was at about this stage,’ Thomas continued, ‘that somebody—I’ve forgotten quite whom—said that they thought Sonia’s room ought to be searched. Jenetta and Fenella and Paul jibbed at this, but Dessy and Cedric and Pauline were as keen as mustard. I had promised to lend Caroline Able a book so I went away rather gladly. Caroline Able teaches the Difficult Children, including Panty, and she is very worried because of Panty not going bald enough. So it might have been an hour later that I went back to our part of the house. And there was Cedric lying in wait for me. Well, he’s the head of the house now, so I suppose I mustn’t be beastly about him. All mysterious and whispering, he was.

‘ “Ssh,” he said. “Come upstairs.”