‘As a matter of fact, I dare say if there’d been anything left I might have done an analysis simply as a routine measure and to satisfy a somewhat pedantic medical conscience. But the whole place had been washed up.’

‘By whose orders?’

‘My dear man, by Barker’s orders or Mrs Kentish’s, or Mrs Henry Ancred’s, or whoever happened to think of it. They didn’t like to move him. Couldn’t very well. Rigor was pretty well established, which gave me, by the way, a lead about the time of his death. When I saw him later in the day they’d fixed him up, of course, and a nice time Mrs Ancred must have had of it with all of them milling about the house in an advanced condition of hysteria and Mrs Kentish “insisting on taking a hand in the laying-out”.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘Oh, they’re like that. Well, as I was saying, there he was when they found him, hunched up on the bed, and the room in a pretty nauseating state. When I got there, two of those old housemaids were waddling off with their buckets and the whole place stank of carbolic. They’d even managed to change the bedclothes. I didn’t get there, by the way, for an hour after they telephoned. Confinement.’

‘About the children’s ringworm—’ Alleyn began.

‘You know about them, do you? Yes. Worrying business. Glad to say young Panty’s cleared up at last.’

‘I understand,’ Alleyn said pleasantly, ‘that you are bold in your use of drugs.’

There was a long silence. ‘And how, may I ask,’ said Dr Withers very quietly, ‘did you hear details of my treatment?’

‘Why, from Thomas Ancred,’ said Alleyn, and watched the colour return to Dr Withers’s face. ‘Why not?’

‘I dislike gossip about my patients. As a matter of fact I wondered if you’d been talking to our local pharmacist. I’m not at all pleased with him at the moment, however.’

‘Do you remember the evening the children were dosed—Monday, the nineteenth, I think it was?’

Dr Withers stared at him. ‘Now, why—?’ he began, and seemed to change his mind. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Simply because that evening a practical joke was played on Sir Henry and the child Panty has been accused of it. It’s too elaborate a story to bother you about, but I’d like to know if she was capable of it. In the physical sense. Mentally, it seems, she certainly is.’

‘What time?’

‘During dinner. She would have visited the drawing-room.’