‘I can’t say I do,’ he replied, putting on his spectacles. ‘Would it be anything like euchre?’

‘Not much, but you’ll pick it up. The object is to collect a family. Would you be good enough,’ he said, turning to Panty, ‘to oblige me with Mrs Snips the Tailor’s Wife?’

‘You didn’t say “Please,” so it’s my turn,’ said Panty. ‘Give me Mr Snips, the Tailor, and Master Snips and Miss Snips, please.’

‘Damn,’ said Alleyn. ‘Here you are,’ and handed over the cards, each with its cut of an antic who might have walked out of a Victorian volume of Punch.

Panty pushed these cards underneath her and sat on them. Her bloomers, true to her legend, were conspicuous. ‘Now,’ she said, turning a bleary glance on Fox, ‘you give me—’

‘Don’t I get a turn?’ asked Fox.

‘Not unless she goes wrong,’ said Alleyn. ‘You’ll learn.’

‘Give me,’ said Panty, ‘Master Grit, the Grocer’s Son.’

‘Doesn’t she have to say “please”?’

‘Please,’ yelled Panty. ‘I said “please.” Please.’

Fox handed over the card.

‘And Mrs Grit,’ Panty went on.

‘It beats me,’ said Fox, ‘how she knows.’

‘She knows,’ said Alleyn, ‘because she looked.’

Panty laughed raucously. ‘And you give me Mr Bull, the Butcher,’ she demanded, turning on Alleyn. ‘Please.’

‘Not at home,’ said Alleyn triumphantly. ‘And now, you see, Fox, it’s my turn.’

‘The game seems crook to me,’ said Fox, gloomily.

‘Master Bun,’ Panty remarked presently, ‘is azzakerly like my Uncle Thomas.’ Alleyn, in imagination, changed the grotesque faces on all the cards to those of the Ancreds as Troy had drawn them in her notebook. ‘So he is,’ he said. ‘And now I know you’ve got him. Please give me Master Ancred, the Actor’s Son.’ This sally afforded Panty exquisite amusement. With primitive guffaws she began to demand cards under the names of her immediate relations and to the utter confusion of the game.

‘There now,’ said Alleyn at last, in a voice that struck him as being odiously complacent. ‘That was a lovely game. Suppose you take us up to see the—ah—’

‘The Happy Family,’ Fox prompted in a wooden voice.

‘Certainly,’ said Alleyn.

‘Why?’ Panty demanded.

‘That’s what we’ve come for.’

Panty stood squarely facing him. Upon her stained face there grew, almost furtively, a strange expression. It was compounded, he thought, of the look of a normal child about to impart a secret and of something less familiar, more disquieting.

‘Here!’ she said. ‘I want to tell you something. Not him. You.’

She drew Alleyn away, and with a sidelong glance pulled him down until she could hook her arm about his neck. He waited, feeling her breath uncomfortably in his ear.

‘What is it?’

The whispering was disembodied but unexpectedly clear. ‘We’ve got,’ it said, ‘a murderer in our family.’

When he drew back and looked at her she was smiling nervously.