‘I’m afraid,’ said Desdemona grandly, ‘that I’ve really no knowledge at all of Miss Orrincourt’s movements. She was away all day yesterday; I imagine in London.’

‘She’s staying on here?’

‘You may well look astonished,’ said Desdemona, though Alleyn, to his belief, had looked nothing of the sort. ‘After everything, Mr Alleyn. After working against us with Papa! After humiliating and wounding us in every possible way. In the teeth, you might say, of the Family’s feelings, she stays on. T’uh!’

‘Does Sir Cedric—?’

‘Cedric,’ said Desdemona, ‘is now the head of the Family, but I have no hesitation in saying that I think his attitude to a good many things inexplicable and revolting. Particularly where Sonia Orrincourt (you’ll never get me to believe she was born Orrincourt) is concerned. What he’s up to, what both of them—However!’

Alleyn did not press for an exposition of Cedric’s behaviour. At the moment he was fascinated by Desdemona’s. On the wall opposite her hung a looking-glass in a Georgian frame. He saw that Desdemona was keeping an eye on herself. Even as she moved her palms from before her eyes, her fingers touched her hair and she slightly turned her head while her abstracted yet watchful gaze noted, he thought, the effect. And as often as she directed her melting glance upon him, so often did it return to the mirror to affirm with a satisfaction barely veiled its own limpid quality. He felt as if he interviewed a mannequin.

‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that it was you who found the tin of rat-bane in Miss Orrincourt’s suitcase?’

‘Wasn’t it awful? Well, it was three of us, actually. My sister Pauline (Mrs Kentish), my sister-in-law, and Cedric and I. In her box-room, you know. A very common-looking suitcase smothered in Number Three Company touring labels. As I’ve pointed out to Thomas a thousand times, the woman is simply a squalid little ham actress. Well, not an actress. All eyes and teeth in the third row of the chorus when she’s lucky.’

‘Did you yourself handle it?’

‘Oh, we all handled it. Naturally. Cedric tried to prise up the lid, but it wouldn’t come. So he tapped the tin, and said he could tell from the sound that it wasn’t full.’ She lowered her voice. ‘ “Only half-full,” he said. And Milly (my sister-in-law, Mrs Henry Ancred) said—’ She paused.

‘Yes?’ Alleyn prompted, tired of these genealogical parentheses. ‘Mrs Henry Ancred said?’

‘She said that to the best of her knowledge it had never been used.’ She changed her position a little and added: ‘I don’t understand Milly. She’s so off-hand. Of course I know she’s frightfully capable but—well, she’s not an Ancred and doesn’t feel as we do. She’s—well, let’s face it, she’s a bit MC, do you know?’