The aspect of the room that struck Alleyn most forcibly was the extraordinary number of prints and photographs upon the walls. They were so lavishly distributed that almost all the paper, a red flock powdered with stars, was concealed by them. Next he noticed the heavy richness of the appointments; the enormous looking-glass, the brocades and velvets, the massive and forbidding furniture.

Suspended above the bed was a long cord. He saw that it ended, not in a bell-push, but in raw strands of wire.

‘Will that be all, sir?’ said Barker, behind them.

‘Stop for a minute, will you?’ Alleyn said. ‘I want you to help us, Barker.’

He was indeed very old. His eyes were filmy and expressed nothing but a remote sadness. His hands seemed to have shrunk away from their own empurpled veins, and were tremulous. But all these witnesses of age were in part disguised by a lifetime’s habit of attentiveness to other people’s wants. There was the shadow of alacrity still about Barker.

‘I don’t think,’ Alleyn said, ‘that Miss Ancred quite explained why we are here. It’s at Mr Thomas Ancred’s suggestion. He wants us to make fuller inquiries into the cause of Sir Henry’s death.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Some of his family believe that the diagnosis was too hastily given.’

‘Quite so, sir.’

‘Had you any such misgivings yourself?’

Barker closed and unclosed his hands. ‘I can’t say I had, sir. Not at first.’

‘Not at first?’

‘Knowing what he took to eat and drink at dinner, sir, and the way he was worked up, and had been over and over again. Dr Withers had warned him of it, sir.’

‘But later? After the funeral? And now?’

‘I really can’t say, sir. What with Mrs Kentish and Mrs Henry and Miss Desdemona asking me over and over again about a certain missing article and what with us all being very put about in the servants’ hall, I can’t really say.’

‘A tin of rat-bane was the missing article?’

‘Yes, sir. I understand they’ve found it now.’

‘And the question they want settled is whether it was an opened or unopened tin before it was lost. Is that it?’

‘I understand that’s it, sir. But we’ve had that stuff on the premises these last ten years and more. Two tins there were, sir, in one of the outside store-rooms and there was one opened and used up and thrown out. That I do know. About this one that’s turned up, I can’t say. Mrs Henry Ancred recollects, sir, that it was there about a year ago, unopened, and Mrs Bullivant, the cook, says it’s been partly used since then, and Mrs Henry doesn’t fancy so, and that’s all I can say, sir.’

‘Do you know if rat poison has ever been used in Miss Orrincourt’s room?’

Barker’s manner became glazed with displeasure.