‘Never to my knowledge, sir,’ he said.

‘Are there no rats there?’

‘The lady in question complained of them, I understand, to one of the housemaids, who set traps and caught several. I believe the lady said she didn’t fancy the idea of poison, and for that reason it was not employed.’

‘I see. Now, Barker, if you will, I should like you to tell me exactly what this room looked like when you entered it on the morning after Sir Henry’s death.’

Barker’s sunken hand moved to his lips and covered their trembling. A film of tears spread over his eyes.

‘I know it’s distressing for you,’ Alleyn said, ‘and I’m sorry. Sit down. No, please sit down.’

Barker stooped his head a little and sat on the only high chair in the room.

‘I’m sure,’ Alleyn said, ‘that if there was anything gravely amiss you’d want to see it remedied.’

Barker seemed to struggle between his professional reticence and his personal distress. Finally, in a sudden flood of garrulity, he produced the classical reaction: ‘I wouldn’t want to see this house mixed up in anything scandalous, sir. My father was butler here to the former baronet, Sir Henry’s second cousin—Sir William Ancred, that was—I was knife-boy and then footman under him. He was not,’ said Barker, ‘anything to do with theatricals, sir, the old gentleman wasn’t. This would have been a great blow to him.’

‘You mean the manner of Sir Henry’s death?’

‘I mean’—Barker tightened his unsteady lips—‘I mean the way things were conducted lately.’

‘Miss Orrincourt?’

‘T’uh!’ said Barker, and thus established his life-long service to the Ancreds.

‘Look here,’ Alleyn said suddenly, ‘do you know what the family have got into their heads about this business?’

There was a long pause before the old voice whispered: ‘I don’t like to think. I don’t encourage gossip below stairs, sir, and I don’t take part in it myself.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn suggested, ‘suppose you tell me about this room.’

It was, after all, only a slow enlargement of what he had already heard. The darkened room, the figure hunched on the bed, ‘as if,’ Barker said fearfully, ‘he’d been trying to crawl down to the floor,’ the stench and disorder and the broken bell-cord.

‘Where was the end?’ Alleyn asked. ‘The bell-push itself?’

‘In his hand, sir. Tight clenched round it, his hand was. We didn’t discover it at first.’

‘Have you still got it?’

‘It’s in his dressing-table drawer, sir. I put it there, meaning to get it mended.’

‘Did you unscrew it or examine it in any way?’

‘Oh, no, sir. No. I just put it away and disconnected the circuit on the board.’

‘Right! And now, Barker, about the night before, when Sir Henry went to bed. Did you see anything of him?’