‘Will you first of all tell me how you knew we were here and why you thought we were police officers?’

She sat on the bed, leaning back on her hands, her hair falling vertically from her scalp. Behind her was spread the crimson counterpane. Alleyn wondered why she had ever attempted to be an actress while there were magazine artists who needed models. She looked in a leisurely manner at Fox’s feet. ‘How do I know you’re police? That’s a scream! Take a look at your boy friend’s boots.’

‘Yours, partner,’ Alleyn murmured, catching Fox’s eye.

Fox cleared his throat. ‘Er— touché,’ he said carefully. ‘Not much good me trying to get by with a sharp-eyed young lady, is it, sir?’

‘Well, come on,’ Miss Orrincourt demanded. ‘What’s the big idea? Are they trying to make out there’s something funny in the Will? Or what? What are you doing, opening my late fiancé’s drawers? Come on!’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Alleyn, ‘you’ve got this situation the wrong way round. We’re on a job, and part of that job is asking questions. And since you’re here, Miss Orrincourt, I wonder if you’d mind answering one or two?’

She looked at him, he thought, as an animal or a completely unselfconscious child might look at a stranger. It was difficult to expect anything but perfect sounds from her. He experienced a shock each time he heard the Cockney voice with its bronchial overtones, and the phrases whose very idiom seemed shoddy, as if she had abandoned her native dialect for something she had half-digested at the cinema.

‘All upstage and county!’ she said. ‘Fancy! And what were you wanting to know?’

‘About the Will, for instance.’

‘The Will’s all right,’ she said quickly. ‘You can turn the place inside out. Crawl up the chimney if you like. You won’t find another Will. I’m telling you, and I know.’

‘Why are you so positive?’

She had slipped back until she rested easily on her forearm. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you. When I came in here last thing that night, my fiancé showed it to me. He’d had old Rattisbon up and a couple of witnesses and he’d signed it. He showed me. The ink was still wet. He’d burnt the old one in the fireplace there.’

‘I see.’

‘And he couldn’t have written another one even if he’d wanted to. Because he was tired and his pain was bad and he said he was going to take his medicine and go to sleep.’

‘He was in bed when you visited him?’