‘Yes.’ She waited for a moment, looking at her enamelled fingernails. ‘People seem to think I’ve got no feelings, but I’ve been very upset. Honestly. Well, he was sweet. And when a girl’s going to be married and everything’s marvellous it’s a terrible thing for this to happen, I don’t care what any one says.’

‘Did he seem very ill?’

‘That’s what everybody keeps asking. The doctor and old Pauline and Milly. On and on. Honestly, I could scream. He just had one of his turns and he felt queer. And with the way he’d eaten and thrown a temperament on top of it, no wonder. I gave him his hot drink and kissed him nighty-nighty and he seemed all right and that’s all I know.’

‘He drank his hot milk while you were with him?’

She swung over a little with a luxurious movement and looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Drank it and liked it.’

‘And his medicine?’

‘He poured that out for himself. I told him to drink up like a good boy, but he said he’d wait a bit and see if his tummy wouldn’t settle down without it. So I went.’

‘Right. Now, Miss Orrincourt,’ said Alleyn, facing her with his hands in his pockets, ‘you’ve been very frank. I shall follow your example. You want to know what we’re doing here. I’ll tell you. Our job, or a major part of it, is to find out why you played a string of rather infantile practical jokes on Sir Henry Ancred and let it be thought that his granddaughter was responsible.’

She was on her feet so quickly that he actually felt his nerves jump. She was close to him now; her under-lip jutted out and her brows, thin hairy lines, were drawn together in a scowl. She resembled some drawing in a man’s magazine of an infuriated baggage in a bedroom. One almost expected some dubious caption to issue in a balloon from her lips.

‘Who says I did it?’ she demanded.

‘I do, at the moment,’ Alleyn said. ‘Come now. Let’s start at Mr Juniper’s shop. You bought the Raspberry there, you know.’

‘The dirty little so-and-so,’ she said meditatively. ‘What a pal! And what a gentleman, I don’t suppose.’

Alleyn ignored these strictures upon Mr Juniper. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘there’s that business about the paint on the banisters.’

Obviously this astonished her. Her face was suddenly bereft of expression, a mask with slightly dilated eyes. ‘Wait a bit,’ she said. ‘That’s funny!’

Alleyn waited.

‘Here!’ she said. ‘Have you been talking to young Ceddie?’

‘No.’

‘That’s what you say,’ she muttered, and turned on Fox. ‘What about you, then?’

‘No, Miss Orrincourt,’ said Fox blandly. ‘Not me or the Chief Inspector.’

‘Chief Inspector?’ she said. ‘Coo!’