‘And they will keep talking about me as Head of the Family. Before I know where I am I shall have turned into another Old Person.’

‘There are one or two points,’ Alleyn began, and immediately Cedric leant forward with an ineffable air of concentration, ‘that we’d like to clear up. The first is the authorship of these anonymous letters.’

‘Well, I didn’t write them.’

‘Have you any idea who did?’

‘Personally I favour my Aunt Pauline.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘She prefaces almost every remark she makes with the phrase: “I have reason to believe.” ’

‘Have you asked Mrs Kentish if she wrote the letters?’

‘Yes, indeed. She denies it hotly. Then there’s Aunt Dessy. Quite capable, in a way, but more likely, one would have thought, to tell us flatly what she suspected. I mean, why go in for all this hush-hush letter-writing? That leaves my cousins Paul and Fenella, who are, one imagines, too pleasurably engrossed in their amorous martyrdom for any outside activities; my Mama, who is much too common-sensical; my aunt-in-law, Jenetta, who is too grand; and all the servants led by the Ancient of Days. That, as they say in sporting circles, is the field. Unless you feel inclined to take in the squire and the parson and dear old Rattlebones himself. It couldn’t be more baffling. No, on the whole I plump for Pauline. She’s about somewhere. Have you encountered her? Since the Tragedy she is almost indistinguishable from Lady Macduff. Or perhaps that frightful Shakespearian dowager who curses her way up hill and down dale through one of the historical dramas. Constance? Yes, Pauline is now all compact of tragedy. Dessy’s pretty bad, but wait till you meet Pauline.’

‘Do you know if there’s any paper in the house of the kind used for these letters?’

‘Gracious, no! Exercise-book paper! The servants wouldn’t have had it at any price. By the way, talking of exercise books, do you think Caroline Able might have done it? I mean, she’s so wrapped up in id and isms and tracing everything back to the Oedipus Complex. Might it perhaps have all snapped back at her and made her a weeny bit odd? It’s only an idea, of course. I merely throw it out for what it’s worth.’

‘About this tin of rat-bane,’ Alleyn began. Cedric interrupted him with a shrill cry.