‘My dear, what a party! Imagine! Milly, the complete hausfrau (my mama, you know)’—Cedric added the inevitable parentheses—‘and Dessy steaming up the stairs and Pauline tramping at her heels like one of the Fates, and poor little me panting in the rear. We didn’t know what we were looking for, really. Partly rat poison and partly they thought there might be compromising papers somewhere because Sonia’s quite lovely, don’t you think, and really the Old Person! Hardly adequate, one couldn’t help feeling. I pointed out that, constant or flighty, a Will was a Will, but nothing would stay them. I said in fun: “You don’t expect, darlings, to find phials of poison in her luggage, do you?” and that put the idea of luggage into their heads. So up into the box-room they hounded me, and there, to use the language of the chase, we “found.” ’

‘You yourself took the tin out of the suitcase?’

‘Yes, indeed. I was petrified.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Like? But didn’t dear Uncle Tom give it to you?’

‘Was it clean or dirty?’

‘My dear, filthy. They wanted me to prise open the lid, and such a struggle as I had. Little bits of rat-bane flying up and hitting me. I was terrified. And then it wouldn’t come out.’

‘Who first suggested this search?’

‘Now, that is difficult. Did we, thinking of that beastly little brochure in the cheese-dish (and there, I must tell you, I see the hand of Panty), did we with one accord cry: “rat-bane” and let loose the dogs of war? I fancy Pauline, after coining the phrase “no smoke” (or is it “reek”?) “without heat,” said: “But where would she get any arsenic?” and that Milly (my Mama), or it might have been me, remembered the missing rat-bane. Anyway, no sooner was it mentioned than Pauline and Dessy were in full cry for the guilty apartment. If you could see it, too. Darling Sonia! Well, “darling” with reservations. The bed-chamber a welter of piercing pink frills and tortured satin and dolls peering from behind cushions or squatting on telephones, do you know?’

‘I would be very glad,’ said Alleyn, ‘if the suitcase could be produced.’

‘Really? You wish, no doubt, to explore it for fingerprints? But of course you shall have it. Unbeknown, I suppose, to darling Sonia?’

‘If possible.’

‘I’ll trip upstairs and get it myself. If she’s there, I’ll tell her there’s a telephone call.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Shall I go now?’

‘One moment, Sir Cedric,’ Alleyn began, and again Cedric, with that winsome trick of anxiety, leant towards him. ‘Why did you, with Miss Sonia Orrincourt, plan a series of practical jokes on your grandfather?’