‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It’s quite true, that beyond the quality of conceit, nobody’s found a nice handy trait common to all murderers. But I’m not so sure that you should sniff at yourself for saying: “That man or woman seems to me to have characteristics that are inconceivable in a murderer!” They needn’t be admirable characteristics either.’

‘D’you remember what Mr Barker said about the rats in Miss Orrincourt’s rooms?’

‘I do.’

‘He mentioned that Miss Orrincourt was quite put-about by the idea of using poison, and refused to have it at any price. Now, sir, would a young woman who was at least, as you might say, toying with the idea of poison, behave like that? Would she? She wouldn’t do it by accident. She might do it to suggest she had a dread of poison, though that’d be a very far-fetched kind of notion too. And would she have owned up as readily to those practical jokes? Mind, you caught her nicely, but she gave me the impression she was upset more on account of being found out for these pranks themselves than because she thought they’d lead us to suspect something else.’

‘She was more worried about the Will than anything else,’ Alleyn said. ‘She and Master Cedric planned those damned stunts with the object of setting the old man against Panty. I fancy she was responsible for the portrait vandalism, Cedric having possibly told her to confine her daubs to dry canvas. We know she bought the Raspberry, and he admits he placed it. I think she started the ball rolling by painting the banister. They plotted the whole thing together. He practically admitted as much. Now, all that worries her may be merely an idea that the publication of these goings-on could upset the Will.’

‘And yet—’

‘I know. I know. That damn bell-push. All right, Fox. Good work. And now, I suppose, we’d better see Mrs Henry Ancred.’

Millamant was at least a change from her relations-by-marriage in that she was not histrionic, answered his questions directly, and stuck to the point. She received them in the drawing-room. In her sensible blouse and skirt she was an incongruous figure there. While she talked she stitched that same hideously involved piece of embroidery which Troy had noticed with horror and which Panty had been accused of unpicking. Alleyn heard nothing either to contradict or greatly to substantiate the evidence they had already collected.

‘I wish,’ he said, after a minute or two, ‘that you would tell me your own opinion about this business.’

‘About my father-in-law’s death? I thought at first that he died as a result of his dinner and his temperament.’

‘And what did you think when these letters arrived?’