‘I’d like to know,’ he said, ‘what you think about it all.’

‘It’s impossible to give an opinion that’s worth much,’ she replied, ‘without a pretty thorough analysis of one if not all of them. Obviously the relationship with their father was unsatisfactory. I should have liked to know about his marriage. One suspected, of course, that there was a fear of impotency, not altogether sublimated. The daughters’ violent antagonism to his proposed second marriage suggests a rather bad father-fixation.’

‘Does it? But it wasn’t a particularly suitable alliance from—from the ordinary point of view, was it?’

‘If the relationship with the father,’ Miss Able said firmly, ‘had been properly adjusted, the children should not have been profoundly disturbed.’

‘Not even,’ Alleyn ventured, ‘by the prospect of Miss O. as a mother-in-law and principal beneficiary in the Will?’

‘Those may have been the reasons advanced to explain their antagonism. They may represent an attempt to rationalize a basic and essentially sexual repulsion.’

‘Oh, dear!’

‘But, as I said before,’ she added, with a candid laugh, ‘one shouldn’t pronounce on mere observation. Deep analysis might lead to a much more complex state of affairs.’

‘You know,’ Alleyn said, taking out his pipe and nursing it in his palm, ‘you and I, Miss Able, represent two aspects of investigation. Your professional training teaches you that behaviour is a sort of code or cryptogram disguising the pathological truth from the uninformed, but revealing it to the expert. Mine teaches me to regard behaviour as something infinitely variable after the fact and often at complete loggerheads with the fact. A policeman watches behaviour, of course, but his deductions would seem completely superficial to you.’ He opened his hand. ‘I see a man turning a dead pipe about in his hand and I think that, perhaps unconsciously, he’s longing to smoke it. May he?’

‘Do,’ said Miss Able. ‘It’s a good illustration. I see a man caressing his pipe and I recognize a very familiar piece of fetishism.’

‘Well, don’t tell me what it is,’ Alleyn said hurriedly.

Miss Able gave a short professional laugh.

‘Now, look here,’ he said, ‘how do you account for these anonymous letters we’re all so tired of? What sort of being perpetrated them and why?’

‘They probably represent an attempt to make an effect and are done by someone whose normal creative impulses have taken the wrong turning. The desire to be mysterious and omnipotent may be an additional factor. In Patricia’s case for instance—’

‘Patricia? Oh, I see. That’s Panty, of course.’

‘We don’t use her nickname over here. We don’t think it a good idea. We think nicknames can have a very definite effect, particularly when they are of a rather humiliating character.’

‘I see. Well, then, in Patricia’s case?’