Instantly she was away on her professional hobby-horse. He listened to an exposition on Panty’s fondness for the cat, and the strange deductions which Miss Able drew, with perfect virtuosity, from this not unusual relationship.

‘At this stage of her development, it was really a bad disturbance when the link was broken.’

‘But,’ Alleyn ventured, ‘if the cat had ringworm…’

‘It wasn’t ringworm,’ said Miss Able firmly. ‘I ought to know. It might have been mange.’

Upon that pronouncement he left her, apparently in two minds about himself. She shook hands with an air of finality, but when he reached the door he thought he heard an indeterminate sound, and turned to find her looking anxiously at him.

‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

‘It’s only that I’m worried about Tom Ancred. They’re dragging him in and making him do all their dirty work. He’s quite different. He’s too good for them. I’m afraid this will upset him.’

And then with a rather strenuous resumption of her professional manner: ‘Psychologically, I mean,’ said Miss Able.

‘I quite understand,’ said Alleyn, and left her.

He found Fox waiting for him on the second terrace. Fox was sitting on the steps with his greatcoat drawn closely round him and his spectacles on his nose. He was reading from the manual on poisons which Alleyn had lent him in the train. By his side were two suitcases. One of these Alleyn recognized as Miss Orrincourt’s. The other, he presumed, was Isabel’s. Near by was a boot-box tied up with string. As Alleyn bent over Fox he noticed an unpleasant smell.

‘Carabbas?’ he asked, edging the box away with his foot.

Fox nodded. ‘I’ve been asking myself,’ he said, and placed a square finger under a line of print. Alleyn read over his shoulder. ‘Arsenic. Symptoms. Manifested as progressive cachexia and loss of flesh; falling out of hair…’

Fox glanced up and jerked a thumb at the boot-box.

‘Falling out of hair,’ he said. ‘Wait till you’ve had a look at Carabbas deceased.’

‘You know, Fox,’ Alleyn said as they walked back to the village, ‘if Thomas Ancred can stand having his lightest cares implacably laid at the door of some infantile impropriety, he and Miss Able will probably get along together very nicely. Obviously, she’s in love with him, or should I say that obviously she finds herself adjusted to a condition of rationalized eroticism in relation to poor old Thomas?’

‘Courting, do you reckon?’