Fenella obeyed, with the charm of movement that was characteristic of all the female Ancreds. She was, as Troy had told him, a vivid girl. Her mother’s spareness was joined in Fenella with the spectacular Ancred beauty and lent it delicacy. ‘Nevertheless,’ Alleyn thought, ‘she can make an entrance with the best of them.’

‘Paul and I,’ she began at once, speaking very rapidly, ‘have talked and talked about it. Ever since those letters came. We said at first that we wouldn’t have anything to do with it. We thought people who wrote that kind of letter were beyond everything, and it made us feel perfectly beastly to think there was any one in the house who could do such a thing. We were absolutely certain that what the letter said was an odious, malicious lie.’

‘Which is precisely,’ her mother said without emphasis, ‘what I have been telling Mr Alleyn. I really do think, darling—’

‘Yes, but that’s not all,’ Fenella interrupted vehemently. ‘You can’t just shrug your shoulders and say it’s horrid. If you don’t mind my saying so, Mummy dear, that’s your generation all over. It’s muddled thinking. In its way it’s the kind of attitude that leads to wars. That’s what Paul and I think anyway. Don’t we, Paul?’

Paul, with a red determined face, said: ‘What Fen means, I think, Aunt Jenetta, is that one can’t just say “Jolly bad form and all ballyhoo,” and let it go at that. Because of the implications. If Sonia Orrincourt didn’t poison Grandfather, there’s somebody in the house who’s trying to get her hanged for something she didn’t do, and that’s as much as to say there’s somebody in the house who’s as good as a murderer.’ He turned to Alleyn: ‘Isn’t that right, sir?’

‘Not necessarily right,’ Alleyn said. ‘A false accusation may be made in good faith.’

‘Not,’ Fenella objected, ‘by the kind of person who writes anonymous letters. And anyway, even if it was in good faith, we know it’s a false accusation, and the realistic thing to do is to say so and, and…’ She stumbled, shook her head angrily and ended with childish lameness, ‘and jolly well make them admit it and pay the penalty.’

‘Let’s take things in their order?’ Alleyn suggested. ‘You say you know the suggestion made in the letters is untrue. How do you know this?’

Fenella glanced at Paul with an air of achievement and then turned to Alleyn and eagerly poured out her story.