‘Aunt Dessy said she thought it would be nice if we could escape having luncheon dishes that looked like the village pond when the floods had subsided. That was maddening for Aunt Milly. She said with a short laugh that Dessy wasn’t obliged to stay on at Ancreton.’

‘And Dessy,’ Paul continued, ‘said that to her certain knowledge Milly and Pauline were holding back some tins of whitebait.’

‘Everybody began talking at once, and Sonia said: “Pardon me, but how does the chorus go?” Cedric tittered and got up and wandered to the sideboard.’

‘And this is our point, sir,’ Paul cut in with determination. ‘The cheese was found by my cousin Cedric. He went to the sideboard and came back with a book, and dropped it over my mother’s shoulder on to her plate. It gave her a shock as you can imagine.’

‘She gave a screech and fainted, actually,’ Fenella added.

‘My Mama,’ said Paul unhappily, ‘was a bit wrought up by the funeral and so on. She really fainted, Aunt Jen.’

‘My dear boy, I’m sure she did.’

‘It gave her a fright.’

‘Naturally,’ Alleyn murmured, ‘books on embalming don’t fall out of cheese-dishes every day in the week.’

‘We’d all,’ Paul went on, ‘just about had Cedric. Nobody paid any attention to the book itself. We merely suggested that it wasn’t amazingly funny to frighten people, and that anyway he stank.’

‘I was watching Cedric, then,’ Fenella said. ‘There was something queer about him. He never took his eyes off Sonia. And then, just as we were all herding Aunt Pauline out of the room, he gave one of his yelps and said he’d remembered something in the book. He ran to the door and began reading out of it about arsenic.’

‘And then somebody remembered that Sonia had been seen looking at the book.’

‘And I’ll swear,’ Fenella cut in, ‘she didn’t know what he was driving at. I don’t believe she ever really understood. Aunt Dessy did her stuff and wailed and said: “No, no, don’t go on! I can’t bear it!” and Cedric purred: “But, Dessy, my sweet, what have I said? Why shouldn’t darling Sonia read about her fiancé’s coming embalmment?” and Sonia burst into tears and said we were all plotting against her and rushed out of the room.’

‘The point is, sir, if Cedric hadn’t behaved as he did, nobody would have thought of connecting the book with the suggestion in the letters. You see?’

Alleyn said: ‘It’s a point.’

‘There’s something else,’ Paul added, again with that tinge of satisfaction in his voice. ‘Why did Cedric look in the cheese-dish?’

‘Presumably because he wanted some cheese?’

‘No!’ Paul said triumphantly. ‘That’s just where we’ve got him, sir. He never touches cheese. He detests it.’

‘So you see,’ said Fenella.