‘I want to know. It’s the uncertainty. I want to know why Papa’s hair had fallen out. I want to know if he was poisoned and if you think Sonia did it. I’m quite discreet, really, and if you tell me I’ll give you my solemn word of honour not to say anything. Not even to Caroline Able, though I dare say she could explain why I feel so peculiar. I want to know.’

‘Everything from the beginning?’

‘Yes, if you don’t mind. Everything.’

‘That’s a tall order. We don’t know everything. We’re trying, very laboriously, to piece things together, and we’ve got, I think, almost the whole pattern. We believe your father was poisoned.’

Thomas rubbed the palms of his hands across the back of the driver’s seat. ‘Are you certain? That’s horrible.’

‘The bell-push in his room had been manipulated in such a way that it wouldn’t ring. One of the wires had been released. The bell-push hung by the other wire and when he grasped it the wooden end came away in his hand. We started from there.’

‘That seems a simple little thing.’

‘There are lots of more complicated things. Your father made two Wills, and signed neither of them until the day of his Birthday party. The first he signed, as I think he told you, before the dinner. The second and valid one he signed late that night. We believe that Miss Orrincourt and your nephew Cedric were the only two people, apart from his solicitor, who knew of this action. She benefited greatly by the valid Will. He lost heavily.’

‘Then why bring him into the picture?’ Thomas asked instantly.

‘He won’t stay out. He hovers. For one thing, he and Miss Orrincourt planned all the practical jokes.’

‘Goodness! But Papa’s death wasn’t a practical joke. Or was it?’

‘Indirectly, it’s just possible that it was caused by one. The final practical joke, the flying cow on the picture, probably caused Sir Henry to fix on the second draft.’

‘I don’t know anything about all that,’ Thomas said dismally. ‘I don’t understand. I hoped you’d just tell me if Sonia did it.’

‘We’re still waiting for one bit of the pattern. Without it we can’t be positive. It would be against one of our most stringent rules for me to name a suspect to an interested person when the case is still incomplete.’

‘Well, couldn’t you behave like they do in books? Give me a pointer or two?’

Alleyn raised an eyebrow and glanced at Fox. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that without a full knowledge of the information our pointers wouldn’t mean very much.’