‘Oh, dear! Still, I may as well hear them. Anything’s better than this awful blank worrying. I’m not quite such a fool,’ Thomas added, ‘as I dare say I seem. I’m a good producer of plays. I’m used to analysing character and I’ve got a great eye for a situation. When I read the script of a murder play I always know who did it.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn said dubiously, ‘here, for what they’re worth, are some relative bits of fact. The bell-push. The children’s ringworm. The fact that the anonymous letters were written on the children’s school paper. The fact that only Sir Cedric and Miss Orrincourt knew your father signed the second Will. The book on embalming. The nature of arsenical poisoning, and the fact that none has been found in his body, his medicine, or in the body of his cat.’

‘Carabbas? Does he come in? That is surprising. Go on.’

‘His fur fell out, he was suspected of ringworm and destroyed. He had not got ringworm. The children had. They were dosed with a medicine that acts as a depilatory and their fur did not fall out. The cat was in your father’s room on the night of his death.’

‘And Papa gave him some hot milk as usual. I see.’

‘The milk was cleared away and the Thermos scalded out and used afterwards. No chemical analysis was possible. Now, for the tin of rat-bane. It was sealed with an accretion of its content and had not been opened for a very long time.’

‘So Sonia didn’t put arsenic in the Thermos?’

‘Not out of the tin, at any rate.’

‘Not at all, if it wasn’t—if—’

‘Not at all, it seems.’

‘And you think that somehow or another he took the Dr Withers ringworm poison.’

‘If he did, analysis will show it. We’ve yet to find out if it does.’

‘But,’ said Thomas. ‘Sonia brought it back from the chemist’s. I remember hearing something about that.’

‘She brought it, yes, together with Sir Henry’s medicine. She put the bottles in the flower-room. Miss Fenella Ancred was there and left the room with her.’

‘And Dr Withers,’ Thomas went on, rather in the manner of a child continuing a narrative, ‘came up that night and gave the children the medicine. Caroline was rather annoyed because he’d said she could do it. She felt,’ Thomas said thoughtfully, ‘that it rather reflected on her capability. But he quite insisted and wouldn’t let her touch it. And then, you know, it didn’t work. They should have been as bald as eggs, but they were not. As bald as eggs,’ Thomas repeated with a shudder. ‘Oh, yes, I see. Papa was, of course.’