It was pleasant, after all, to cross that barren back hall, smelling of linoleum and coal, to revisit an undistinguished office where the superintendent of CI, against a background of crossed swords, commemorative photographs and a horseshoe, greeted him with unmistakable satisfaction. It was oddly pleasant to sit again at his old desk in the chief inspectors’ room and contemplate the formidable task of taking up the threads of routine.

He had looked forward to a preliminary gossip with Fox, but Fox had gone out on a job somewhere in the country and would not be back before the evening. In the meantime here was an old acquaintance of Alleyn’s, one Squinty Donovan, who, having survived two courts-martial, six months’ confinement in Broadmoor, and a near-miss from a flying bomb, had left unmistakable signs of his ingenuity upon a lock-up antique shop in Beachamp Place, Chelsea. Alleyn set in motion the elaborate police machinery by which Squinty might be hunted home to a receiver. He then turned again to his file.

There was nothing exciting; a series of routine jobs. This pleased him. There had been enough of excursions and alarums, the Lord knew, in his three years’ hunting for the Special Branch. He had wanted his return to CI to be uneventful.

Presently Nigel Bathgate rang up. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘has Troy seen about the Will?’

‘Whose Will?’

‘Old Ancred’s. She’s told you about the Ancreds, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s in this morning’s Times. Have a look at it. It’ll rock them considerably.’

‘What’s he done?’ Alleyn asked. But for some reason he was unwilling to hear more about the Ancreds.

He heard Nigel chuckling. ‘Well, out with it,’ he said. ‘What’s he done?’

‘Handed them the works.’

‘In what way?’

‘Left the whole caboosh to the Orrincourt.’

Nigel’s statement was an over-simplification of the facts, as Alleyn discovered when, still with that sense of reluctance, he looked up the Will. Sir Henry had cut Cedric down to the bare bones of the entail, and had left a legacy of one thousand pounds to Millamant, to each of his children and to Dr Withers. The residue he had willed to Sonia Orrincourt.

‘But—what about the dinner speech and the other Will!’ Troy cried when he showed her the evening paper. ‘Was that just a complete have, do you suppose? If so, Mr Rattisbon must have known. Or—Rory,’ she said, ‘I believe it was the flying cow that did it! I believe he was so utterly fed up with his family he marched upstairs, sent for Mr Rattisbon and made a new Will there and then.’

‘But didn’t he think the enfant terrible had done the flying cow? Why take it out of the whole family?’

‘Thomas or somebody may have gone up and told him about Panty’s alibi. He wouldn’t know who to suspect, and would end up by damning the whole crew.’