‘Good God!’ Bimbo said, and turned up his eyes.

Desirée said to Alleyn: ‘I told you. I called to own up that I’d given you his letter. I felt shabby about it and wanted to get it off my chest.’

‘What’s his attitude about the Grantham Gallery proposal, do you know?’

‘Oh,’ Desirée said easily, ‘he waffles.’

‘He’ll be all right,’ Bimbo said.

‘Just a moment,’ Leonard intervened. He still lay back in his chair and looked at the ceiling but there was a new edge in his voice. ‘If you’re talking about this proposition to buy an art gallery,’ he said, ‘I happen to know P.P. was all against it.’

Bimbo said: ‘You met Mr Period for the first time when you got yourself asked to lunch in his house: I fail to see how that gives you any insight into his views on anything.’

‘You don’t,’ Leonard observed, ‘have to know people all their lives to find out some of the bits and pieces. The same might apply to you, chum. How about that affair over a certain club?’

‘You bloody little pip-squeak –’

‘All right, darling,’ Desirée said easily. ‘Pipe down. It couldn’t matter less.’

‘Not when you marry money, it couldn’t,’ Leonard agreed offensively.

Bimbo strode down the room towards him: ‘By God, if the police don’t do something about you, I will.’

Fox rose from obscurity. ‘Now, then, sir,’ he said blandly. ‘We mustn’t get too hot, must we?’

‘Get out of my way.’

Leonard was on his feet. Moppett snatched his arm. He jabbed at her with his elbow, side-stepped, and backed down the room, his hand in his jacket pocket. Alleyn took him from behind by the arms.

‘You’ve forgotten,’ he said. ‘I’ve got your knife.’

Leonard uttered an elaborate obscenity and at the same time Fox, with the greatest economy, caused Bimbo to drop backwards into the nearest chair. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to get too warm. It wouldn’t look well, in the circumstances, would it?’

Bimbo swore at him. ‘I demand,’ he said, pointing a bandaged hand at Alleyn, ‘I demand an explanation. You’re keeping us here without authority. You’re listening to a lot of bloody, damaging, malicious lies. If you suspect one of us, I demand to know who and why. Now then!’

‘Fair enough,’ said Desirée. ‘You stick out for your rights, duckie. All the same,’ she added, looking Alleyn full in the face, ‘I don’t believe he knows. He’s letting us cut up rough and hoping something will come out of it. Aren’t you, Rory?’

She was inviting Alleyn, as he very well knew, to acknowledge, however slightly, that he and she spoke the same language: that alone, of all this assembly, they could understand each other without elaboration. He released the now quiescent Leonard and answered her directly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It isn’t quite like that. It’s true that I believe I know who murdered Harold Cartell. I believe that there is only one of you who fills the bill. Naturally I’m looking for all the corroborative evidence I can find.’