‘No!’ Mr Period quite shouted. They turned. His face was still red and his eyes were screwed up as if he expected a blow. ‘No!’ he repeated. ‘Don’t go! I am resigned. If I have to dree my weird I may as well dree it now. My nanny,’ Mr Period explained with a travesty of his family preoccupation, ‘was a Highlander. I prefer, I repeat, that you should remain. Nicola: you lunched here, you heard the conversation? About – about the baptismal register? You remember?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘’Nuff said. But I felt sure that Hal was going to tell Connie and Connie would tell the girl and – and if I—indeed, when I saw her, the girl threatened –’

‘Little beast,’ Nicola said heartily.

‘Worse than that! I gathered they were prepared to use blackmail. And then, dear Desirée came in that evening and said, Alleyn, she’d given you that unfortunate letter so –’

‘So you felt you had nothing to lose?’

‘Quite! Quite!’

‘So you told the girl that unless she could explain their presence in the lane you would report it to the police.’

‘Yes. I said I felt it my duty to speak, in case innocent people should be suspected. It was then she threatened to use – to make public – however! She was so impertinent and so brazen I lost my temper. I said I would ring you up at once. I quite shouted it after her as she went away. And then, you know, I did ring up and—and then I don’t know what happened.’

Alleyn said: ‘What happened was this. Constance Cartell, on the hunt for her Pekinese, came into your garden. She probably caught a glimpse of her ward coming out by the French windows. She heard your final threat. She was terribly suspicious, indeed terrified, of you.’

‘Of Mr Period,’ Nicola exclaimed. ‘But why?’

‘Because of the identical letters of condolence. She thought he suspected her. She had let me see the second letter, hoping to anticipate anything he might tell me by throwing suspicion on him.’

‘But how dreadful of her!’ Mr Period faintly exclaimed.