‘Could you arrange for it to be taken to the nearest mortuary? Sir James Curtis will do the PM and will be hoping to see you. He’ll be here by midday.’

‘I’ve laid on the ambulance. The mortuary’s at Rimble.’

‘Good. Either Fox or I will look you up at the station at noon. There’s one other thing. What do you make of that?’ He walked a few paces up the lane and pointed to a large damp patch on the surface. ‘There was no rain last night and it’s nothing to do with the digging. Looks rather as if a car with a leaky radiator had stood there. Might even have been filled up and overflowed. Damn’ this hard surface. Yes, look. There’s a bit of oil there too where the sump might well have dripped. Ah, well it may not amount to a row of beans. Ready, Fox? Let’s go in through the side gate, shall we?’

They fetched a circuitous course round the drain and entered Mr Period’s garden by the side gate. Near the house, Alleyn noticed a stand-pipe with a detached hose coiled up beside it and a nearby watering-can from which the rose had been removed.

‘Take a look at this, Br’er Fox,’ he said and indicated a series of indentations about the size of a sixpence leading to and from the stand-pipe.

‘Yes,’ Fox said. ‘And the can’s been moved and replaced.’

‘That’s right. And who, in this predominantly male household, gardens in stiletto heels? Ah, well! Come on.’

They walked round the house to the front door where Alfred formally admitted them.

‘Mr Period is in the library, sir,’ he said. ‘May I take your coat?’

Fox, who, being an innocent snob, always enjoyed the treatment accorded to his senior officer on these occasions, placidly removed his own coat.

‘What,’ Alleyn asked Alfred, ‘have you done with the dog?’

‘Shut her up, sir, in the wood-shed. She ought never to have been let loose.’

‘Quite so. Will you let me have her leash?’

‘Sir?’

‘The lead. Inspector Fox will pick it up. Will you, Fox? And join us in the library?’

Alfred inclined his head, straightened his arms, turned his closed hands outward from the wrists and preceded Alleyn to the library door.

‘Mr Roderick Alleyn, sir,’ he announced.

It was perhaps typical of him that he omitted the rank and inserted the Christian name. ‘Because, after all, Mrs M.,’ he expounded later on to his colleague, ‘whatever opinions you and I may form on the subject, class is class and to be treated as such. In the Force he may be, and with distinction. Of it, he is not.’

Mrs Mitchell put this detestable point of view rather more grossly. ‘The brother’s a baronet,’ she said. ‘And childless, at that. I read it in the News of the World. “The Handsome Super”, it was called. Fancy!’

Meanwhile Alleyn was closeted with Mr Pyke Period, who in a different key, piped the identical tune.