Miss Cartell sat with her hands on her knees staring dolefully at him. Her left thumb was decorated with dirty, bloodstained cotton-wool and stamp-paper. She had evidently been crying.

‘It’s pretty ghastly,’ she said. ‘Poor old Boysie! I can’t take it in. He was a bit of an old maid but a brother’s a brother. We didn’t see eye-to-eye over a lot of things, but still.’

Alleyn was visited by the fleeting wish that he could run into somebody who at least pretended to have liked Mr Cartell.

‘When,’ he asked her, ‘did you last see him?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. Last evening. He came over here with that ghastly bitch. It upset Li-chi. They’re very highly strung animals, pekes. He’s still nervous. Eat up, my poppet,’ said Miss Cartell to the Pekinese. ‘Lovely livvy!’

She poked her finger temptingly in the raw liver.

‘Eat up,’ she said and wiped her finger on the Pekinese. Alleyn noticed that her hand was unsteady.

‘Was it just a casual, friendly visit?’ he asked.

Miss Cartell’s rather prominent blue eyes, slightly bloodshot, seemed to film over.

‘He was taking the bitch for a walk,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Brought it into the house, like a fool, and of course, Li became hysterical and bit me, poor little chap. I’ve fixed it up with girth-gall stuff,’ she added, ‘it smells a bit, but it’s good.’

‘Did Mr Cartell meet anybody else during his call, do you remember?’

With a manner that was at once furtive and anxious she said: ‘Not that I know. I mean, I didn’t see anything.’ She might have been a great elderly schoolgirl caught on the hop. ‘He was here when I came in,’ she added. ‘I don’t know who he’d seen.’

‘Miss Cartell,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m anxious to find out if your brother had any enemies. I expect that sounds rather melodramatic, but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable. Is there, do you know, anyone who had cause, for any reason, however trivial, to dislike or fear him?’

She waited much too long before she said: ‘No one in particular,’ and then after a pause: ‘he wasn’t awfully popular, I suppose. I mean he didn’t make friends with people all that easily.’ She reached down her blunt ill-kept hand to the Pekinese and fondled it. ‘He was a dry old stick,’ she said. ‘You know. Typical solicitor: I used to tell him he had ink instead of blood in his veins.’

She broke into one of her ungainly laughs and blew her nose on a man’s handkerchief.

‘There was a luncheon party,’ Alleyn said, ‘wasn’t there? Yesterday, at Mr Pyke Period’s house?’

Instead of answering him she suddenly blurted out: ‘But I thought it was an accident! The way they told me. It sounded like an accident.’

‘Who told you?’