‘P.P.,’ she said. ‘Alfred told him and he told me. He made it sound like an accident.’

‘The odds against,’ Alleyn said, ‘are considerable.’

‘Why?’

Everything about her was dull; her face, her manner, her voice. He wondered if she was really attending to him.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘accident would imply at least two lots of people behaving independently like dangerous hoodlums at the same spot with different objectives.’

‘I don’t follow that,’ said Miss Cartell.

‘Never mind, just tell me about the luncheon party. There were you and your adopted niece and Miss Nicola Maitland-Mayne and Mr Leonard Leiss. And, of course, your brother and Mr Period. Is that right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What did you talk about?’

Nicola had given him a pretty full account of the luncheon party. Miss Cartell was much less explicit. She described the Pixie incident with one or two dismal hoots of retrospective laughter and she dwelt, disjointedly, upon Mr Period’s references to blue blood and polite behaviour. She was clearly very ill at ease.

‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet over that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘My brother ragged him about it and he got jolly ratty. You could see. Can’t take a joke.’

‘What sort of joke?’ Alleyn ventured.

‘Well – I dunno. Some story about a baptismal register in a vestry. I didn’t listen.’

Alleyn asked her about the cigarette-case and she at once exhibited all the classic signs of a clumsy and unaccustomed liar. She changed colour, avoided his glance and again fondled the unenthusiastic Pekinese.

‘I didn’t notice anything about that,’ she said. ‘He’d got the case. I didn’t know he’d lost it. He’s an old fusspot anyway.’ The colour started out in blotches on her flattish cheeks. ‘He probably lost it himself,’ she said. ‘Muddling about.’

Alleyn said: ‘Miss Cartell, I’m sorry to badger you when you’ve had such a shock, but I’m sure you want to get this wretched business cleared up, don’t you?’

‘Don’t know,’ she countered. ‘Not if it’s going to lead to a lot of unpleasantness. Won’t bring poor old Boysie back, will it?’

Alleyn disregarded this. ‘Your adopted niece and a friend of hers, called Mr Leiss, were at the luncheon, weren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ she said, staring at him. She seemed to be in two minds whether to go on. Then she said: ‘You don’t want to pay any attention to what P.P. says about them. He’s out of touch with the young. Expects them to behave like his generation; and a lot of pie-faced little humbugs they were, if you like.’

‘Was there some talk of Mr Leiss buying a car?’

She bent over the dog. ‘That’s enough,’ she said to it. ‘You’ve had enough.’ And then to Alleyn: ‘It all petered out. He didn’t buy it.’