‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said. ‘Auntie C. thought you’d gone.’

She was a dishevelled figure, half-saved by her youth and held together in a negligée that was as unfresh as it was elaborate. ‘Isn’t it frightful,’ she said. ‘Poor Uncle Hal! I can’t believe it!’

Either she was less perturbed than Leonard or several times tougher. He had turned a very ill colour and had jerked cigarette ash across his chest.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Moppett exclaimed and then to Alleyn, ‘haven’t you told him?’

‘Miss Ralston,’ Alleyn said, ‘you have saved me the trouble. It is Miss Ralston, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Sorry,’ Moppett went on after a moment, ‘if I’m interrupting something. I’ll sweep myself out, shall I? See you, ducks,’ she added in Cockney to Leonard.

‘Don’t go, if you please,’ said Alleyn. ‘You may be able to help us. Can you tell me where you and Mr Leiss lost Mr Period’s cigarette-case?’

‘No, she can’t,’ Leonard intervened. ‘Because we didn’t. We never had it. We don’t know anything about it.’

Moppett opened her eyes very wide and her mouth slightly. She turned in fairly convincing bewilderment from Leonard to Alleyn.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘P.P.’s cigarette-case? Do you mean the old one he showed us when we lunched with him?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘That’s the one I mean.’

‘Lenny, darling, what did happen to it, do you remember? I know! We left it on the window-sill. Didn’t we? In the dining-room?’

‘Okay. Okay. Like I’ve been telling the Chief God-almighty High Commissioner,’ Leonard said and behind his alarm, his fluctuating style and his near-Americanisms, there flashed up an unrepentant barrow-boy. ‘So, now it’s been found. So what?’

‘It’s been found,’ Alleyn said, ‘in the open drain a few inches from Mr Cartell’s body.’

Leonard seemed to retreat into himself. It was as if he shortened and compressed his defences.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. He shot a glance at Moppett. ‘That’s a very nasty suggestion, isn’t it? I don’t get the picture.’

‘The picture will emerge in due course. A minute or two ago,’ Alleyn said, ‘you told me I was welcome to search this room. Do you hold to that?’

Leonard went through the pantomime of inspecting his fingernails but gave it up on finding his hands were unsteady.

‘Naturally,’ he murmured. ‘Like I said. Nothing to hide.’

‘Good. Please don’t go, Miss Ralston,’ Alleyn continued as Moppett showed some sign of doing so. ‘I shan’t be long.’

He had moved over to the wardrobe and opened the door when he felt a touch on his arm. He turned and there was Moppett, smelling of scent, hair and bed, gazing into his face unmistakably palpitating.