“I’ll be there, Inspector. Oh, don’t forget your dog. Little beauty! And a good ratter, like his master. He’s down here a lot. Makes himself at home. Till tomorrow, then!”

He strode in at exactly eight o’clock the next morning as invited and was shown to the inspector’s office.

Redfyre looked with keen interest at the man who had eluded them, the man so many witnesses about the town had hurried to describe and defend. His barber had talked in distracting detail about his haircut, even particularising the side of the parting and the length to the tenth of an inch. No change there, but the clean-shaven features after three weeks on the lam had acquired the slightly raffish nobility of a Sir Walter Raleigh. He only lacked the earring.

“Major,” Redfyre said, using his correct rank with military punctiliousness. “Thank you for coming in to help us with our enquiries. We’re investigating the death of an academic, a Dr. Fanshawe, the unfortunate event occurring in the course of a dinner party in the gentleman’s own rooms at St. Jude’s College, held on Friday the sixteenth of May, three weeks ago. We understand that you were present as a guest at that event. Will you confirm that?”

The piratical image intensified as he grinned sardonically back at the inspector, clearly critical of the policeman’s stiff official tone.

“Yup! I was there, all right,” he said. “Damned strangest party of my life! As bad as Belshazzar’s feast. Worse, in fact—we didn’t get as far as tasting the food, and there were no skimpily clad girls present. Not even a corseted master’s wife. We’d been lured to”—he lowered his voice and hissed dramatically—“a symposium. In the classical style, if you understand what I’m saying. Disturbing, what! Others felt the same.”

He left a pause for Redfyre to absorb his meaning, then went on lightly. “It was so boring, one of the guests was moved to chuck the host through the window! Hardy? Was that his name? A dark-haired bloke. Lost his rag when Fanshawe murmured something in his ear, picked him up and pushed him out through the open window. Couldn’t have that! Jolly bad show, I thought, and ran over to intervene. The soldier’s way.” He stuck out two large, calloused hands and demonstrated. “He struggled, I feared for my life—the chap was clearly doolally—and I oversteered. When you get around to charging me, if you can ever fight your way through the circumlocutions, I shall say, ‘I confess to the manslaughter of Abel Hardy.’”

He held out his hands again, but this time symbolically, for the handcuffs.

MacFarlane chose this bad moment to burst into Redfyre’s office.