‘Yes, I did, because of what he said. It was addressed to him and it had a foreign stamp on it. The writing was very bold and it seemed to me foreign looking. I put it on the shelf face downwards and he drew my attention to it again by stabbing at it with his finger. The name of the sender was written on the back.’

‘Do you remember it?’

‘Yes, I do, because of his insistence.’

‘Good girl,’ said Alleyn quietly.

‘It was “Otto Brod” and the address was a theatre in Prague. I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of the theatre or the street. I ought to remember the theatre. It was a French name, Théâtre de—something. Why can’t I remember!’

‘You haven’t done badly. Was there something in the envelope?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t anything fat. One sheet of paper I should think.’

‘And his manner was triumphant?’

‘I thought so. He was just rather odd about it. He’d been drinking—brandy I thought—the tumbler was on the dressing-shelf and he made as if to put the flask behind his looking-glass.’

‘Did you think he was at all the worse for wear?’

‘I wondered if it accounted for his queer behaviour.’

‘Can you tell me anything else he said? The whole conversation if you remember it.’

Martyn thought back and it seemed she had journeyed half a lifetime in three days. There was the room. There was J.G. going out and leaving her with Bennington and there was Bennington staring at her and talking about the cigarette-case. There was also something else, buried away behind her thoughts of which the memory now returned. She was made miserable by it.

‘He said, I think, something about the cigarette-case. That he himself hadn’t given it to Miss Hamilton.’

‘Did he say who gave it to her?’

‘No,’ Martyn said. ‘I don’t think he said that. Just that he didn’t.’

‘And was his manner of saying this strange?’

‘I thought his manner throughout was—uncomfortable and odd. He seemed to me to be a very unhappy man.’

‘Yet you used the word triumphant?’

‘There can be unhappy victories.’

‘True for you. There can, indeed. Tell me one thing more. Do you connect the two conversations? I mean do you think what he said about the cigarette-case had anything to do with what he said about the letter?’

‘I should say nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ Alleyn said resignedly and called out: ‘Have you got all that, Mike?’

‘Coming up the straight, sir.’

‘Put it into longhand, now, will you, and we’ll ask Miss Tarne to have a look at it and see if she’s been misrepresented. Do you mind waiting a minute or two, Miss Tarne? It’ll save you coming back.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Martyn whose ideas of police investigation were undergoing a private revolution. Alleyn offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. The consultation, she felt, was over and the famous surgeon was putting his patient at her ease.