He and Fox approached Syce who, unlike Lady Lacklander, evidently found the interval between the first hail and, as it were, boarding distance, extremely embarrassing. As they plodded up the hill he looked anywhere but at them and when, finally, Alleyn introduced himself and Fox, he shied away from them like an unbroken colt.

‘We are,’ Alleyn explained, ‘police officers.’

‘Good lord!’

‘I suppose you’ve heard of last night’s tragedy?’

‘What tragedy?’

‘Colonel Cartarette.’

‘Cartarette?’

‘He has been murdered.’

‘Great grief!’

‘We’re calling on his neighbours in case …’

‘What time?’

‘About nine o’clock, we think.’

‘How d’you know it’s murder?’

‘By the nature of the injuries, which are particularly savage ones, to the head.’

‘Who found him?’

‘The District Nurse. Nurse Kettle.’

Commander Syce turned scarlet. ‘Why didn’t she get me?’ he said.

‘Would you expect her to?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then …’

‘I say, come in, won’t you? No good nattering out here, what!’ shouted Commander Syce.

They followed him into his desolate drawing-room and noted the improvized bed, now tidily made up and a table set out with an orderly array of drawing-materials and watercolours. A large picture-map in the early stages of composition was pinned to a drawing-board. Alleyn saw that its subject was Swevenings and that a number of lively figures had already been sketched in.

‘That’s very pleasant,’ Alleyn said, looking at it.

Commander Syce made a complicated and terrified noise and interposed himself between the picture-map and their gaze. He muttered something about doing it for a friend.

‘Isn’t she lucky?’ Alleyn remarked lightly. Commander Syce turned, if anything, deeper scarlet and Inspector Fox looked depressed.

Alleyn said he was sure Commander Syce would understand that as a matter of routine the police were calling upon Cartarette’s neighbours. ‘Simply,’ he said, ‘to try and get a background. When one is casting about in a case like this …’

‘Haven’t you got the fellah?’

‘No. But we hope that by talking to those of the Colonel’s neighbours who were anywhere near …’

‘I wasn’t. Nowhere near.’

Alleyn said with a scarcely perceptible modulation of tone: ‘Then you know where he was found?’

‘’Course I do. You say nine o’clock. Miss … ah … the … ah … the lady who you tell me found him, left here at five to nine, and I saw her go down into the valley. If she found him at nine he must have been in the perishing valley, mustn’t he? I watched her go down.’

‘From where?’

‘From up here. The window. She told me she was going down the valley.’

‘You were on your feet, then? Not completely prostrate with lumbago?’

Commander Syce began to look wretchedly uncomfortable. ‘I struggled up, don’t you know,’ he said.

‘And this morning you’ve quite recovered?’

‘It comes and goes.’