He spoke with extraordinary vehemence and seemed to be moved equally by astonishment, shame and indignation. Alleyn wondered why on earth he himself didn’t get the snub he had certainly invited and decided it was because Syce was too embarrassed to administer one. He tried to get something more about Syce’s encounters with Cartarette in Singapore but was unsuccessful. He noticed the unsteady hands, moist skin and patchy colour, and the bewildered unhappy look in the very blue eyes. ‘Alcoholic, poor devil,’ he thought.

‘It’s no good asking me anything,’ Syce abruptly announced. ‘Nobody tells me anything. I don’t go anywhere. I’m no good to anybody.’

‘We’re only looking for a background, and I hoped you might be able to provide a piece of it. Miss Kettle was saying last night how close the Swevenings people are to each other; it all sounded quite feudal. Even Sir Harold Lacklander had young Phinn as his secretary. What did you say?’

‘Nothing. Young perisher. Doesn’t matter.’

‘… and as soon as your ship comes in, Cartarette naturally looks you up. You bring about his first meeting with Miss … I don’t know Mrs Cartarette’s maiden name.’

Commander Syce mumbled unhappily.

‘Perhaps you can give it to me,’ Alleyn said apologetically. ‘We have to get these details for the files. Save me bothering her.’

He gazed mildly at Syce who threw one agonized glance at him, swallowed with difficulty, and said in a strangulated voice: ‘de Vere.’

There was a marked silence. Fox cleared his throat.

‘Ah, yes,’ Alleyn said.

IV

‘Would you have thought,’ Fox asked as he and Alleyn made their way through Mr Phinn’s coppice to Jacob’s Cottage, ‘that the present Mrs Cartarette was born into the purple, Mr Alleyn?’

‘I wouldn’t have said so, Brer Fox. No.’

‘De Vere, though?’

‘My foot.’

‘Perhaps,’ Fox speculated, reverting to the language in which he so ardently desired to become proficient, ‘perhaps she’s – er – déclassée.’

‘I think, on the contrary, she’s on her way up.’

‘Ah. The baronet, now,’ Fox went on, ‘he’s sweet on her as anyone could see. Would you think it was a strong enough attraction to incite either of them to violence?’

‘I should think he was going through the silly season most men of his type experience. I must say I can’t see him raising an amatory passion to the power of homicide in any woman. You never know of course. I should think she must find life in Swevenings pretty dim. What did you collect from Syce’s general behaviour, Fox?’