‘Well, now, he did get me wondering what exactly are his feelings about this lady? I mean, they seem to be old acquaintances, don’t they? Miss Kettle said he made a picture of Mrs Cartarette before she was married. And then he didn’t seem to have fancied the marriage much, did he? Practically smoked when it was mentioned, he got so hot. My idea is there was something between him and her, and the magnolia bush wherever East meets West.’

‘You dirty old man,’ Alleyn said absently. ‘We’ll have to find out, you know.’

‘Crime passionel?’

‘Again you never know. We’ll ring the Yard and ask them to look him up in the Navy List. They can find out when he was in Singapore and get a confidential report.’

‘Say,’ Fox speculated, ‘that he was sweet on her. Say they were engaged when he introduced her to the Colonel. Say he went off in his ship and then was retired from the Navy, and came home and found Kitty de Vere changed into the second Mrs Cartarette. So he takes to the bottle and gets,’ said Mr Fox, ‘an idée fixe.’

‘So will you, if you go on speculating with such insatiable virtuosity. And what about his lumbago? Personally, I think he’s having a dim fling with Nurse Kettle.’

Fox looked put out.

‘Very unsuitable,’ he said.

‘Here is Mr Phinn’s spinney and here, I think, is our girlfriend of last night.’

Mrs Thomasina Twitchett was, in fact, taking a stroll. When she saw them she wafted her tail, blinked and sat down.

‘Good morning, my dear,’ said Alleyn.

He sat on his heels and extended his hand. Mrs Twitchett did not advance upon it, but she broke into an extremely loud purring.

‘You know,’ Alleyn continued severely, ‘if you could do a little better than purrs and mews, I rather fancy you could give us exactly the information we need. You were in the Bottom Meadow last night, my dear, and I’ll be bound you were all eyes and ears.’

Mrs Twitchett half-closed her eyes, sniffed at his extended forefinger, and began to lick it.

‘Thinks you’re a kitten,’ Fox said sardonically.

Alleyn in his turn sniffed at his finger, and then lowered his face almost to the level of the cat’s. She saluted him with a brief dab of her nose.

‘What a girl,’ Fox said.

‘She no longer smells of raw fish. Milk and a little cooked rabbit, I fancy. Do you remember where we met her last night?’

‘Soon after we began to climb the hill on this side, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. We’ll have a look over the terrain when we get the chance. Come on.’

They climbed up through Mr Phinn’s spinney and finally emerged on the lawn before Jacob’s Cottage. ‘Though if that’s a cottage,’ Fox observed, ‘Buck House is a bungalow.’