He might have touched off a high explosive. The colour flooded angrily into Mr Phinn’s face and he began to shout of the infamies of Commander Syce and his archery. The death of Thomasina Twitchett’s mother at the hands of Commander Syce was furiously recalled. Syce, Mr Phinn said, was a monster, an alcoholic sadist, possessed of a blood-lust. It was with malice aforethought that he had transfixed the dowager Twitchett. The plea of accident was ridiculous: the thing was an obsession. Syce would drink himself into a sagittal fury and fire arrows off madly into the landscape. Only last night, Mr Phinn continued, when he himself was returning from the Chyne after what he now called his little mésentente with Colonel Cartarette, the Commander’s bow was twanging away on the archery lawn and Mr Phinn had actually heard the tuck of an arrow in a tree trunk dangerously near to himself. The time was a quarter past eight. He remembered hearing his clock chime.

‘I think you must be mistaken,’ Alleyn put in mildly. ‘Nurse Kettle tells us that last evening Commander Syce was completely incapacitated by an acute attack of lumbago.’

Mr Phinn shouted out a rude and derisive word. ‘A farrago of nonsense!’ he continued. ‘Either she is his accomplice or his paramour or possibly,’ he amended more charitably, ‘his dupe. I swear he was devilishly active last night. I swear it. I trembled lest my Thomasina, who had accompanied me to the Chyne, should share the fate of her mama. She did not join me on my return but had preferred to linger in the evening air. Indeed, the reason for my perhaps slightly dramatic entry into Hammer in the early hours of this morning was my hope of retrieving my errant Fur. The dreadful news with which you met me quite put her out of my head,’ Mr Phinn concluded and did not look as if he expected to be believed.

‘I see,’ Alleyn said, and did not look as if he believed him. ‘Quite a chapter of accidents. Do you mind if we take possession of your fishing gear for a short time? Part of a routine check, you know.’

Mr Phinn was at a loss for words. ‘But how quite extraordinary!’ he at last exclaimed. ‘My fishing gear? Well, I suppose one must not refuse.’

‘We shan’t keep it any longer than is necessary,’ Alleyn assured him.

Fox put the kit in order and slung it over his massive shoulder.

‘And also, I’m afraid,’ Alleyn said apologetically, ‘the shoes and suit that you wore on your fishing expedition.’

‘My shoes? My suit! But why, why? I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.’

‘It may be some comfort to you to know that I shall make the same awkward demands of at least four other persons.’

Mr Phinn seemed to brighten a little. ‘Blood?’ he asked.