‘So off you go, Oliphant,’ Alleyn said. ‘Drive Mr Fox to the station where he will ring the Yard and the Natural History Museum. Deliver your treasure-trove to Dr Curtis. I hope to have the rest of the exhibits before this evening. Come on, chaps, this case begins to ripen.’

He led them back into the valley, saw Oliphant and Fox on their way with an accumulation of gear and objects of interest, and himself climbed up the hill to Nunspardon.

Here, to his surprise, he ran into a sort of party. Shaded from the noontide sun on the terrace before the great house were assembled the three Lacklanders, Kitty Cartarette and Rose. It was now half-past twelve and a cocktail tray gave an appearance of conviviality to a singularly wretched-looking assembly. Lady Lacklander seemed to have retired behind her formidable façade leaving in her wake an expression of bland inscrutability: George stood in a teapot attitude, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other on the back of a chair, one neatly knickered leg straight, one bent. Mark scowled devotedly upon Rose who was pale, had obviously wept a great deal and seemed in addition to her grief to be desperately worried. Kitty, in a tweed suit, high heels and embroidered gloves, was talking to George. She looked exhausted and faintly sulky, as if tragedy had taken her by surprise and let her down. She lent an incongruous note to a conversation piece that seemed only to lack the attendant figures of grooms with hounds in leashes. Her voice was a high-pitched one. Before she noticed Alleyn she had completed a sentence and he had heard it. ‘That’s right,’ she had said. ‘Brierley and Bentwood,’ and then she saw him and made an abrupt movement that drew all their eyes upon him.

He wondered how many more times he would have to approach these people through their gardens and from an uncomfortable distance. In a way he was beginning to enjoy it. He felt certain that this time, if George Lacklander could have managed it, the waiting group would have been scattered by a vigorous gesture, George himself would have retired to some manly den and Alleyn, in the ripeness of time, would have been admitted by a footman.

As it was, all of them except Lady Lacklander made involuntary movements which were immediately checked. Kitty half-rose as if to beat a retreat, looked disconsolately at George and sank back in her chair.

‘They’ve been having a council of war,’ thought Alleyn.

After a moment’s further hesitation Mark, with an air of coming to a decision, put his chin up, said loudly: ‘It’s Mr Alleyn,’ and came to meet him. As they approached each other Alleyn saw Rose’s face, watchful and anxious, beyond Mark’s advancing figure. His momentary relish for the scene evaporated.