He looked from one to the other.

‘It was like that,’ Lady Lacklander said. She raised her voice as if she repeated some intolerable lesson. ‘My husband writes that he drove Viccy Phinn to his death as surely as if he had killed him with his own hands. He was instructed to do so by his Nazi masters. It was then that he began to understand what he had done and to what frightful lengths his German associates could drive him. I knew, at that time, he was wretchedly unhappy, but put it down to the shock of Viccy’s death and – as I, of course, thought – treachery. But the treachery, Occy, was ours and your Viccy was only a foolish and tragically careless boy.’ She looked at Mr Phinn and frowned. ‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘after your row with Maurice over the trout, he came to me and told me he’d left a copy of the amended Chapter 7 at your house. Why haven’t you produced it, Occy? Why just now did you try to stop me? Was it because –’

‘Dear me, no,’ Mr Phinn said very quietly, ‘not from any high-flown scruples, I assure you. It was, if you will believe me, in deference to my boy’s wishes. Before he killed himself, Viccy wrote to his mother and to me. He begged us to believe him innocent. He also begged us most solemnly, whatever the future might hold, never to take any action that might injure Sir Harold Lacklander. You may not have noticed, my dear Lady L., that my foolish boy hero-worshipped your husband. We decided to respect his wishes.’

Mr Phinn stood up. He looked both old and shabby. ‘I am not concerned,’ he said, ‘with the Lacklander conscience, the Lacklander motive, or the Lacklander remorse. I no longer desire the Lacklanders to suffer for my dear boy’s death. I do not, I think, believe any more in human expiation. Now, if I may, I shall ask you to excuse me. And if you want to know what I did with Chapter 7, I burnt it to ashes, my dear Chief Inspector, half an hour ago.’

He raised his dreadful smoking-cap, bowed to Lady Lacklander, and walked into his house, followed by his cats.

Lady Lacklander stood up. She began to move towards the gate, seemed to recollect herself and paused. ‘I am going to Nunspardon,’ she said. Alleyn opened the gate. She went out without looking at him, got into her great car and was driven away.

Fox said: ‘Painful business. I suppose the young fellow suspected what was up at the last interview. Unpleasant.’

‘Very.’

‘Still, as Mr Phinn says, this Chapter 7 really puts him in the clear as far as killing Colonel Cartarette is concerned.’

‘Well, no,’ Alleyn said.

‘No?’

‘Not exactly. The Colonel left Chapter 7 at Jacob’s Cottage. Phinn, on his own statement, didn’t re-enter the house after his row with the Colonel. He returned to the willow grove, found the body and lost his spectacles. He read Chapter 7 for the first time this morning, I fancy, by the aid of a magnifying glass.’