‘In which case, why is she so cagey about it all now, and what did she and the Colonel talk about afterwards?’

‘Ah, blast!’ said Fox in disgust. ‘Well, then, it may be that the memoirs and Chapter 7 and Who Stole The Secret Documents in Zlomce? haven’t got anything to do with the case.’

‘My feeling is that they do belong but are not of the first importance.’

‘Well, Mr Alleyn, holding the view you do hold, it’s the only explanation that fits.’

‘Quite so. And I tell you what, Fox. Motive, as usual, is a secondary consideration. And here is Chyning and a petrol pump and here (hold on to your hat, Fox. Down, down little flutterer) is the Jolly Kettle filling up a newly painted car which I’ll swear she calls by a pet name. If you can control yourself we’ll pull in for some petrol. Good morning, Miss Kettle.’

‘The top of the morning to you, Chief,’ said Nurse Kettle turning a beaming face upon them. She slapped the back of her car as if it were a rump. ‘Having her elevenses,’ she said. ‘First time we’ve met for a fortnight on account she’s been having her face lifted. And how are you?’

‘Bearing up,’ Alleyn said, getting out of the car. ‘Inspector Fox is turning rather short-tempered.’

Fox ignored him. ‘Very nice little car, Miss Kettle,’ he said.

‘Araminta? She’s a good steady girl on the whole,’ said Nurse Kettle, remorselessly jolly. ‘I’m just taking her out to see a case of lumbago.’

‘Commander Syce?’ Alleyn ventured.

‘That’s right.’

‘He is completely recovered.’

‘You don’t say,’ Nurse Kettle rejoined, looking rather disconcerted. ‘And him tied up in knots last evening. Fancy!’

‘He was a cot-case, I understood, when you left him round about eight o’clock last night.’

‘Very sorry for ourselves, we were, yes.’

‘And yet,’ Alleyn said, ‘Mr Phinn declares that at a quarter past eight, Commander Syce was loosing off arrows from his sixty-pound bow.’

Nurse Kettle was scarlet to the roots of her mouse-coloured hair. Alleyn heard his colleague struggling with some subterranean expression of sympathy.

‘Well, fancy!’ Nurse Kettle was saying in a high voice. ‘There’s ’bago for you! Now you see it, now you don’t.’ And she illustrated this aphorism with sharp snaps of her finger and thumb.

Fox said in an unnatural voice: ‘Are you sure, Miss Kettle, that the Commander wasn’t having you on? Excuse the suggestion.’

Nurse Kettle threw him a glance that might perhaps be best described as uneasily roguish.

‘And why not?’ she asked. ‘Maybe he was. But not for the reason you mere men suppose.’

She got into her car with alacrity and sounded her horn. ‘Home, John, and don’t spare the horses,’ she cried waggishly and drove away in what was evidently an agony of self-consciousness.