Before they returned to Swevenings, Alleyn and Fox visited Dr Curtis in the Chyning Hospital mortuary. It was a very small mortuary attached to a sort of pocket hospital and there was a ghastly cosiness in the close proximity of them all to the now irrevocably and dreadfully necrotic Colonel. Curtis, who liked to be thorough in his work, was making an extremely exhaustive autopsy and had not yet completed it. He was able to confirm that there had been an initial blow, followed, it seemed, rather than preceded by a puncture but that neither the blow nor the puncture quite accounted for some of the multiple injuries which were the result, he thought, of pressure. Contre-coup, he said, was present in a very marked degree. He would not entirely dismiss Commander Syce’s arrows or Lady Lacklander’s umbrella spike but he thought her shooting-stick the most likely of the sharp instruments produced. The examination of the shooting-stick for blood traces might bring them nearer to a settlement of this point. The paint rag, undoubtedly, was stained with blood which had not yet been classified. It smelt quite strongly of fish. Alleyn handed over the rest of his treasure trove.

‘As soon as you can,’ he said, ‘do, like a good chap, get on to the fishy side of the business. Find me scales of both trout on one person’s article and only on one person’s and the rest will follow as the night the day.’

‘You treat me,’ Curtis said without malice, ‘like a tympanist in a jazz band perpetually dodging from one instrument to another. I’ll finish my PM, blast you, and Willy Roskill can muck about with your damned scales.’ Sir William Roskill was an eminent Home Office analyst.

‘I’ll ring him up, now,’ Alleyn said.

‘It’s all right, I’ve rung him. He’s on his way. As soon as we know anything we’ll ring the station. What’s biting you about this case, Rory?’ Dr Curtis asked. ‘You’re always slinging off at the “expeditious” officer and raising your cry of festina lente. Why the fuss and hurry? The man was only killed last night.’

‘It’s a pig of a case,’ Alleyn said, ‘and on second thoughts I’ll keep the other arrow – the bloody one. If it is blood. What the hell can I carry it in? I don’t want him to …’ He looked at the collection of objects they had brought with them. ‘That’ll do,’ he said. He slung George Lacklander’s golf bag over his shoulder, wrapped up the tip of Syce’s arrow and dropped it in.

‘A pig of a case,’ he repeated, ‘I hate its guts.’

‘Why this more than another?’