But Alleyn did not answer. He was looking at the personal effects of the persons under consideration. They were laid out in neat groups along a shelf opposite the dissecting table, almost as if they were component parts of the autopsy. The Colonel’s and Mr Phinn’s clothes, boots, fishing gear and hat. Kitty’s loud new tweed skirt and twin set. Sir George’s plus-fours, stockings and shoes, Mark’s and Rose’s tennis clothes. Lady Lacklander’s tentlike garments, her sketching kit and a pair of ancient but beautifully made brogues. Alleyn stopped, stretched out a hand and lifted one of these brogues.

‘Size about four,’ he said. ‘They were hand-made by the best bootmaker in London in the days when Lady Lacklander still played golf. Here’s her name sewn in. They’ve been cleaned but the soles are still dampish and …’ He turned the shoe over and was looking at the heel. It carried minature spikes. Alleyn looked at Fox who, without a word, brought from the end of the shelf a kitchen plate on which were laid out, as if for some starvation diet, the remains of the Colonel’s fish. The flap of skin with its fragment of an impression was carefully spread out. They waited in silence.

‘It’ll fit all right,’ Alleyn said. ‘Do your stuff, of course, but it’s going to fit. And the better it fits, the less I’m going to like it.’

And with this illogical observation he went out of the mortuary.

‘What is biting him?’ Dr Curtis asked Fox.

‘Ask yourself, Doctor,’ Fox said. ‘It’s one of the kind that he’s never got, as you might say, used to.’

‘Like that, is it?’ Dr Curtis, for the moment unmindful of his own terribly explicit job, muttered: ‘I often wonder why on earth he entered the Service.’

‘I’ve never liked to inquire,’ Fox said in his plain way; ‘but I’m sure I’m very glad he did. Well, I’ll leave you with your corpse.’

‘… seeing you,’ Dr Curtis said absently and Fox rejoined his principal. They returned to the police station where Alleyn had a word with Sergeant Oliphant. ‘We’ll leave you here, Oliphant,’ Alleyn said. ‘Sir William Roskill will probably go straight to the hospital, but as soon as there’s anything to report, he or Dr Curtis will ring you up. Here’s a list of people I’m going to see. If I’m not at one of these places I’ll be at another. See about applying for a warrant; we may be making an arrest before nightfall.’

‘’T, ’t, ’t,’ Sergeant Oliphant clicked. ‘Reely? In what name, sir? Same as you thought?’

Alleyn pointed his long forefinger at a name on the list he had given the sergeant who stared at it for some seconds, his face perfectly wooden.