Mr Phinn blinked and gave a singular little laugh. ‘Am I to conclude then, that I am the subject of your interest? Or are you on your way to fresh fields of surmise and conjecture? Nunspardon, for instance. Do you perhaps envisage my Lady Brobdignagia, the Dowager Tun, the Mammoth Matriarch, stealing a-tiptoe through the daisies? Or George aflame with his newly-acquired dignities, thundering through the willow grove in plus-fours. Or have the injuries a clinical character? Do we suspect the young Aesculapius with scalpel or probe? You are thinking I am a person of execrable taste, but the truth is there are other candidates for infamy. Perhaps we should look nearer at hand. At our elderly and intemperate merryman of the shaft and quiver. Or at the interesting and mysterious widow with the dubious antecedents? Really, how very footling, if you will forgive me, it all sounds, doesn’t it? What can I do for you?’

Alleyn looked at the pallid face and restless eyes. ‘Mr Phinn,’ he said, ‘will you let me have your copy of Chapter 7?’

The kitten screamed, opening its mouth and showing its tongue. Mr Phinn relaxed his fingers, kissed it and put it down.

‘Forgive me, my atom,’ he said. ‘Run to Mother.’ He opened the gate. ‘Shall we go in?’ he suggested, and they followed him into a garden dotted about with rustic furniture of an offensive design.

‘Of course,’ Alleyn said, ‘you can refuse. I shall then have to use some other form of approach.’

‘If you imagine,’ Mr Phinn said, wetting his hps, ‘that as far as I am concerned this Chapter 7, which I am to suppose you have seen on my desk but not read, is in any way incriminating, you are entirely mistaken. It constitutes, for me, what may perhaps be described as a contramotive.’

‘So I had supposed,’ Alleyn said. ‘But don’t you think you had better let me see it?’

There was a long silence. ‘Without the consent of Lady Lacklander,’ Mr Phinn said, ‘never. Not for all the sleuths in Christendom.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘that’s all very correct, I dare say. Would you suggest, for the sake of argument, that Chapter 7 constitutes a sort of confession on the part of the author? Does Sir Harold Lacklander, for instance, perhaps admit that he was virtually responsible for the leakage of information that tragic time in Zlomce?’

Mr Phinn said breathlessly: ‘Pray, what inspires this gush of unbridled empiricism?’

‘It’s not altogether that,’ Alleyn rejoined with perfect good humour. ‘As I think I told you this morning, I have some knowledge of the Zlomce affair. You tell us that the new version of Chapter 7 constitutes for you a contramotive. If this is so: if, for instance, it provides exoneration, can you do anything but welcome its publication?’

Mr Phinn said nothing.

‘I think I must tell you,’ Alleyn went on, ‘that I shall ask the prospective publishers for the full story of Chapter 7.’