‘I told him that Colonel Cartarette was knocked out by a golf club. I’ll now add for the information of you all, since you choose to stay here, that he was finally killed by a stab through the temple made by your shooting-stick, Lady Lacklander. Your paint rag was used to wipe the scales of two trout from the murderer’s hands. The first blow was made from the punt. The murderer in order to avoid being seen from Watt’s Hill, got into the punt and slid down the stream using the long mooring rope as you probably did when you yourself sketched from the punt. The punt, borne by the current, came to rest in the little bay by the willow grove and the murderer stood in it idly swinging a club at the daisies growing on the edge of the bank. This enemy of the Colonel’s was so well known to him that he paid little attention; said something perhaps about the trout he had caught and went on cutting grass to wrap it in. Perhaps the last thing he saw was the shadow of the club moving swiftly across the ground. Then he was struck on the temple. We think there was a return visit with your shooting-stick, Lady Lacklander, and that the murderer quite deliberately used the shooting-stick on Colonel Cartarette as you used it this morning on your garden path. Placed it over the bruised temple and sat on it. What did you say? Nothing? It’s a grotesque and horrible thought, isn’t it? We think that on getting up and releasing the shooting-stick there was literally a slip. A stumble, you know. It would take quite a bit of pulling out. There was a backward lunge. A heel came down on the Colonel’s trout. The fish would have slid away, no doubt, if it had not been lying on a sharp triangular stone. It was trodden down and, as it were, transfixed on the stone. A flap of skin was torn away and the foot, instead of sliding off, sank in and left an impression. An impression of the spiked heel of a golf shoe.’

George Lacklander said in an unrecognizable voice: ‘All this is conjecture!’

‘No,’ Alleyn said, ‘I assure you. Not conjecture.’ He looked at Lady Lacklander and Mark. ‘Shall I go on?’

Lady Lacklander, using strange uncoordinated gestures, fiddled with the brooches that, as usual, were stuck about her bosom. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

Mark, who throughout Alleyn’s discourse, had kept his gaze fixed on his father, said: ‘Go on. By all means. Why not?’