Nurse Kettle looked pleased. ‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘we do get to know people. Of course our duties take us mostly to the ordinary folk although with the present shortage we find ourselves doing quite a lot for the other sort. They pay the full fee and that helps the Association, so, as long as it’s not depriving the ones who can’t afford it, we take the odd upper-class case. Like me and Lady Lacklander’s toe, for instance.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Alleyn said, ‘there’s the toe.’ He observed with surprise the expression of enraptured interest in his colleague’s elderly face.

‘Septic,’ Nurse Kettle said cosily.

‘’T, ’t, ’t,’ said Fox.

‘And then again, for example,’ Nurse Kettle went on, ‘I nightnursed the old gentleman. With him when he died actually. Well, so was the family. And the Colonel, too, as it happens.’

‘Colonel Cartarette?’ Alleyn asked without laying much stress on it.

‘That’s right. Or wait a moment. I’m telling stories. The Colonel didn’t come back into the room. He stayed on the landing with the papers.’

‘The papers?’

‘The old gentleman’s memoirs they were. The Colonel was to see about publishing them, I fancy, but I don’t really know. The old gentleman was very troubled about them. He couldn’t be content to say good-bye and give up until he’d seen the Colonel. Mind you, Sir Harold was a great man in his day and his memoirs’ll be very important affairs, no doubt.’

‘No doubt. He was a distinguished ambassador.’

‘That’s right. Not many of that sort left I always say. Everything kept up. Quite feudal.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘there aren’t many families left who can afford to be feudal. Don’t they call them the Lucky Lacklanders?’

‘That’s right. Mind, there are some who think the old gentleman overdid it.’

‘Indeed?’ Alleyn said, keeping his mental fingers crossed. ‘How?’

‘Well, not leaving the grandson anything. Because of him taking up medicine instead of going into the army. Of course, it’ll all come to him in the end, but in the meantime, he has to make do with what he earns, though of course – but listen to me gossiping. Where was I now. Oh, the old gentleman and the memoirs. Well, no sooner had he handed them over than he took much worse and the Colonel gave the alarm. We all went in. I gave brandy. Dr Mark gave an injection but it was all over in a minute. ‘“Vic,”’ he said, ‘“Vic, Vic,”’ and that was all.’ Alleyn repeated ‘“Vic?”’ and then was silent for so long that Nurse Kettle had begun to say: ‘Well, if that’s all I can do …’ when he interrupted her.

‘I was going to ask you,’ he said, ‘who lives in the house between this one and Mr Phinn’s?’