Nurse Kettle smiled all over her good-humoured face. ‘At Uplands?’ she said. ‘Commander Syce, to be sure. He’s another of my victims,’ she added, and unaccountably turned rather pink. ‘Down with a bad go of ’bago, poor chap.’

‘Out of the picture, then, from our point of view?’

‘Yes, if you’re looking for … oh, my gracious,’ Nurse Kettle suddenly ejaculated, ‘here we are at goodness knows what hour of the morning talking away as pleasant as you please and all the time you’re wondering where you’re going to find a murderer. Isn’t that frightful!’

‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Fox begged her.

Alleyn stared at him.

‘Well, of course I’m worried. Even suppose it turns out to have been a tramp. Tramps are people just like other people,’ Nurse Kettle said vigorously.

‘Is Mr Phinn one of your patients?’ Alleyn asked.

‘Not to say patient. I nursed a carbuncle for him years ago. I wouldn’t go getting ideas about him if I were you.’

‘In our job,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘we have to get ideas about everybody.’

‘Not about me, I hope and trust.’

Fox made a complicated soothing and scandalized noise in his throat.

Alleyn said: ‘Miss Kettle, you liked Colonel Cartarette, didn’t you? It was clear from your manner, I thought, that you liked him very much indeed.’

‘Well, I did,’ she said emphatically. ‘He was one of the nicest and gentlest souls: a gentle man if ever I saw one. Devoted father. Never said an unkind word about anybody.’

‘Not even about Mr Phinn?’

‘Now look here,’ she began, then caught herself up. ‘Listen,’ she said; ‘Mr Phinn’s eccentric. No use my pretending otherwise for you’ve seen him for yourselves and you’ll hear what others say about him. But there’s no malice. No, perhaps I wouldn’t say there’s no malice exactly, but there’s no real harm in him. Not a scrap. He’s had this tragedy in his life, poor man, and in my opinion he’s never been the same since it happened. Before the war, it was. His only son did away with himself. Shocking thing.’

‘Wasn’t the son in the Foreign Service?’

‘That’s right. Ludovic was his name, poor chap. Ludovic! I ask you! Nice boy and very clever. He was in some foreign place when it happened. Broke his mother’s heart they always say, but she was a cardiac anyway, poor thing. Mr Phinn never really got over it. You never know, do you?’

‘Never. I remember hearing about it,’ Alleyn said vaguely. ‘Wasn’t he one of Sir Harold Lacklander’s young men?’

‘That’s right. The old gentleman was a real squire. You know: the old Swevenings families and all that. I think he asked for young Phinn to be sent out to him, and I know he was very cut up when it happened. I dare say he felt responsible.’