‘Sad,’ said Mr Fox.

‘It was indeed.’

‘Would you say, Mr Alleyn, now, that this Mr Phinn senior, was slightly round the bend?’

‘Dotty?’

‘Well … Eccentric.’

‘His behaviour in the watches of last night was certainly oddish. He was a frightened man, Fox, if ever I saw one. What do you think?’

‘The opportunity was there,’ Fox said, going straight to the first principle of police investigation.

‘It was. And, by the way, Bailey’s done his dab-drill. The spectacles are Mr Danberry-Phinn’s.’

‘There now!’ Fox ejaculated with the utmost satisfaction.

‘It’s not conclusive, you know. He might have lost them down there earlier in the day. He’d still be very chary of owning to them.’

‘Well …’ Fox said sceptically.

‘I quite agree. I’ve got my own idea about when and how they got there which is this.’

He propounded his idea. Fox listened with raised brows. ‘And as for opportunity, Fox,’ Alleyn went on, ‘as far as we’ve got, it was also there for his wife, all three Lacklanders and, for a matter of that, Nurse Kettle herself.’

Fox opened his mouth, caught a derisive glint in his senior’s eye and shut it again.

‘Of course,’ Alleyn said, ‘we can’t exclude the tramps or even the dark-skinned stranger from the Far East. But there’s one item that emerged last night which I don’t think we can afford to disregard, Fox. It seems that Colonel Cartarette was entrusted by Sir Harold Lacklander, then on his death-bed, with the Lacklander memoirs. He was to supervise their publication.’

‘Well, now,’ Fox began, ‘I can’t say …’

‘This item may be of no significance whatever,’ Alleyn rejoined. ‘On the other hand, isn’t it just possible that it may be a link between the Lacklanders on the one hand and Mr Octavius Phinn on the other, that link being provided by Colonel Cartarette with the memoirs in his hands.’

‘I take it,’ Fox said in his deliberate way, ‘that you’re wondering if there’s a full account of young Phinn’s offence in the memoirs and if his father’s got to know of it, and made up his mind to stop publication.’

‘It sounds hellish thin when you put it like that, doesn’t it? Where does such a theory land us? Cartarette goes down the hill at twenty-past seven, sees Phinn poaching, and, overheard by Lady Lacklander, has a flaming row with him. They part company. Cartarette moves on to talk to Lady Lacklander, stays with her for ten minutes and then goes to the willow grove to fish. Lady L. returns home and Phinn comes back and murders Cartarette because Cartarette is going to publish old Lacklander’s memoirs to the discredit of young Phinn’s name. But Lady L. doesn’t say a word about this to me. She doesn’t say she heard them quarrel about the memoirs although, if they did there’s no reason that I can see why she shouldn’t. She merely says they had a row about poaching and that Cartarette talked about this to her. She adds that he and she also discussed a private and domestic business which had nothing to do with Cartarette’s death. This, of course, is as it may be. Could the private and domestic business by any chance be anything to do with the publication of the memoirs? If so, why should she refuse to discuss it with me?’