‘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?’

‘Have we any reason to think it might be about these memoirs, though?’

‘No. I’m doing what I always say you shouldn’t do: I’m speculating. But it was clear, wasn’t it, that young Lacklander didn’t like the memoirs being mentioned. He shut up like a trap over them. They crop up, Brer Fox. They occur. They link the Cartarettes with the Lacklanders and they may well link Mr Phinn with both. They provide, so far, the only connecting theme in this group of apparently very conventional people.’

‘I wouldn’t call her ladyship conventional,’ Fox observed.

‘She’s unconventional along orthodox lines, believe me. There’s a car pulling up. It’ll be Dr Curtis. Let’s return to the Bottom Field and to the question of opportunity and evidence.’

But before he led the way out he stood rubbing his nose and staring at his colleague.

‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘that old Lacklander died with what sounds like an uneasy conscience and the word ‘“Vic”’ on his lips.’

‘Ah. Vic.’

‘Yes. And Mark Lacklander referred to young Phinn as Viccy! Makes you fink, don’t it? Come on.’

V