He said, looking at the photograph, ‘This is your son, sir, isn’t it?’

Mr Phinn, in a voice that was quite unlike his usual emphatic alto, said: ‘My son, Ludovic.’

‘I didn’t meet him, but I was in the Special Branch in 1937. I heard about his tragedy, of course.’

‘He was a good boy,’ Mr Phinn said. ‘I think I may have spoiled him. I fear I may have done so.’

‘One can’t tell about these things.’

‘No. One can’t tell.’

‘I don’t ask you to forgive me for speaking of him. In a case of homicide I’m afraid no holds are barred. We have discovered that Sir Harold Lacklander died with the name ‘Vic’ on his lips and full of concern about the publication of his own memoirs which he had entrusted to Colonel Cartarette. We know that your son was Sir Harold’s secretary during a crucial period of his administration in Zlomce and that Sir Harold could hardly avoid mention of the tragedy of your son’s death if he was to write anything like a definitive record of his own career.’

‘You need go no further,’ said Mr Phinn, with a wave of his hand. ‘I see very clearly what is in your mind.’ He looked at Fox whose notebook was in his palm. ‘Pray write openly, Inspector. Mr Alleyn, you wonder, do you not, if I quarrelled with Colonel Cartarette because he proposed to make public, through Lacklander’s memoirs, the ruin of my boy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.’

‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘if the discussion that Lady Lacklander overheard, but doesn’t care to reveal, was about some such matter.’

Mr Phinn suddenly beat his pudgy hands together, once. ‘If Lady L. does not care to tell you,’ he announced, ‘then neither for the time being do I.’

‘I wonder, too,’ Alleyn continued, ‘if it wouldn’t be easy to misjudge completely your own motives and those of Lady Lacklander.’

‘Ah,’ Mr Phinn said, with extraordinary complacency, ‘you are on dangerous ground indeed, my dear Alleyn. Peel away the layers of motive from the ethical onion and your eyes may well begin to water. It is no occupation, believe me, for a Chief Detective-Inspector.’

A faint smile played conceitedly about the corners of his mouth. Alleyn might have supposed him to have completely recovered his equanimity if it had not been for the slightest possible tic in the lower lid of his right eye and a movement of the fingers of one hand across the back of the other.

‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘if you’d mind showing us your fishing gear … the whole equipment as you took it down yesterday to the Chyne?’

‘And why not?’ Mr Phinn rejoined. ‘But I demand,’ he added loudly, ‘to know if you suspect me of this crime. Do you? Do you?’

‘Come now,’ Alleyn said, ‘you must know very well that you can’t in the same breath refuse to answer our questions and demand an answer to your own. If we may we would like to see your fishing gear.’