When George had exhausted his mental address-book, the Commander of Detectives cleared his throat in a way that gave the merest hint of smugness.

‘Grave charges,’ he said. ‘Graver, perhaps, than you realize. Certainly graver than we had anticipated. Serious view they’ll take of it. Serious. Unacceptable, you see.’

Sam made a brief reference to the Southern end of the digestive tract, in the plural, then relapsed into his lump.

‘No, no, sir,’ said the C of D, ‘that doesn’t help a bit, not that attitude doesn’t. Constructive is the word. Let’s be constructive. See what we can work out. Least harmful, least publicity, least cost to the taxpayer, eh?’

Sam made a suggestion which might or might not have given pleasure to the average taxpayer.

‘There you are again, you see, sir. Interesting biologically but not what you’d call constructive. Lucky we haven’t got a police stenographer in here, eh?’ The gentle threat floated gently to the ground. Sam grumbled, ‘Sorry’, and George said, ‘Hrrmph’. I said that I wasn’t used to drinking cocoa for breakfast. The C of D produced his whisky bottle in an insulting fashion.

Then he explained to us, with thinly-disguised relish, that we were up an improbably-named creek in a concrete canoe without a paddle and that the kindest thing he could do, before clapping us into his deepest dungeon, was to allow us to make one telephone call each. George’s advocate, the grandest imaginable, kept on saying ‘oh dear, oh dear’, until George slammed the instrument down. Sam’s advocate seemed to be saying ‘oy oy, oy oy’ until Sam told him curtly that he wanted no moaning at the bar.

My own chap is but a mere solicitor and his reaction was crisp. ‘Put the copper on,’ he said, crisply.

Two minutes later the C of D told us, crisply, that it had just occurred to him that he couldn’t hold us until he could think of some better charges and that, if we were prepared to go through a trifling formality at the box-office, we were free to go for the time being.

We went. I was prepared to chat freely on the way home but the others seemed both tacit and mute. I shall never understand people.

At home, Johanna greeted me with her cryptic smile, the one that makes her look like a rich man’s Mona Lisa, and the sisterly sort of kiss with which a wife tells you that she loves, you; but. Scorning explanations, I swept off to my dressing-room, leaving instructions that I should be called at twenty minutes before luncheon.

‘Yes, dear,’ she said. She has a gift for words.

In the event it was Jock who aroused me from a hoggish slumber, which had been intermingled with fearful dreams.

‘Chops, Mr Charlie,’ he said, ‘and chips and them little French beans.’