“Alleyn? I think I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he—” She paused. Cicely O’Callaghan had nearly dropped a brick. She had been about to say “Isn’t he a gentleman?” She must have been really very much perturbed to come within hail of such a gaffe. Inspector Fox answered her very simply.

“Yes,” he said, “he’s rather well known. He’s a very highly educated man. Quite a different type from me, you might say.”

Again a faint pink tinged her cheeks.

“I am grateful to you for the trouble you are taking,” she told him.

“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Fox. “If you’ll excuse me, Lady O’Callaghan, I’ll get along. I’ll speak to the chief at once. If you’re agreeable, I’ll show him the correspondence.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you very much. I’ll wish you good afternoon.”

“Will you have something to drink before you go?”

“No, thank you. Very kind of you, I’m sure.” He tramped to the door, turned and made a little bow.

“I hope you’ll allow me to offer my sympathy,” he said. “It’s a great loss to the nation.”

“Thank you.”

“Good afternoon, Lady O’Callaghan.”

“Good afternoon, inspector.”

So Inspector Fox went to the Yard to see Alleyn.

CHAPTER SIX

Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn

Friday, the twelfth. Afternoon and evening.

“HULLO, BRER FOX,” said Alleyn, looking up from his desk. “Where’ve you been in your new bowler?”

“Paying a call on the Snow Queen,” replied Fox with unexpected imaginativeness. “And when I say ‘Snow Queen’ I don’t mean cocaine, either.”

“No? Then what do you mean? Sit down and have a smoke. You look perturbed.”

“Well, I am,” said Fox heavily. He produced a pipe and blew down it, staring solemnly at his superior. “I’ve been to see the wife of the late Home Secretary,” he said.

“What! You are coming on.”

“Look here, chief. She says it’s murder.”

“She says what’s murder?”

“Him. Sir Derek O’Callaghan.”

Alleyn put his pipe down and swung round slowly in his chair.

“Oh!” he said. He raised one eyebrow to an excruciating height and twisted his mouth sideways. This trick invested his handsome face with a kind of impish fastidiousness.

“What sort of woman is she?” he asked.

“A very cold fishy sort of lady,” answered Fox. “A Snow Queen, in fact. Not the hysterical sort, if that’s what you mean.”

“She was a Rattisbon. All the Rattisbons are a bit frosty. I was at school with her brother—who was, of course, called ‘Ratsbane.’ I speak like Mr. Gossip, don’t I? A very churlish fellow, he was. Well, let’s have the whole story.”

Fox told him the whole story, dwelling a little on the letters.

“I see,” said Alleyn. “And she’s hell-bent on an inquest?”