“Perhaps she lied.”

“Oh, do you think so? Surely not.”

“Don’t be facetious,” said Nigel.

“Thank you, Bathgate. No, but I don’t think Nurse Graham lied. Jane Harden did, over her letters. Well, there they all are. Have one of your celebrated lucky dips and see if you can spot the winner.”

“For a win,” Nigel pronounced at last, “the special nurse. For a place the funny little man.”

“Why?”

“On, the crime-fiction line of reasoning. The two outsiders. The nurse looks very fishy. And funny little men are rather a favourite line in villains nowadays. He might turn out to be Sir Derek’s illegitimate brother and that’s why he’s so interested in heredity. I’m thinking of writing detective fiction.”

“You should do well at it.”

“Of course,” said Nigel slowly, “there’s the other school in which the obvious man is always the murderer. That’s the one you favour at the Yard, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” agreed Alleyn.

“Do you read crime fiction?”

“I dote on it. It’s such a relief to escape from one’s work into an entirely different atmosphere.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” Nigel protested.

“Perhaps not quite as bad as that. Any faithful account of police investigations, in even the most spectacular homicide case, would be abysmally dull. I should have thought you’d seen enough of the game to realise that. The files are a plethora of drab details, most of them entirely irrelevant. Your crime novelist gets over all that by writing grandly about routine work and then selecting the essentials. Quite rightly. He’d be the world’s worst bore if he did otherwise.”

“May I speak?” inquired Angela.

“Do,” said Alleyn.

“I’m afraid I guess it’s Sir John Phillips.”

“I’ve heard you say yourself that the obvious man is usually the ace,” ruminated Nigel after a pause.

“Yes. Usually,” said Alleyn.

“I suppose, in this case, the obvious man is Phillips.”

“That’s what old Fox will say,” conceded Alleyn with a curious reluctance.

“I suppose it’s hopeless to ask, but have you made up your mind yet, inspector?”

Alleyn got up, walked to the fireplace, and then swung round and stared at his friend.

“I regret to say,” he said, “that I haven’t the foggiest notion who killed Cock Robin.”

1 See Enter a Murderer and A Man Lay Dead.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Lenin Hall Lot

Tuesday, the sixteenth. Night.

“OF COURSE,” SAID Angela suddenly, “it may be the matron. I always suspect gentility. Or, of course—” She stopped.

“Yes?” asked Alleyn. “There’s still some of the field left.”

“I knew you’d say that. But I do mistrust people who laugh too much.”

Alleyn glanced at her sharply.

“Do you? I must moderate my mirth. Well, there’s the case, and I’m glad to have taken it out and aired it. Shall we go to the Palladium?”