‘Two minutes and forty-two seconds,’ said Inspector Curry, clicking the stop watch with which he had been timing him. ‘They don’t take long, these things, do they?’

His tone was pleasantly conversational.

‘I don’t run as fast as your constable,’ said Alex. ‘I presume it is my supposed movements you have been timing?’

‘I’m just pointing out that you had the opportunity to do murder. That’s all, Mr Restarick. I’m not making any accusations — as yet.’

Alex Restarick said kindly to Constable Dodgett, who was still panting:

‘I can’t run as fast as you can, but I believe I’m in better training.’

‘It’s since ’aving the bronchitis last winter,’ said Dodgett.

Alex turned back to the Inspector.

‘Seriously, though, in spite of trying to make me uncomfortable and observing my reactions — and you must remember that we artistic folk are oh! so sensitive, such tender plants!’ — his voice took on a mocking note — ‘you can’t really believe I had anything to do with all this? I’d hardly send a box of poisoned chocolates to Mrs Serrocold and put my card inside, would I?’

‘That might be what we are meant to think. There’s such a thing as a double bluff, Mr Restarick.’

‘Oh, I see. How ingenious you are. By the way, those chocolates were poisoned?’

‘The six chocolates containing Kirsch flavouring in the top layer were poisoned, yes. They contained aconitine.’

‘Not one of my favourite poisons, Inspector. Personally, I have a weakness for curare.’

‘Curare has to be introduced into the bloodstream, Mr Restarick, not into the stomach.’

‘How wonderfully knowledgeable the police force are,’ said Alex admiringly.

Inspector Curry cast a quiet sideways glance at the young man. He noted the slightly pointed ears, the un-English Mongolian type of face. The eyes that danced with mischievous mockery. It would have been hard at any time to know what Alex Restarick was thinking. A satyr — or did he mean a faun? An overfed faun, Inspector Curry thought suddenly, and somehow there was an unpleasantness about that idea.

A twister with brains — that’s how he would sum up Alex Restarick. Cleverer than his brother. Mother had been a Russian or so he had heard. ‘Russians’ to Inspector Curry were what ‘Bony’ had been in the early days of the nineteenth century, and what ‘the Huns’ had been in the early twentieth century. Anything to do with Russia was bad in Inspector Curry’s opinion, and if Alex Restarick had murdered Gulbrandsen he would be a very satisfactory criminal. But unfortunately Curry was by no means convinced that he had.

Constable Dodgett, having recovered his breath, now spoke.

‘I moved the curtains as you told me, sir,’ he said. ‘And counted thirty. I noticed that the curtains have a hook torn off at the top. Means that there’s a gap. You’d see the light in the room from outside.’

Inspector Curry said to Alex:

‘Did you notice light streaming out from that window last night?’