When he finally emerged from the building he found Grant and Sophy waiting for him.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Grant said.

‘By all means. Will you have lunch with me?’ Alleyn made a bow to Sophy. ‘Both of you? Do.’

‘Not me,’ Sophy said. ‘I’m only a hanger-on.’

‘You’re nothing of the sort,’ Grant contradicted.

‘Well, whatever I am, I’ve got a date for lunch. So—thank you, Mr Alleyn—but I must be off.’

And before they could do anything to stop her she had in fact darted across the street and stopped a taxi.

‘A lady of incisive action,’ Alleyn remarked.

‘She is indeed.’

‘Here’s another cab. Shall we go?’

They lunched at Alleyn’s hotel. He caught himself wondering if to Grant the occasion seemed like a rendering in another key of his no doubt habitual acceptance of expense-account hospitality.

Alleyn was a good host. He made neither too much nor too little of the business of ordering and when that was done, talked about the difficulties of adjusting oneself to Rome and the dangers of a surfeit of sightseeing. He asked Grant if he’d had to do a great deal of research for Simon in Latium.

‘Of course,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s bloody cheek to say so, but it always seemed to me that a novelist who has set his book in a foreign environment is, in some sort, like an investigating officer. I mean, in my job one is for ever having to “get up” information, to take in all sorts of details—technical, occupational, indigenous, whatever you like—in surroundings that are quite outside one’s experience. It’s a matter of mugging up.’

‘It certainly was in the case of Simon in Latium.’

‘You must have stayed in Rome for some time, surely?’

‘Two months,’ Grant said, shortly. He laid down his knife and fork. ‘As a matter of fact it’s about that—in a way—that I want to talk to you.’

‘Do you? Fair enough. Now?’

Grant thought for a moment or two. ‘It’s a poor compliment to a superb luncheon but—now, if you please.’

So he told Alleyn how Sebastian Mailer found his manuscript and about the sequel.

‘I think I know now how he’d worked the whole job. When he found the MS he got his idea. He picked the lock of my case and read the book. He spent three days concocting his Angelo in August. He didn’t make it blatantly like Simon. Just introduced my major theme as a minor one. Enough to make me talk about it in front of his revolting chums.