He found them and poured out a moderate amount of brandy. She made a sad botch of shaking out three tablets. He had to help her. ‘Are you sure you should take three?’ he asked. She nodded, crouched over her hand, gulped and swallowed the brandy. ‘Tranquillizers,’ she said. ‘Prescription.’

For a minute or so she sat with her eyes closed, shivering. ‘I’m sorry. Do have a drink,’ she offered in a travesty of her social voice.

He paid no attention to this. When she had opened her eyes and found her handkerchief he said, ‘I’ll do what I can. I think it’s unlikely that your nephew is in danger of arrest. I’ll find out about it. In the meantime you mustn’t think of giving anything else to Giovanni. He is blackmailing you and he will certainly not carry out any negotiations with the police. But I don’t think he will come. It’s highly possible that he himself is under arrest. I’ll leave you now but before I go tell me one thing. Your nephew did meet Mailer that afternoon by the statue of Apollo, didn’t he?’

‘I think so.’

‘To collect his drugs?’

‘I think so.’

‘For any other purpose, do you know? Did he tell you?’

‘I—think—he’d seen Mailer talking to me and he’d seen I was upset. And—I think he wanted to find out if—if—’

‘If you’d agreed to pay up?’ She nodded.

‘When your nephew appears,’ Alleyn said grimly, ‘will you tell him I want to see him? I will be in my room, 149, for the next hour. And I think, Lady Braceley, you should go to bed. Shall I call your maid?’

‘She’ll come.’

She was gazing at him now with an intensity that appalled him. She suddenly burst into an incoherent babble of thanks and since there seemed no hope of stemming the flood, he left her, still talking, and returned to his room.

V

Inspector Fox came through, loud and clear at six o’clock. The department had been expeditious in collecting information about the travellers. The Dutch Embassy and the London representative of Messrs Adriaan and Welker had confirmed the Van der Veghels’ account of themselves: an ancient family, a strict Lutheran background conforming with the evangelical policy of the firm.