Kenneth had stood far enough away from his subject to include in the foreground the Baroness, fussing with her camera, and beyond her the group. Alleyn and Sophy grinned on either side of the furiously embarrassed Grant and there was Sweet very clearly groping for Sophy’s waist. They had the startled and rigid look of persons in darkness transfixed by a flashlight. The details of the wall behind them, their own gigantic shadows and the plump god with his Phrygian cap, his smile and his blankly staring eyes, all stood out in the greatest clarity. Kenneth had taken no other photographs in S. Tommaso. The rest of his film had been used up on the Palatine Hill.

Alleyn waited for the films and prints to dry. Bergarmi pleaded pressure of work and said he would leave him to it.

As he was about to go Alleyn said, ‘You know, Signor Vice-Questore, there is one item in this case that I find extremely intriguing.’

‘Yes? And it is—?’

‘This. Why on earth should Mailer, a flabby man, go to all the exertion and waste a great deal of time in stowing Violetta in the sarcophagus when he might so easily and quickly have tipped her down the well?’

Bergarmi gazed at him in silence for some moments.

‘I have no answer,’ he said. ‘There is, of course, an answer but I cannot at the moment produce it. Forgive me, I am late.’

When he had gone Alleyn muttered, ‘I can. Blow me down flat if I can’t.’

It was ten to three when he got back to his hotel.

He wrote up his report, arranged a meeting with Interpol and took counsel with himself.

His mission, such as it was, was accomplished. He had got most of the information he had been told to get. He had run the Mailer case down to its grass roots and had forced Sweet to give him the most useful list yet obtained of key figures in the biggest of the drug rackets.

And Mailer and Sweet were dead.

Professionally speaking, their deaths were none of his business. They were strictly over to the Roman Questura, to Valdarno and Bergarmi and their boys, and very ably they were being handled. And yet…

He was greatly troubled.

At half past five he laid out all the photographs on his bed. He took a paper from his file. The writing on it was in his own hand. He looked at it for a long time and then folded it and put it in his pocket.

At six o’clock Kenneth Dorne rang up and asked apparently in some agitation if he could come and collect his film.

‘Not now. I’m engaged,’ Alleyn said, ‘at least until seven.’ He waited a moment and then said, ‘You may ring again at eight.’

‘Have—have they turned out all right? The photos?’

‘Yours are perfectly clear. Why?’

‘Is something wrong with hers—the Baroness’s?’