“Glad to see you, Mr. Alleyn,” said Harper. “Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mr. Fox. I’ve got a car outside.”

He drove them in a police Ford down the main street. They passed a Woolworth store, a departmental store, a large hotel, and a row of small shops amongst which Alleyn noticed one labelled “Bernard Noggins, Chemist.”

“Is that where Parish bought the cyanide?”

“You haven’t lost any time, Mr. Alleyn,” said Harper, who seemed to hover on the edge of Alleyn’s Christian name and to funk it at the last second. “Yes, that’s it. He’s a very stupid sort of man, is Bernie Noggins. There’s the station. The colonel will be along presently. He’s in a shocking mood over this affair, but you may be able to cope with him. I thought that before we moved on to Ottercombe, you might like to see the files and have a tell,” said Harper, whose speech still held a tang of West Country.

“Splendid. Where are we to stay?”

“That’s as you like, of course, Mr. Alleyn, but I’ve told that old blatherskite Pomeroy to hold himself in readiness. I thought you might prefer to be on the spot. I’ve warned him to say nothing about it and I think he’ll have the sense to hold his tongue. No need to put anybody on the alert, is there? This car’s at your service.”

“Yes, but look here—”

“It’s quite all right, Mr. Alleyn. I’ve a small two-seater we can use here.”

“That sounds perfectly splendid,” said Alleyn, and followed Harper into the police station.

They sat down in Harper’s office, while he got out his files. Alleyn looked at the photographs of past Superintendents, at the worn linoleum and varnished woodwork, and he wondered how many times he had sat in country police stations waiting for the opening gambit of a case that, for one reason or another, had been a little too much for the local staff. Alleyn was the youngest chief-inspector at the Central Branch of New Scotland Yard, but he was forty-three. “I’m getting on,” he thought without regret. “Old Fox must be fifty, he’s getting quite grey. We’ve done all this so many times together.” And he heard his own voice as if it was the voice of another man, uttering the familiar phrases.

“I hope we won’t be a nuisance to you, Nick. A case of this sort’s always a bit tiresome, isn’t it? Local feeling and so on.”

Harper clapped a file down on his desk, threw his head back and looked at Alleyn from under his spectacles.

“Local feeling?” he said. “Local stupidity! I don’t care. They work it out for themselves and get a new version every day. Old Pomeroy’s not the worst, not by a long chalk. The man’s got something to complain about, or thinks he has. It’s these other experts, George Nark & Co., that make all the trouble. Nark’s written three letters to the Illington Courier. The first was about fingerprinting. He called it ‘the Bertillion system,’ of course, ignorant old ass, and wanted to know if we’d printed everyone who was there, when Watchman died. So I got him round here and printed him. So he wrote another letter to the paper about the liberty of the subject and said the South Devon Constabulary were a lot of Hitlers. Then Oates, the Coombe P.C., found him crawling about outside Pomeroy’s garage with a magnifying glass, and kicked him out. So he wrote another letter, saying the police were corrupt. Then the editor, who ought to know better, wrote a damn-fool leader and then three more letters about me appeared. They were signed ‘Vigilant,’ ‘Drowsy,’ and ‘Moribund.’ Then all the pressmen who’d gone away, came back again. I don’t care. What of it? But the C.C. began ringing me up three times a day and I got fed up and suggested he ask you, and he jumped at it. There’s the file.”

Alleyn and Fox hastened to make sympathetic noises.

“Before we see the file” Alleyn said, “we’d very much like to hear your own views. We’ve looked up the report on the inquest so we’ve got the main outline or ought to have it.”

“My views?” repeated Mr. Harper moodily. “I haven’t got any. I don’t think it was an accident.”

“Don’t you, now?”

“I don’t see how it could have been. I suppose old Pomeroy bleated about his injuries when he went screeching up to the Yard. I think he’s right. ’Far as I can see, the old man did take reasonable precautions. Well, perhaps not that, the stuff ought never to have been left on the premises. But I don’t see how, twenty-four hours after he’d stowed the bottle away in the cupboard, he could have infected that dart accidentally. We’ve printed the cupboard. It’s got his prints on it and nobody’s else’s.”

“Oh,” said Alleyn, “then it isn’t a case of somebody else having tampered with the bottle and been too scared to own up.”

“No.”

“How many sets of Pomeroy’s prints are on the cupboard door?”

“Several. Four good ones on the knob. And he turned the key in the top cupboard when he put the cyanide away. His print’s on the key all right and you can’t do the pencil trick, for I’ve tried. It’s a fair teaser.”

“Any prints on the bottle?”

“None. But he explained he wore gloves and wiped the bottle.”

“The cupboard door’s interesting.”

“Is it? Well, when he opened the parcel of darts he broke the seals. I got hold of the wrapping and string. The string had only been tied once and the seals have got the shop’s mark on them.”

“Damn good, Nick,” said Alleyn. Mr. Harper looked a little less jaundiced.

“Well, it goes to show,” he admitted, “the dart was O.K. when old Pomeroy unpacked it. Then young Will and Parish handled the darts, and then Legge tried them out. Next thing — one of ’em sticks into deceased’s finger and in five minutes he’s a corpse.”

“The inference being…?”

“God knows! They found cyanide on the dart, but how the hell it got there’s a masterpiece. I suppose old Pomeroy’s talked Legge to you.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Well, Legge had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. Cubitt and young Pomeroy swear he took the darts with his left hand and held them point outward in a bunch while he tried them. They say he didn’t wait any time at all. Just threw them into the board, said they were all right and then waded in with his trick. You see, they were all watching Legge.”

“Yes.”

“What about the other five, Super?” asked Fox. “He used six for the trick, didn’t he?”

“Meaning one of them might have contrived to smear cyanide on one dart, while they looked at the lot?”

“It doesn’t make any sort of sense,” said Alleyn. “How was Cubitt or young Pomeroy to know Legge was going to pink Watchman?”

“That’s right,” agreed Harper, relapsing. “So it must be Legge but it couldn’t be Legge; so it must be accident but it couldn’t be accident. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Screamingly.”

“The iodine bottle’s all right and so’s the brandy bottle.”

“The brandy glass was broken?”

“Smashed to powder, except the bottom, and that was in about thirty pieces. They couldn’t find any cyanide.”

“Whereabouts on the dart was the trace of cyanide?”

“On the tip and halfway up the steel point. We’ve printed the dart, of course. It’s got Legge’s prints all over it. They’ve covered Abel’s or anybody else’s who touched it, except Oates, and he kept his head and only handled it by the flight. The analyst’s report is here. And all the exhibits.”

“Yes. Have you fished up a motive?”

“The money goes to Parish and Cubitt. Two thirds to Parish and one third to Cubitt. That’s excepting one or two small legacies. Parish is the next-of-kin. It’s a big estate. The lawyer was so close as an oyster, but I’ve found out it ought to wash up at something like fifty thousand. We don’t know much beyond what everybody knows. Reckon most folks have seen Sebastian Parish on the screen, and Mr. Cubitt seems to be a well-known artist. The C.C. expects the Yard to tackle that end of the stick.”

“Thoughtful of him! Anyone else?”

“They’ve found a bit already. They’ve found Parish’s affairs are in a muddle and he’s been to the Jews. Cubitt had money in that Chain Stores Unlimited thing, that bust the other day. There’s motive there, all right.”