“Mrs. Compline hadn’t worn that coat before, sir. She arrived in a Burberry like you see at the shooting parties, and when they took a walk on the first evening she wore it again, sir. It was yesterday morning she took out the tweed. When the two gentlemen was going to have that bet, sir,” said the little maid turning pink. “I was in Madam’s room, sir, asking what I should put out for her to wear, when poor Mr. William called out in the passage ‘It’s worth a tenner to see him do it.’ She seemed very upset, sir. She got up and went to the door and looked after him. She called out, but I don’t think he heard her because he ran downstairs. She said she didn’t require me. So I went out and she must have followed him.”

“When did you see her again?”

“Well, after a minute or two, I saw her go downstairs wearing that coat, sir, and a tweed hat, and I called Elsie, the second housemaid, sir, and said we could slip in and make Mrs. Compline’s bed and do her room. So we did. At least—” here the little maid hesitated.

“Yes?” Alleyn asked.

“Well, sir, I’m afraid we did look out of the window because we knew about the bet. But you can’t see the pond from that window on account of the shrubs. Only the terrace. We saw the poor lady cross the terrace. It was snowing very hard. She seemed to stare down towards the pond, sir, for a little while and then she looked round and — and Elsie and I began to make the bed. It wasn’t above two minutes before she was back, as white as a sheet and trembling. I offered to take away her wet coat and hat, but she said, ‘No, no, leave them,’ rather short, so Elsie and I went out. By that time there was a great to-do, down by the pond, and Thomas came in and said one of the gentlemen had fallen in.”

“And while Mrs. Compline was on the terrace, nobody joined her or appeared near her?”

“No, sir. I think Miss Wynne and poor Mr. William must have gone out afterwards, because we heard their voices down there, just before Mrs. Compline got back.”

“Well done,” said Alleyn. “And is this—” he showed her the tweed hat—“is this the hat she was wearing?”

“That’s it, sir.”

“Looks just the same?”

The little maid took it in her hands and turned it round, eyeing it in a thoughtful bird-like manner. “It’s got two of those feathery hooks,” she said at last. “Funny kind of trimming, I think. Two.”

“Yes?”

“It only had one yesterday. The big yellow-and-black one.”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn, and quite fluttered her by the fervency of his smile.

Detective-Inspector Fox, and Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, arrived at seven o’clock in a hired car from Pen Gidding. Alleyn was delighted to see them. He set Bailey to work on the brass Buddha, the Charter forms, the Maori mere, and the wireless cabinet. Thompson photographed all the details that Alleyn had already taken with his own camera. And at last the body of William Compline was taken away from the armchair in the smoking-room. There was a ballroom at Highfold. It had been added incontinently to the east side by a Victorian Royal and was reached by a short passage. Here, in an atmosphere of unused grandeur and empty anticipation, Sandra Compline lay, not far removed from the son for whom she had not greatly cared. Alleyn heard Jonathan issuing subdued but emphatic orders for flowers.

Fox and Alleyn went together to the library.

“Sit down, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn. “Sorry to have hauled you out, but I’m damn’ glad to see you.”

“We had quite a job getting here,” said Fox, taking out his spectacle case. “Very unpleasant weather. Nasty affair this, sir, by the looks of it. What’s the strength of it? Murder followed by suicide, or what?”

“There’s my report. You’d better take a look at it.”

“Ah,” said Fox. “Much obliged. Thank you.” He settled his spectacles rather far down his nose and put on his reading face. Fox had a large rosy face. To Alleyn, his reading expression always suggested that he had a slight cold in the head. He raised his sandy eyebrows, slightly opened his mouth and placidly absorbed the words before him. For some time there was no sound but the crackle of turning leaves and Fox’s breathing.

“Um,” he said when he had finished. “Silly sort of business. Meant to look complicated but isn’t. When do we fix this customer up, Mr. Alleyn?”

“We’ll wait for Bailey, I think. I’d like to arrest on a minor charge, but there isn’t the smell of an excuse so far.”

“Assault on Mr. Mandrake?”

“Well,” said Alleyn, “we might do that. I suppose I haven’t gone wrong anywhere. The thing’s so blasted obvious I keep wondering if there’s a catch in it. We’ll have to experiment, of course, with the business next door. Might do that now, if Bailey’s finished. They’ve taken that poor chap out, haven’t they? All right. Come on, Foxkin.”

They went into the smoking-room. Bailey, a taciturn officer with an air of permanent resentment, was packing away his finger-print apparatus, and Thompson had taken down his camera.

“Finished?” asked Alleyn. “Got a shot of the ash in the grate all right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Thompson. “Made a little find there, Mr. Alleyn. Bailey spotted it. You know this trace in the ash, the sort of coil affair?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sir, it’s what you said all right. String or cord or something. There’s a bit not quite burnt out up at the back. Charred-like but still a bit of substance in it. Seems as if it was green originally.”

“We’ll have it,” said Alleyn. “Good work, Bailey. I missed that.”

The mulish expression on Sergeant Bailey’s face deepened.

“We had a five-hundred-watt lamp on it,” he said. “Looks as if someone’d chucked this string on the fire and pulled those two side logs over it. They must have fallen apart and the stuff smouldered out slowly. Tough, fine-fibred stuff, I’d say. Might be silk. It finishes with a trace of structureless fairly tough black ash that has kept its form and run into lumps. What’s the next job, sir?”

“Well have to get their prints. I don’t for a moment suppose they’ll object. I warned Mr. Royal about it. Thank the Lord I shan’t have to use any of the funny things they brought me from the chemist. Anything to report?”

“There’s a couple of nice ones on that brass image affair, sir. Latent, but came up nicely under the dust. Same as the ones on the stone cosh. There’s something on the neck of the cosh, but badly blurred. As good a set as you’d want on the blade.”

“What about the wireless?”

“Regular mix-up, Mr. Alleyn, like you’d expect. But there’s a kind of smudge on the volume control.” Bailey looked at his boots. “Might be gloves,” he muttered.

“Very easily,” said Alleyn. “Now, look here: Mr. Fox and I are going to make an experiment. I’ll get you two to stay in here and look on. If it’s a success, I think we might stage a little show for a select audience.” He squatted down and laid his piece of fishing-line out on the floor. “You might just lock the door,” he said.

“This is a big house,” said Chloris, “and yet there seems nowhere to go. I’ve no stomach for the party in the drawing-room.”

“There’s the ‘boudoir,’ ” Mandrake suggested.

“Aren’t the police overflowing into that?”

“Not now. Alleyn and that vast red man went down to the pond a few minutes ago. Now they’ve gone back into the smoking-room. Let’s try the ‘boudoir.’ ”

“All right, let’s.”

They went into the “boudoir.” The curtains were closed and the lamps alight. A cheerful fire crackled in the grate.

Chloris moved restlessly about the room and Mandrake intercepted a quick glance at the door into the smoking-room. “It’s all right,” she said. “William’s gone, you know, and the police seem to have moved into the library.” There was a sudden blare of radio on the other side of the door, and both Mandrake and Chloris jumped nervously. Chloris gave a little cry. “They’re in there,” she whispered. “What are they doing?”