Manx said: “You were next to our table, I think, weren’t you, Alleyn?”

“By an odd coincidence,” Alleyn rejoined pleasantly.

“I think it better for us to postpone our answers.”

“Do you?” Alleyn said lightly. “Why?”

“Obviously, the question about whether we could have touched this hat, or whatever it was…”

“You know perfectly well what it was, Ned,” Lord Pastern interjected. “It was my sombrero, and the gun was under it. We’ve had all that.”

“… this sombrero,” Edward amended, “is a question that has dangerous implications for all of us. I’d like to say that quite apart from the possibility, which we have not admitted, of any of us touching it, there is surely no possibility at all that any of us could have taken a revolver from underneath it, shoved a bit of a parasol up the barrel and replaced the gun, without anything being noticed. If you don’t mind my saying so, the suggestion of any such manoeuvre is obviously ridiculous.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lord Pastern with an air of judicial impartiality. “All that switchin’ about of the light and the metronome waggin’ and everybody naturally watchin’ me, you know. I should say, in point of fact, it was quite possible. I wouldn’t have noticed, I promise you.”

“George,” Félicité whispered fiercely, “do you want to do us in?”

“I want the truth,” her stepfather shouted crossly. “I was a Theosophist, once,” he added.

“You are and have been and always will be an imbecile,” said his wife, shutting her lorgnette.

“Well,” Alleyn said and, the attention of the band, the employees of the restaurant and its guests having been diverted to this domestic interchange, swung back to him, “ridiculous or not, I shall put the question. You are, of course, under no compulsion to answer it. Did any of you handle Lord Pastern’s sombrero?”

They were silent. The waiter, who had gathered up the pieces of broken mirror, faced Alleyn with an anxious smile. “Excuse me, sir,” he said.

“Yes?”

“The young lady,” said the waiter, bowing towards Félicité, “did put her hand under the hat. I was the waiter for that table, sir, and I happened to notice. I hope you will excuse me, miss, but I did happen to notice.”

Fox’s pencil whispered over the paper.

“Thank you,” said Alleyn.

Félicité cried out: “This is the absolute end. Suppose I said it’s not true.”

“I shouldn’t,” Alleyn said. “As Mr. Manx has pointed out, I was sitting next to your table.”

“Then why ask?”

“To see if you would frankly admit that you did, in fact, put your hand under the sombrero.”

“People,” said Carlisle suddenly, “think twice about making frank statements all over the place when a capital crime is involved.”

She looked up at Alleyn and found him smiling at her. “How right you are,” he said. “That’s what makes homicide cases so tiresome.”

“Are we to hang about all night,” Lord Pastern demanded, “while you sit gossipin’? Never saw such a damned amateur set-up in all m’ life. Makes you sick.”

“Let us get on by all means, sir. We haven’t very much more ground to cover here. It will be necessary, I’m afraid, for us to search you before we can let you off.”

“All of us?” Félicité said quickly.

They looked, with something like awe, at Lady Pastern.

“There is a wardress in the ladies’ cloak-room,” Alleyn said, “and a detective-sergeant in the men’s. We shall also need your finger-prints, if you please. Sergeant Bailey will attend to that. Shall we set about it? Perhaps you, Lady Pastern, will go in first?”

Lady Pastern rose. Her figure, tightly encased, seemed to enlarge itself. Everybody stole uneasy glances at it. She faced her husband. “Of the many indignities you have forced upon me,” she said, “this is the most intolerable. For this I shall never forgive you.”

“Good Lord, C,” he rejoined, “what’s the matter with bein’ searched? Trouble with you is you’ve got a dirty mind. If you’d listened to my talks on the Body Beautiful that time in Kent…”

“Silence!” she said (in French) and swept into the ladies’ cloakroom. Félicité giggled nervously.

“Anybody may search me,” Lord Pastern said generously. “Come on.”

He led the way to the men’s cloak-room.

Alleyn said: “Perhaps, Miss de Suze, you would like to go with your mother. It’s perfectly in order, if you think she’d prefer it.”

Félicité was sitting in her chair with her left hand clutching her bag and her right hand out of sight. “I expect she’d rather have a private martyrdom, Mr. Alleyn,” she said.

“Suppose you go and ask her? You can get your part of the programme over when she is free.”

He stood close to Félicité, smiling down at her. She said, “Oh, all right. If you like.” Without enthusiasm, and with a backward glance at Manx, she followed her mother. Alleyn immediately took her chair and addressed himself to Manx and Carlisle.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you can help me with one or two routine jobs that will have to be tidied up. I believe you were both at the dinner party at Lord Pastern’s house — it’s in Duke’s Gate, isn’t it? — before this show to-night.”

“Yes,” Edward said. “We were there.”

“And the rest of the party? Bellairs and Rivera and of course Lord and Lady Pastern. Anyone else?”

“No,” Carlisle said and immediately corrected herself. “I’d forgotten. Miss Henderson.”

“Miss Henderson?”

“She used to be Félicité’s governess and stayed on as a sort of general prop and stay to everybody.”

“What is her full name?”

“I–I really don’t know. Ned, have you ever heard Hendy’s Christian name?”

“No,” Edward said. “Never. She’s simply Hendy. I should think it might be Edith. Wait a moment though,” he added, “I do know. Fée told me years ago. She saw it on an electoral roll or something. It’s Petronella Xantippe.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“People so seldom have the names you expect,” Alleyn murmured vaguely. “Can you give me a detailed description of your evening at Duke’s Gate? You see, as Rivera was there, the dinner party assumes a kind of importance.”

Carlisle thought: “We’re waiting too long. One of us ought to have replied at once.”

“I want,” Alleyn said at last, “if you can give it to me, an account of the whole thing. When everybody arrived. What you talked about. Whether you were all together most of the time or whether you split up, for instance, after dinner, and were in different rooms. That kind of thing.”

They began to speak together and stopped short. They laughed uncomfortably, apologized and invited each other to proceed. At last Carlisle embarked alone on a colourless narrative. She had arrived at Duke’s Gate at about five and had seen her aunt and uncle and Félicité. Naturally there had been a good deal of talk about the evening performance. Her uncle had been in very good spirits.

“And Lady Pastern and Miss de Suze?” Alleyn said. Carlisle replied carefully that they were in much their usual form. “And how is that?” he asked. “Cheerful? Happy family atmosphere, would you say?”

Manx said lightly: “My dear Alleyn, like most families they rub along together without — without — ”

“Were you going to say ‘without actually busting up’?”

“Well — well — ”

“Ned,” Carlisle interjected, “it’s no good pretending Uncle George and Aunt Cécile represent the dead norm of British family life. Presumably, Mr. Alleyn reads the papers. If I say they were much as usual it means they were much as usual on their own lines.” She turned to Alleyn. “On their own lines, Mr. Alleyn, they were perfectly normal.”

“If you’ll allow me to say so, Miss Wayne,” Alleyn rejoined warmly, “you are evidently an extremely sensible person. May I implore you to keep it up.”

“Not to the extent of letting you think a routine argument to them is matter for suspicion to you.”

“They argue,” Manx added, “perpetually and vehemently. It means nothing. Well, you’ve heard them.”