“And you have not yet arrived at this decision?”

“Not yet.”

“You, of course, have your information from the Lady Gargantua, the Mammoth Chatelaine, the Great, repeat Great, Lady of Nunspardon,” said Mr. Phinn, and then surprisingly turned pink. His gaze, oddly fixed, was directed past Alleyn’s elbow to some object behind him. It did not waver. “Not,” Mr. Phinn added, “that, in certain respects, her worth does not correspond by a rough computation with her avoirdupois. Did she divulge the nature of my further conversation with the Colonel?”

“No.”

“Then neither,” said Mr. Phinn, “shall I. At least, not yet. Not unless I am obliged to do so.”

The direction of his gaze had not shifted.

“Very well,” Alleyn said and turned away with an air of finality.

He had been standing with his back to a desk. Presiding over an incredibly heaped-up litter were two photographs in tarnished silver frames. One was of the lady of the portrait. The other was of a young man bearing a strong resemblance to her and was inscribed in a flowing hand: “Ludovic.”

It was at this photograph that Mr. Phinn had been staring.

CHAPTER VIII

Jacob’s Cottage

Alleyn decided to press home what might or might not be an advantage and so did so with distaste. He had been in the police service for over twenty years. Under slow pressure his outward habit had toughened, but, like an ice cube that under warmth will yield its surface but retain its inward form, so his personality had kept its pattern intact. When an investigation led him, as this did, to take action that was distasteful to him, he imposed a discipline upon himself and went forward. It was a kind of abstinence, however, that prompted him to do so.

He said, looking at the photograph, “This is your son, sir, isn’t it?”

Mr. Phinn, in a voice that was quite unlike his usual emphatic alto, said, “My son, Ludovic.”

“I didn’t meet him, but I was in the Special Branch in 1937. I heard about his tragedy, of course.”

“He was a good boy,” Mr. Phinn said. “I think I may have spoiled him. I fear I may have done so.”

“One can’t tell about these things.”

“No. One can’t tell.”

“I don’t ask you to forgive me for speaking of him. In a case of homicide I’m afraid no holds are barred. We have discovered that Sir Harold Lacklander died with the name ‘Vic’ on his lips and full of concern about the publication of his own memoirs which he had entrusted to Colonel Cartarette. We know that your son was Sir Harold’s secretary during a crucial period of his administration in Zlomce and that Sir Harold could hardly avoid mention of the tragedy of your son’s death if he was to write anything like a definitive record of his own career.”

“You need go no further,” said Mr. Phinn with a wave of his hand. “I see very clearly what is in your mind.” He looked at Fox, whose notebook was in his palm. “Pray write openly, Inspector. Mr. Alleyn, you wonder, do you not, if I quarrelled with Colonel Cartarette because he proposed to make public, through Lacklander’s memoirs, the ruin of my boy. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if the discussion, that Lady Lacklander overheard but doesn’t care to reveal, was about some such matter.”

Mr. Phinn suddenly beat his pudgy hands together, once. “If Lady L. does not care to tell you,” he announced, “then neither for the time being do I.”

“I wonder, too,” Alleyn continued, “if it wouldn’t be easy to misjudge completely your own motives and those of Lady Lacklander.”

“Ah,” Mr. Phinn said, with extraordinary complacency, “you are on dangerous ground indeed, my dear Alleyn. Peel away the layers of motive from the ethical onion and your eyes may well begin to water. It is no occupation, believe me, for a Chief Detective-Inspector.”

A faint smile played conceitedly about the corners of his mouth. Alleyn might have supposed him to have completely recovered his equanimity if it had not been for the slightest possible tic in the lower lid of his right eye and a movement of the fingers of one hand across the back of the other.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if you’d mind showing us your fishing gear… the whole equipment as you took it down yesterday to the Chyne?”

“And why not?” Mr. Phinn rejoined. “But I demand,” he added loudly, “to know if you suspect me of this crime. Do you? Do you?”

“Come now,” Alleyn said, “you must know very well that you can’t in the same breath refuse to answer our questions and demand an answer to your own. If we may, we would like to see your fishing gear.”

Mr. Phinn stared at him. “It’s not here,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

“Fox will help you.”

Mr. Phinn looked as if he didn’t much relish this offer but appeared to think better of refusing it. He and Fox went out together. Alleyn moved over to the book-lined wall on his left and took down Maurice Cartarette’s work on The Scaly Breed. It was inscribed on the title page: “January 1930. For Viccy on his eighteenth birthday with good wishes for many happy castings,” and was signed by the author. The Colonel, Alleyn reflected, had evidently been on better terms with young Phinn than with his father.

He riffled through the pages. The book had been published in 1929 and appeared to be a series of short and pleasantly written essays on the behaviour and eccentricities of freshwater fish. It contained an odd mixture of folkishness, natural history, mild flights of fancy and, apparently, a certain amount of scientific fact. It was illustrated, rather charmingly, with marginal drawings. Alleyn turned back to the title page and found that they were by Geoffrey Syce: another instance, he thought, of the way the people of Swevenings stick together, and he wondered if, twenty-six years ago, the Colonel in his regiment and the Commander in his ship had written to each other about the scaly breed and about how they should fashion their book. His eye fell on a page-heading, “No Two Alike,” and with astonishment he saw what at first he took to be a familiar enough kind of diagram: that of two magnified fingerprints, showing the essential dissimilarities. At first glance they might have been lifted from a manual on criminal investigation. When, however, he looked more closely, he found, written underneath: “Microphotographs. Fig. 1. Scale of Brown Trout. 6 years. 2½ lbs. Chyne River. Showing 4 years’ poor growth followed by 2 years’ vigorous growth. Fig. 2. Scale of Trout. 4 years. 1 lb. Chyne River. Note differences in circuli, winter bands and spawning marks.” With sharpened interest he began to read the accompanying letterpress:

For the margin Commander Syce had made a facetious picture of a roach with meerschaum and deerstalker hat examining through a lens the scales of a very tough-looking trout.

Alleyn had time to re-read the page. He turned back to the frontispiece — a drawing of the Colonel himself. Alleyn found in the face a dual suggestion of soldier and diplomat superimposed, he fancied, on something that was pure countryman. “A nice chap, he looks. I wonder if it would have amused him to know that he himself has put into my hands the prize piece of information received.”

He replaced the book and turned to the desk with its indescribable litter of pamphlets, brochures, unopened and opened letters, newspapers and magazines. Having inspected the surface, he began, gingerly, to disturb the top layer and in a moment or two had disclosed a letter addressed to “Octavius Phinn, Esq.” in the beautiful and unmistakable handwriting of Colonel Cartarette.