“Mr. Cuddy,” his wife said, “hasn’t missed for twenty years. They made him an Elder Bison for it and gave him ever such a nice testimonial.”

Brigid and Tim Makepiece caught each other’s eyes and hurriedly turned aside.

Mr. Merryman, who had listened to Mr. Cuddy with every mark of the liveliest impatience, began to question him about the time he had left his lodge, but Mr. Cuddy grew lofty and said he wasn’t feeling quite the thing, which judging by his ghastly colour was true enough. He retired, accompanied by Mrs. Cuddy, to the far end of the lounge. Evidently Mr. Merryman looked upon his withdrawal as a personal triumph for himself. He straightened his shoulders and seemed to inflate.

“The discussion,” he said, looking about him, “is not without interest. So far we have been presented with two allegedly provable alibis”— he made a facetious bob at the captain and Father Jourdain —“and otherwise, if the ladies are to be counted, with failures.”

“Yes, but look here,” Tim said, “a little further examination—”

Mr. Merryman blandly and deliberately misunderstood him. “By all means!” he ejaculated. “Precisely. Let us continue. Miss Abbott—”

“What about yourself?” Mr. Cuddy suddenly bawled from the far end of the room.

“Ah!” Mrs. Cuddy rejoined and produced a Rabelaisian laugh. “Ho, ho, ho,” she said, without moving a muscle of her face. “What about yourself, Mr. Merryband?”

“Steady, Ethel,” Mr. Cuddy muttered.

“Good God!” Tim muttered to Brigid. “She’s tiddly!”

“She was tossing down bumpers at dinner — probably for the first time in her life.”

“That’s it. Tiddly. How wonderful!”

“Ho, ho, ho!” Mrs. Cuddy repeated. “Where was Merryband when the lights went out?”

“Eth!”

“Fair enough,” Aubyn Dale exclaimed. “Come along, Mr. Merryman. Alibi, please.”

“With all the pleasure in life,” Mr. Merryman said. “I have none. I join the majority. On the evening in question,” he continued didactically, as if he expected them all to start taking dictation, “I attended a suburban cinema. The Kosy, spelt (abominable vulgarism) with a ‘K.’ In Bounty Street, Chelsa. By a diverting coincidence the film was The Lodger. I am totally unable to prove it,” he ended triumphantly.

“Very fishy!” Tim said, shaking his head owlishly. “Oh, very fishy indeed, I fear, sir!”

Mr. Merryman gave a little crowing laugh.

“I know!” Mr. McAngus abruptly shouted. “I have it! Tuesday! Television!” And at once added, “No, no, wait a moment. What did you say the date was?”

Alleyn told him and he became silent and depressed.

“What about Miss Abbott, now?” Captain Bannerman asked. “Can Miss Abbott find an alibi? Come along, Miss Abbott. January fifteenth.”

She didn’t answer at once but sat, unsmiling and staring straight before her. A silence fell upon the little company.

“I was in my flat,” she said at last, and gave the address. There was something uncomfortable in her manner. Alleyn thought, “Damn! The unexpected. In a moment somebody will change the conversation.”

Aubyn Dale was saying waggishly, “Not good enough! Proof, Miss Abbott, proof.”

“Did anybody ring up or come in?” Brigid prompted with a friendly smile for Miss Abbott.

“My friend — the person I share my flat with — came in at ten-thirty-five.”

“How clever to remember!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick murmured and managed to suggest that she herself was enchantingly feckless.

“And before that?” Mr. Merryman demanded.

A faint dull red settled above Miss Abbott’s cheekbones. “I watched television,” she said.

“Voluntarily?” Mr. Merryman asked in astonishment.

To everybody’s surprise Miss Abbott shuddered. She wetted her lips. “It passed… it… sometimes helped to pass the time—”

Tim Makepiece, Father Jourdain, and Brigid, sensing her discomfiture, tried to divert Mr. Merryman’s attention, but he was evidently one of those people who are unable to abandon a conversation before they have triumphed. “ ‘Pass the time,’ ” he ejaculated, casting up his eyes. “Was ever there a more damning condemnation of this bastard, this emasculate, this enervating peepshow. What was the programme?”

Miss Abbott glanced at Aubyn Dale, who was looking furiously at Mr. Merryman. “In point of fact—” she began.

Dale waved his hands. “Ah-ah! I knew it. Alas, I knew it! Nine to nine-thirty. Every Tuesday night, God help me. I knew.” He leaned forward and addressed himself to Mr. Merryman. “My session, you know. The one you dislike so much. The Jolyon swimsuit programme—Pack Up Your Troubles, which, oddly enough, appears to create a slightly different reaction in its all-time-high viewing audience. Very reprehensible, no doubt, but there it is. They seem quite to like it.”

“Hear, hear!” Mrs. Cuddy shouted vaguely from the far end of the lounge and stamped approval.

“Pack up your troubles,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick ejaculated. “Of course!”

“Madam,” Mr. Merryman continued, looking severely at Miss Abbott. “Will you be good enough to describe the precise nature of the predicaments that were aired by the — really, I am at a loss for the correct term to describe these people’the protagonist will no doubt enlighten me—”

“The subjects?” Father Jourdain suggested.

“The victims?” Tim amended.

“Or the guests? I like to think of them as my guests,” said Aubyn Dale.

Mrs. Cuddy said rather wildly, “That’s a lovely, lovely way of putting it!”

(“Steady, Eth!”)

Miss Abbott, who had been twisting her large hands together, said, “I remember nothing about the programme. Nothing.”

She half rose from her seat and then seemed to change her mind and sank back. “Mr. Merryman, you’re not to badger Miss Abbott,” Brigid said quickly and turned to Aubyn Dale. “You, at any rate, have got your alibi, it seems.”

“Oh, yes!” he rejoined. He finished his double brandy and, in his turn, slipped his hand under Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s forearm. “God, yes! I’ve got the entire Jolyon swimsuit admass between me and Beryl Cohen. Twenty million viewers can’t be wrong! In spite of Mr. Merryman.”

Alleyn said lightly, “But isn’t the programme over by nine-thirty? What about the next half-hour?”

“Taking off the war-paint, dear boy, and meeting the chums in the jolly old local.”

It had been generally agreed that Aubyn Dale’s alibi was established when Mr. McAngus said diffidently, “Do you know — I may be quite wrong — but I had a silly notion someone said that particular session was done at another time, I mean, if of course it was that programme.”

“Ah?” Mr. Merryman ejaculated, pointing at him as if he’d held his hand up. “Explain yourself. Filmed? Recorded?”

“Yes. But, of course I may be—”

But Mr. Merryman pounced gleefully on Aubyn Dale. “What do you say, sir? Was the session recorded?”

Dale collected everybody else’s attention as if he invited them to enjoy Mr. Merryman with him. He opened his arms and enlarged his smile and he patted Mr. McAngus on the head.

“Clever boy,” he said. “And I thought I’d got away with it. I couldn’t resist pulling your leg, Mr. Merryman. You will forgive me, won’t you?”

Mr. Merryman did not reply. He merely stared very fixedly at Aubyn Dale, and as Brigid muttered to Tim, may have been restraining himself from saying he would see him in his study after prep.

Dale added to this impression by saying with uneasy boyishness, “I swear, by the way, I was just about to come clean. Naturally.”

“Then,” Alleyn said, “it was not a live transmission?”

“Not that one. Usually is, but I was meant to be on my way to the States, so we filmed it.”

“Indeed?” Mr. Merryman said. “And were you on your way to the United States, sir?”

“Actually, no. One of those things. There was a nonsense made over dates. I flew three days later. Damn nuisance. It meant I didn’t get back till the day before we sailed.”