Flossie was my aunt by marriage, you know,” Fabian added unexpectedly. “Her husband, the ever-patient Arthur, was my blood uncle, if that’s the. correct expression. He survived her by six months. Curious, isn’t it? In spite of his chronic endocarditis, Flossie, alive, did him no serious damage. Dead, she polished him off completely. I hope you don’t think me very heartless.”

“I was wondering,” Alleyn murmured, “if Mrs. Rubrick’s death was a shock only to her husband.”

“Well, hardly that,” Fabian began and then glanced sharply at his guest. “You mean you think that because I’m suffering from shock I adopt a gay ruthlessness to mask my lacerated nerves?” He drove for a few moments in silence and then, speaking very rapidly and on a high note, he said: “If your aunt-by-marriage turned up in a highly compressed state in the middle of a wool bale, would you be able to pass it off with the most accomplished sang-froid? Or wouldn’t you? Perhaps, in your profession, you would.” He waited and then said very quickly, as if he uttered an indecency, “I had to identify her.”

“Don’t you think,” Alleyn said, “that this is a good moment to tell me the whole story, from the beginning?”

“That was my idea, of course. Do forgive me. I’m afraid my instinct is to regard you as omniscience itself. An oracle. To be consulted rather than informed. How much, by the way, do you know?”

Alleyn, who had had his share of precious young moderns, wondered if this particular specimen was habitually so disjointed in speech and manner. He knew that Fabian Losse had seen war service. He wondered what had sent him to New Zealand and whether, as Fabian himself had suggested, he was, in truth, suffering from shock.

“I mean,” Fabian was saying, “it’s no use my filling you up with vain repetitions.”

“When I decided to come,” said Alleyn, “I naturally looked up the case. On my way here I had an exhaustive session with Sub-Inspector Jackson who, as of course you know, is the officer in charge of the investigation.”