Wan with heat, and already exhausted by an after-dinner set of tennis, we had trotted at her heels, unwilling acolytes. During this promenade she had worn a long diaphanous coat garnished with two diamond clips. When we were at last allowed to sit down, Flossie, heated with exercise and embryonic oratory, had peeled off this garment and thrown it over the back of her deck-chair. Some twenty minutes later, when she was about to resume the garment, one of the diamond clips was missing. Douglas, blast him, discovered the loss while he was helping Flossie into her coat and, like a damned officious booby, immediately came over all efficient and said we’d all look for it. With fainting hearts we suffered ourselves to be organized into a search-party; this one to the rose beds, that to the cucumber frames. My lot fell among the vegetable marrows. Flossie, encouraged by Douglas, was most insistent that we separate and cover the ground exhaustively. She had the infernal cheek to announce that she was going off to the wool-shed to practise her speech and was not to be disturbed. She marched off down a long path, bordered with lavender, and that, as far as we know, was the last time she was seen alive.”

Fabian paused, looked at Alleyn out of the corners of his eyes, and inhaled a deep draught of smoke. “I had forgotten the classic exception,” he said. “The last time she was seen alive, except by her murderer. She turned up some three weeks later at Messrs. Riven Brothers’ wool store, baled up among the Mount Moon fleeces, poor thing. Did I forget to say we were shearing at the time of her disappearance? But of course you know all that.”

“You followed her instructions about hunting for the clip?”

Fabian did not answer immediately. “With waning enthusiasm, on my part, at least,” he said. “But, yes. We hunted for about forty-five minutes.