Mr. Luton rose to knock his pipe against the stove. Bony slowly rolled yet another thing some persons might name a cigarette. The two men watched and waited as though for his verdict.

“The newspapers told me,” he said, “that Wickham died in this house, and early one morning. The doctor stated, and so signed the certificate, that death was due to heart disease. You support a private report made to me that he died during a bout of delirium tremens. Well?”

“We were having the hoo-jahs. We were both getting over ’em,” declared Mr. Luton. “We were at the tail-end of ’emwhen Ben died that morning. He shouldof come out of them hoo-jahs like he always did. Same as me. But he died instead. Of something else.”

“The doctor said it was alcoholic poisoning,” interjected Bony.

“The quack’s a bone-pointer, like. He wouldn’t know,” argued Knocker Harris, savagely pulling at his dirty-grey ragged moustache.

“Mr. Wickham had been drinking hard for more than three weeks,” Bony persisted.

“Not a reason,” countered Mr. Luton. “We often drank hard for six weeks. Once for two months, solid. Nearly got carted off to hospital that time.”

“Wickham was seventy-five.”

“I’m eighty-four, Inspector.”

“You told the policeman that that morning you woke from a good sleep. Feeling slightly better, you decided to light the stove and prepare something to eat. You were busy with the stove when you heard Mr. Wickham laughing. Mr. Wickham was occupying the front room. You went to him and found him sitting up in bed. He continued to laugh, and appeared to be unaware of your presence. You returned to the kitchen and brewed a pot of tea. When you returned to your friend with tea and dry biscuits, Wickham was lying back on the bed asleep. So you thought. You covered him with the bedclothes and left him for an hour. On again going to join him, you discovered that he was dead. Correct, Mr. Luton?”