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have all cabled him in Oxford. But perhaps he hasn’t yet gone up, or is away on a walking tour in Germany as he so often is … I don’t know.” Jourdain nodded; and then with an exclamation he stood up, recalling something he had forgotten. “I completely forgot. I borrowed the police photos for you to see. They show the room exactly as it was when the police photographer was called in by the inspector and the médecin-légiste . Of course in part it is due to the fact that it took place at the Princes Hotel – what the devil induced Piers to stay there instead of somewhere like the Bristol? Funds? It’s virtually a maison de passe . Perhaps he had special secret vices we don’t know about? Anyway, whatever happens at the Princes is automatically suspect for the police. Hence these awkward questions, photographs and so on. Of course he was an amateur of quat – hashish – which delighted the cops. But there was precious little else of interest.”
    As he was speaking he was undoing a heavy black briefcase which had been lying against the sofa; from it he extracted an official envelope which held a number of photographic prints, as yet hardly dry. The glossy surface stuck to one’s fingers as one peeled them. They were extremely beautiful, these still-lifes of Piers’ disorderly room. Jourdain spread them out on a green card-table and drew up two chairs, at the same time producing a large magnifying glass through which one could study the detail of the room with its strange inhabitant, who lay in bed, in the very posture in which he had been found. I felt a shortening of the breath as I contemplated them. Jourdain was talking on softly, anxious to give as complete an account as he could of this strange affair. “There were several sets of prints on the empty bottle here, on the bedside table. One of them Sylvie’s, which is interesting. As you know he took quite large doses of Luminash, as a sort of sedative as well as a sleeping draught. Presumably this is what they’ll find in the organs.”
    Piers lay on his side with his knees drawn up – in almost a sketch of the foetal position; he had thrown back the sheet and the covers and appeared to be about to get up from his bed. His head was turned round towards the camera, presumably in the direction of the door, and he was smiling as if in delighted and surprised recognition, at someone who had just entered the room. It was clearly a smile of welcome. The flashlight threw into relief his pleasant patrician face and the brilliance of his bright blue eyes, which had a sapphire-like luminosity. He wore one of his old white nightshirts with the little monogram on the breast. It was like a frozen shot in a film, and it was difficult to interpret what he might have been about to do; instead of rising perhaps he was just sinking back luxuriously, and smiling goodbye as somebody left the room?
    Yet one outstretched hand with its firm fencer’s wrist was stretched out towards the bedside table as if to switch off a light, take up a book or a cigarette. I passed the magnifying glass across the field to examine the detail with more precision. A novel lay beside the bed. His wrist-watch and his ebony cigarette holder lay in the silver ashtray on the bed-table. In a second and larger ashtray lay a mountain of cigarette and cigar ends. I recognised the stubs of the cheroots he smoked. For the rest the room was in a state of chaos; everywhere were tea-cups, jars of jam, flowers, packets of joss, picture-magazines and mountains of books and papers. “The room looks as if it had never been cleaned,” I said, and Jourdain shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the Princes,” he said as if that explained everything.
    To tell the truth the appearance of his room was, for such an untidy man, relatively normal. Cupboards hung open revealing his wardrobe. Though he had always been a little bit of a dandy his choice of apparel was scanty, but choice, with a distinct leaning towards