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dusting powder and let them have a look around. Not, of course, that they’ll find anything.’
    â€˜You’re so sure?’
    â€˜I’m sure. Anyone cool enough to walk away leaving the murder weapon in situ , as it were, is pretty confident in himself. And you notice the way he’s lying, feet to the door, head pointing away?’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜The fact that he’s so close to the door is almost sure proof that Pilgrim opened it himself. Would he have turned his back on a murderer? Whoever the killer was, he was a man Pilgrim not only knew but trusted.’ 
    Â Â Â 
    Fawcett had been right. The two experts who had come up with their little box of tricks had turned up nothing. The only places where fingerprints might conceivably have been, on the ice-pick handle and door-knobs, were predictably clean. They were just leaving when a man entered without benefit of either permission or knocking.
    The admiral looked like everybody’s favourite uncle or a successful farmer or, indeed, what he was, a fleet admiral, albeit retired. Burly, red-faced,with pepper-and-salt hair and radiating an oddly kind authority, he looked about ten years younger than his acknowledged if frequently questioned fifty-five. He gazed down at the dead man on the floor, and the more kindly aspect of his character vanished. He turned to Dr Harper.
    â€˜Made out the death certificate yet? Coronary, of course.’ Dr Harper shook his head. ‘Then do so at once and have Pilgrim removed to our private mortuary.’
    Fawcett said: ‘If we could leave that for a moment, sir. The mortuary bit, I mean. I have two people coming up here very shortly, the owner of the circus and our latest – ah – recruit. I’m convinced neither of them has anything to do with this – but it would be interesting to see their reactions. Also, to find out if they still want to go through with this.’
    â€˜What guarantee can you offer that they won’t leave here and head for the nearest telephone? There isn’t a newspaper in the country that wouldn’t give their assistant editor for this story.’
    â€˜You think that had not occurred to me, sir?’ A slightly less than cordial note had crept into Fawcett’s tone. ‘There is no guarantee. There’s only my judgement.’
    â€˜There’s that,’ the admiral said pacifically. It was the nearest he could ever bring himself to an apology. ‘Very well.’ He paused and to recover his position said: ‘They are not, I trust, knocking and entering by the front door?’

    â€˜Barker and Masters are bringing them. By the rear tunnel.’
    As if on cue, Barker and Masters appeared in the doorway, then stepped aside to let Wrinfield and Bruno in. The admiral and Dr Harper, Fawcett knew, were watching their faces as intently as he was. Understandably, neither Wrinfield nor Bruno was watching them: when you find a murdered man lying at your feet your ocular attention does not tend to stray. Predictably, Bruno’s reactions were minimal, the narrowing of the eyes, the tightening of the mouth could have been as much imagined as real, but Wrinfield’s reactions were all that anyone could have wished for: the colour drained from his face, leaving it a dirty grey, he put out a trembling hand against the lintel to steady himself and for a moment he looked as if he might even sway and fall.
    Three minutes later, three minutes during which Fawcett had told him what little he knew, a seated Wrinfield, brandy glass in hand, was still shaking. Bruno had declined the offer of a restorative. The admiral had taken the floor.
    He said to Wrinfield: ‘Do you have any enemies in the circus?’
    â€˜Enemies? In the circus?’ Wrinfield was clearly taken aback. ‘Good God, no. I know it must sound corny to you but we really are one big happy family.’
    â€˜Any enemies anywhere?’

    â€˜Every