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conversation by the roaring log fire. ‘Bring your glass. There’s something I want to show you.’
    Lestrade followed Cairns through the house, past his own room and on through endless passages, twisting to right and left, until they came to a locked door, studded with brass. Cairns produced a key and unlocked it. It took a while for Lestrade to take in the contents. The room was obviously some sort of laboratory. Hanging from the ceiling were gruesome birds in the attitude of flight, casting large shadows on the walls. Pigeons disintegrating on the impact of hawks, and shrikes impaling insects on thorns. On the tables and benches was a vast array of glassware, bottles and flasks and tubing. In the centre of the room, the floor was bare, scarred with cuts and stained darkish brown. In jars on the shelves was every assortment of animal, floating in greenish liquid.
    ‘Lord Hurstmonceux was a scientist?’ asked Lestrade.
    ‘Not quite,’ came the answer. Cairns pointed to an oblong box in one corner of the room. At one end of it was a series of black and white keys and the box was divided into compartments with piano wires strung across the base to the keys themselves. Lestrade felt it was legitimate to admit that he did not know what this was.
    ‘The Cats’ Piano,’ said Cairns grimly.
    ‘Er … the cats’ … er …’
    ‘The cats are placed into the compartments and locked in. Then the … scientist … plays a tune on the keyboard with the result that the wires spring up and lash the cats from below and the hammers hit their heads.’
    ‘So this is not a laboratory?’ said Lestrade, the light beginning to dawn.
    ‘No, Inspector. This is a torture chamber.’
    Lestrade noticed for the first time that the walls and door were heavily padded. Cairns caught his eye. ‘Noise-proof,’ he said. ‘The animals around you in the jars, I’ll wager any price you like that they were operated on while very much alive.’
    Cairns crossed to a desk-drawer and produced a ledger. ‘Here – a record of his “experiments”.’
    ‘Vivisection,’ mused Lestrade.
    ‘Oh, no, Inspector. The public might not like the idea, but true vivisection is at least for scientific purposes. But this – this is sheer sadism. Torture for pleasure’s sake. And Unnatural Acts,’ he added cryptically.
    Lestrade flicked through the ledger. Boiling hedgehogs, skewering thrushes on needles, snapping the front legs of foxes, castrating horses with dressmaking scissors, blinding goats with hatpins. Hardly the usual pastimes of a scholar and a gentleman. And what Lord Hurstmonceux attempted to do with the sheep on his estate was very definitely best left to the imagination.
    ‘How does this help us, Sir Bertram?’ asked Lestrade.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ answered Cairns. ‘But we all know why you’re here, Lestrade. This is not a simple death in the morning. It’s murder.’
    ‘By dog or dogs unknown,’ added Lestrade.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Let me explain something about murder, Sir Bertram. When I am called in to investigate foul play, I usually have a victim and no murderer. The average killer does not stand over the corpse obligingly with a gun or knife in his hand until I arrive. I piece together the evidence – like the parts of a jigsaw puzzle – and I arrive at conclusions. Now, in this case, I have my murderer – or murderers, I should say. Forty of them. But they are foxhounds, sir and a foxhound cannot stand trial before one of Her Majesty’s Justices. There is no precedent for it.’
    ‘Good God, man, I’m not an idiot. Freddie Hurstmonceux was one of the most unpopular men in the country. There must have been scores of people who would not have been sorry to see him dead.’
    ‘Very possibly, sir. But unless you can tell me how they did it, I cannot proceed further.’
    Lestrade slept little that night. In his room tucked away in the west wing, he paced the floor. The oil-lamp cast a lurid glow on the heavy