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not closing time yet . . . ’
    â€˜Nonsense!’ snapped the inspector. ‘There’s been a serious crime committed here, and I am in command of the crime scene. You will lock up immediately.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ she responded mildly, taking a large bunch of keys from a desk drawer and walking to the front door. A moment later it closed with a soft thud, shutting out the street sounds, and shutting us in with the bristling inspector. In response to a commanding gesture from his superior, Constable Dixon walked over and stood with his back to the closed front door. Clearly we were not going to be allowed to leave for a little while yet.
    â€˜Now, gentlemen,’ said the inspector. ‘I apologise for neglecting you so far. The name is Hyde. I am the inspector of police for this district. What can you tell me about this suspicious death?’
    â€˜In all probability, nothing more than your constable has already told you,’ said Jack.
    Sergeant Donaldson pulled out a notebook and pencil, and during the conversation that followed took copious notes. He began by taking down our names, addresses and occupations. There was a look of slight surprise on his face when he discovered that Jack was a Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford, that Warnie held a commission in the British Army, and that I was about to start work for Sir William Dyer at Plumwood Hall.
    â€˜Did any one of you go back down to the cellar?’ asked Hyde.
    We all looked at him and shook our heads.
    â€˜Jack was withdrawing money from his passbook account, and we stood beside him,’ Warnie explained.
    â€˜In fact,’ I added, ‘the late Mr Grimm insisted that we three all stand on the customers’ side of the counter, so none of us was even close to the door leading to the cellar steps.’
    â€˜So who could have gone through that door and down those steps?’ asked the inspector quietly, putting the question more to himself than to us. Then he turned around to face the office girl.
    â€˜Miss,’ he barked. She went pale and dabbed at her eyes with an already soaked handkerchief. ‘You’re Ruth Jarvis, aren’t you? Todd Jarvis’s daughter?’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ she replied in a voice little above a whisper.
    â€˜How long have you worked here?’
    â€˜Two years, sir.’
    â€˜Now, you were here in this office. Did you follow Mr Grimm down those steps into the cellar?’
    Her only response was to break into a fresh round of howling.
    â€˜She couldn’t have, inspector,’ said Jack. ‘We were facing the office and if she’d moved we would have noticed. She didn’t leave her desk. In fact, I’m sure she didn’t stop typing.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ sobbed Ruth Jarvis. ‘I didn’t stop typing. Not the whole time I didn’t stop. You can see the work in my machine.’
    Inspector Hyde actually walked through the counter flap and stood at her desk looking at the sheet of paper in the typewriter and the pile of completed sheets beside it. Then he spun around and faced us again.
    â€˜Well, if it wasn’t Miss Jarvis, then who was it?’ he demanded.
    There was no answer to that question, so we didn’t try to provide one. I saw the suspicious gleam in his eye and wondered if he thought he was looking at some secret society of Gentlemen Murderers. At least, that’s what his narrowing gaze said to me. What did he imagine we were? The Oxford League of Assassins: mysterious murders committed to order on short notice—reasonable rates. Is that what he imagined? His suspicion of us couldn’t have been clearer if he’d worn it as a broad phylactery on his forehead.
    â€˜Perhaps there’s another way into the cellar,’ mumbled Warnie after a long silence. ‘Only thing I can think of.’
    â€˜And we thought of it too, Major Lewis. Some seventy or eighty years ago, when this was a private