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the back, with stables and a garage. In the latter reposed a Lagonda sports-tourer. The former contained only junk and an old man who was gazing at the handle of a spade with the glassy rigidity of a mystic contemplating eternity. Nigel rightly deduced that this was the gardener. Jeremiah Pegrum was his name, Nigel discovered. He had worked in the Dower House garden and blown the church organ, man and boy, fifty year come Easter. Nigel felt it was too late in life for Jeremiah Pegrum to be taking to murder, and turned to go. He was detained, however, by a hand on his sleeve. The gardener’s rheumy eyes took on a semblance of animation, and his next remark made Nigel start. ‘Yu look aafter Mr O’Brien, zur! ’Tes a dangerous time for him, this Christmastide. Zoon as he came down yur I sez to my missus, “Mother,” I says, “new gennulman at Dower House bain’t long for this world. Znow coming, zur. ’Tes a martal bad time for the old uns and the zick when east wind blows down tu Chatcombe. Powerful ill he looks, zur, and a fine gennulman as ever I knowed. But this wind’ll carpse ’im, zure as spinach—if he don’t bust hisself up first in that car of ’is.’
    Nigel wandered through the kitchen garden, round to the east side of the house. The wind was certainly killing. He sheltered for a moment under the lee of the hut. Peering in through the window of the cubicle, his eyes registered that something was missing there. But before his attention could concentrate on it, it was diverted by the arrival of a taxi at the front door. Out of it there bounced a small, rather fat man, immaculately clad: an unmistakable figure, even to Nigel’s short sight.
    ‘And if you don’t get some new springs in your so-called conveyance, I shall report you to the Minister of Transport,’ the little man was saying with some heat. Nigel hailed him.
    ‘Hallo, Philip!’
    Philip Starling, fellow of All Saints and the foremost authority in England on Homeric civilisation and literature , exclaimed, ‘Good God, if it isn’t Nigel!’, came stumping over the grass, shook Nigel by the shoulders, and rattled off, ‘What the devil are you doing here, old boy? Oh, I forgot. You’ve a noble kinsman in residence somewhere here, haven’t you? Mealy-Mouth? Marshmallow? Marl-pit? Marlinspike? What’s his name? No, don’t tell me! I’ve got it—Marlinworth. I’ve not collected him yet. You must introduce me.’
    Nigel firmly stemmed the flow. ‘No, as a matter of fact I’m staying with O’Brien. But what, may I ask, brings
you
down here?’
    ‘Celebrity snobbery, old boy. I’ve collected pretty well all the aristocracy, so now I’m taking up celebrities—and a lousy dull crew they are for the most part. However, I have hopes of the aviator. A good egg, I should judge, though I’ve only met him once, at a dinner at Christ Church, and as I happened to be tight at the time—you know the sort of grocer’s port they dish out there—my judgement may be at fault.’
    ‘And on the strength of meeting you once at a dinner, he asks you down to this very select party?’
    ‘I expect it was my personal charm. Believe me, I’ve got my ticket; not gate-crashing this time. You sound very suspicious. Do you represent the secret police down here? Guarding the silver or something?’
    ‘Some
one
,’ Nigel was tempted to reply, but managed to refrain. Starling’s air of exaggerated candour was appallingly infectious, and had led three generations of undergraduates into the most wholesale exposure of their private lives. Nigel, however, had become inured to it.
    ‘Well, yes and no,’ he said: ‘but for heaven’s sake, Philip, don’t let on to any of the other guests that I’m a detective. It’s quite vital.’
    ‘Very well, old boy, very well. The clam will be a babbler compared to me. You know if I hadn’t become a don, I should have taken up your profession. I revel in the seamy side of life. But one sees so much of it in the