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right. Brice and Pasmore had been at school together, and had been close friends there, united in a passionately earnest devotion to music—a devotion whose naïvety occasionally bordered on the ludicrous. And on one occasion, when they had been listening together to Tchaikowsky’s Sixth Symphony, Pasmore had remarked, in solemn, awestruck tones: ‘Lacrimae rerum, Paul; it sums up the whole tragedy of humankind.’ Brice had been much amused by this pretentious gloss on the music, and thereafter ‘Lacrimae rerum’ had been often used between them as a means of referring to that particular work.
    “So naturally I went away and hunted through back numbers of the Radio Times until I found the programme of the concert which had been broadcast on the afternoon of Pasmore’s murder. It consisted of two works, the Walton Symphony followed by the Tchaikowsky Sixth; and there was no difficulty in calculating that the Tchaikowsky must have begun at about a quarter past four and gone on until the end of the concert at a quarter to five. All quite straightforward, you see; no discrepancy with the suggestion that Pasmore’s reply to Brice had been written more or less immediately after i receiving Brice’s letter at four-fifteen.
    “There I might have left it, but for the chance that I was I lecturing in Amersham a week or so later, and having an hour or so to spare, decided to go and interview Pasmore’s neighbour—he of the radio. He turned out to be a pleasant little man—something to do with the Home Office, I fancy—and naturally enough he still remembered the events of the crucial afternoon quite clearly. He’d had that concert on all right, from beginning to end, but beyond that there didn’t seem to be anything of value he could tell me. And I was on the point of leaving, in a welter of civilities, before he quite unexpectedly let the cat out of the bag.
    “‘Of course, the police questioned me about it,’ he said, ‘and even though that wasn’t till several weeks afterwards, I had no difficulty in recalling the concert—partly, no doubt, because of the change in the advertised programme.’
    “I must have looked as though I’d seen a ghost. ‘Change?’ I echoed.
    “‘Why, yes. For some mysterious reason of their own, they played the Tchaikowsky first and the Walton second.’
    “And they had. I checked with the B.B.C., and it was true. Owing to some kind of mismanagement, the orchestral parts of the Walton hadn’t been in the studio at the start of the concert, and the Tchaikowsky had had to be played while they were searched for. Therefore, the Tchaikowsky— ‘Iacrimae rerum’ —had finished at four o’clock; and therefore, if the reference in the final paragraph meant anything at all, Pasmore’s letter to Brice had been completed by four o’clock.”
    Fen chuckled suddenly. “And given that, it didn’t really require much thinking to deduce how Angela’s alibi had been contrived. The police, as I discovered, had worked it all out for themselves—but not, unfortunately, until after the acquittal.”
    Fen paused, and Haldane shook his head. “I’m afraid that for my own part—”
    “Oh, come… Brice’s letter had been posted in Edinburgh on the previous afternoon. It arrived at Amersham, of course, by the morning post on the day of the murder. Angela opened it—I’ve mentioned, I think, that she acted as Pasmore’s secretary—and saw in it her opportunity. She destroyed the envelope in which it arrived, made a note of Brice’s queries, typed a fresh envelope, inserted the letter, stamped it, and posted it again . She could thus be fairly sure of its arriving a second time, in the presence of the invited and infatuated Sir Charles, by the afternoon post. And in the meantime she went to her husband and said something like this:
    “‘Brice rang up from Edinburgh while you were out. He’s written you a letter about Merlin , but it struck him that it might possibly not arrive soon