Dead Water

IX Storm

It was not raining now, but the night was filled with so vast an uproar that there was no room for any perception but that of noise: the clamour of wind and irregular thud and crash of a monstrous tide. It broke over the foreshore and made hissing assaults on the foot of the steps. Alleyn went up them at a sort of a shambling run, bent double and feeling his way with his hands. When he reached the last flight and came into range of the hotel windows, his heart pounded like a ram and his throat was dry. He beat across the platform and went in by the main entrance. The night porter was reading behind his desk. He looked up in astonishment at Alleyn, who had not waited to put on his mackintosh.

“Did you get caught, sir?”

“I took shelter,” Alleyn said. “Good night.”

He made for the stairs and, when he was out of sight, waited for a moment or two to recover his wind. Then he went up to the second floor.

The passage had the vacant look of all hotel corridors at night. A radio blared invisibly. When he moved forward he realized the noise was coming from Miss Emily’s room. A brass band was playing “Colonel Bogey.”

He knocked on the door. After a moment or two it was opened by Jenny Williams.

It was as if a tableau had been organized for his benefit; as if he had been sent out of the room while the figures arranged themselves to their best effect. Miss Emily stood on the hearthrug, very pale and grand. Margaret Barrimore, with her hands to her mouth, was behind the door, on his left. The three men had pride of place: Major Barrimore stood centre, with his legs straddled and blood running from his nose into his gaping mouth. Dr. Mayne faced him and frowned at a cut across the knuckles of his own well-kept doctor’s hand. Patrick, dishevelled, stood between them, like a referee who has just stopped a fight. The radio bellowed remorselessly. There was a scatter of broken glass in the fireplace.

They all turned their heads and looked at Alleyn. They might have been asking him to guess the word of their charade.

“Can we switch that thing off?” he asked.

Jenny did so. The silence was deafening.

“I did it to drown the shouting,” she said.

“Miss Emily,” Alleyn said, “will you sit down?” She did so.

“It might be as well,” he suggested, “if everyone did.”

Dr. Mayne made an impatient noise and walked over to the window. Barrimore sucked his moustache, tasted blood and got out his handkerchief. He was swaying on his feet. Alleyn pushed a chair under him and he collapsed on it. His eyes were out-of-focus and he reeked of whisky. Mrs. Barrimore moved towards Dr. Mayne. Jenny sat down on an arm of Miss Emily’s chair, and Patrick on the edge of the table.

“And now,” Alleyn said, “what has happened?”

For a second or two nobody spoke; then Jenny said: “I asked you to come, so I suppose I’d better explain.”

“You better hold your tongue,” Barrimore mumbled through his bloodied handkerchief.

“That’ll do,” said Patrick dangerously.

Alleyn said to Jenny: “Will you, then?”

“If I can. All right. I’d come in to say ‘Good night’ to Miss Emily. Patrick was waiting for me downstairs, I think. Weren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Miss Emily and I were talking. I was just going to say ‘Good night’ when there was a tap on the door. I answered it. It was Mrs. Barrimore.”

“Jenny — No! No!” Margaret Barrimore whispered.

“Don’t stop her,” Miss Emily said quietly—“It’s better not to. I’m sure of it.”

“Patrick?” Jenny appealed to him.

He hesitated, stared at his mother and then said: “You’d beter go on, I think. Just the facts, Jenny.”

“Very well. Mrs. Barrimore was distressed and — I think — frightened. She didn’t say why. She looked ill. She asked if she could stay with us for a little while and Miss Emily said yes. We didn’t talk very much. Nothing that could matter.”

Margaret Barrimore said rapidly: “Miss Pride was extremely kind. I wasn’t feeling well. I haven’t been, lately. I had a giddy turn — I was near her room: that’s why I went there.”

Dr. Mayne said: “As Mrs. Barrimore’s doctor I must insist that she should not be troubled by any questioning. It’s true that she is unwell.” He jerked a chair forward and touched her arm. “Sit down, Margaret,” he said gently, and she obeyed him.

“As Mrs. Barrimore’s doctor,” her husband quoted and gave a whinnying laugh. “That’s wonderful! That’s a superb remark!”

“Will you go on please?”

“O.K. Yes. Well, that lasted quite a long time — just the three of us, here. And then Dr. Mayne came in to see Miss Pride. He examined the cut on her neck and he told us it would probably be too rough for us to cross the channel tomorrow. He and Mrs. Barrimore were saying ‘Good night’ when Major Barrimore came in.”

So far, Jenny had spoken very steadily, but she faltered now and looked at Miss Emily. “It’s — it’s then that — that things began to happen. I…”

Miss Emily, with perfect composure, said: “In effect, my dear Rodrigue, there was a scene. Major Barrimore made certain accusations. Dr. Mayne intervened. A climax was reached and blows were exchanged. I suggested, aside, to Jenny, that she solicit your aid. The fracas continued. A glass was broken. Mrs. Barrimore screamed and Mr. Patrick arrived upon the scene. He was unsuccessful and, after a renewal of belligerency, Major Barrimore fell to the floor. The actual fighting came to a stop, but the noise was considerable. It was at this juncture that the radio was introduced. You entered shortly afterwards.”

“Does everybody agree to this?”

There was no answer.

“I take it that you do.”

Dr. Mayne said: “Will you also take it that whatever happened has not the remotest shade of bearing upon your case? It was an entirely private matter and should remain so.” He looked at Patrick and, with disgust, at Major Barrimore. “I imagine you agree,” he said.

“Certainly,” Patrick said shortly.

Alleyn produced his stock comment on this argument. “If it turns out there’s no connection, I assure you I shall be glad to forget it. In the meantime, I’m afraid I must make certain.”

There was a tap at the door. He answered it. Fox, Bailey and Thompson had arrived. Alleyn asked Fox to come in and the others to wait.

“Inspector Fox,” he said, “is with me on this case.”

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Fox said.

They observed him warily. Miss Emily said: “Good evening, Mr. Fox. I have heard a great deal about you.”

“Have you, madam?” he rejoined. “Nothing to my discredit, I hope.” And to Alleyn: “Sorry to interrupt, sir.”

Alleyn gave him a brief summary of the situation and returned to the matter in hand.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to tell me what it was that triggered off this business,” he said. “What were Major Barrimore’s accusations?”

Nobody answered. “Will you tell me, Miss Emily?”

Miss Emily said: “I cannot. I am sorry. I–I find myself unable to elaborate upon what I have already said.” She looked at Alleyn in distress. “You must not ask me,” she said.

“Never mind.” He glanced at the others. “Am I to know?” he asked and, after a moment: “Very well. Let us make a different approach. I shall tell you, instead, what we have been doing. We have, as some of you know, been at Miss Cost’s shop. We have searched the shop and the living quarters behind it. I think I should tell you that we have found Miss Cost’s diary. It is a long, exhaustive and, in many places, relevant document. It may be put in evidence.”

Margaret Barrimore gave a low cry.

“The final entry was made last night. In it, she suggests that as a result of some undefined insult she is going to make public certain matters which are not specifically set out in that part of the diary but will not, I think, be difficult to arrive at when the whole document is reviewed. It may be that, after she made this last entry, she wrote a letter to the press. If so, it would have gone into the shop mailbag.”

“Has it gone out yet?” Patrick asked sharply.

Alleyn said coolly: “Oh, yes. Being Sunday, you know.”

“It must be stopped.”

“We don’t, normally, intercept Her Majesty’s mail.”

Barrimore said thickly: “You can bloody well intercept this one.”

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Mayne crisply.

“By God, sir, I won’t take that from you. By God!” Barrimore began, trying to get to his feet.

“Sit down,” Alleyn said. “Do you want to be taken in charge for assault? Pull yourself together.”

Barrimore sank back. He looked at his handkerchief, now drenched with blood. His face was bedabbled and his nose still ran with it. “Gimme ’nother,” he muttered.

“A towel, perhaps,” Miss Emily suggested. Jenny fetched one from the bathroom.

“He’d better lie down,” Dr. Mayne said impatiently.

“I’ll be damned if I do,” said the Major.

“To continue,” Alleyn said: “The facts that emerge from the diary and from the investigation are these. We now know the identity of the Green Lady. Miss Cost found it out September thirtieth year before last. She saw the impersonator repeating her initial performance for a concealed audience of one. She afterwards discovered who this other was…You will stay where you are, if you please, Major Barrimore…Miss Cost was unwilling to believe this evidence. She began, however, to spy upon the two persons involved. On June seventeenth of this year she took a photograph at the spring.”

Dr. Mayne said: “I can’t allow this!” and Patrick said: “No, for God’s sake!”

“I would avoid it if I could,” Alleyn said. “Mrs. Barrimore, would you rather wait in the next room? Miss Williams will go with you, I’m sure.”

“Yes, darling,” Jenny said quickly. “Do.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Not now. Not now.”

“It would be better,” Patrick said.

“It would be better, Margaret,” Dr. Mayne repeated.

“No.”

There was a brief silence. An emphatic gust of wind battered at the window. The lights flickered, dimmed and came up again. Alleyn’s hearers were momentarily united in a new uneasiness. When he spoke again, they shifted their attention back to him with an air of confusion.

“Miss Cost,” he was saying, “kept her secret to herself. It became, I think, an obsession. It’s clear from other passages in her diary that, sometime before this discovery, she had conceived an antagonism for Major Barrimore. The phrases she uses suggest that it arose from the reaction commonly attributed to a woman scorned.”

Margaret Barrimore turned her head and, for the first time, looked at her husband. Her expression, one of profound astonishment, was reflected in her son’s face and Dr. Mayne’s.

“There is no doubt, I think,” Alleyn said, “that during her first visit to the Island their relationship, however brief, had been of the sort to give rise to the later reaction.”

“Is this true?” Dr. Mayne demanded of Barrimore. He had the towel clapped to his face. Over the top of it his eyes, prominent and dazed, narrowed as if he were smiling. He said nothing.

“Miss Cost, as I said just now, kept her knowledge to herself. Later, it appears, she transferred her attention to Dr. Mayne and was unsuccessful. It’s a painful and distressing story and I shan’t dwell on it except to say that up to yesterday’s tragedy we have the picture of a neurotic who has discovered that the man upon whom her fantasy is now concentrated is deeply attached to the wife of the man with whom she herself had a brief affair that ended in humiliation. She also knows that this wife impersonated the Green Lady in the original episode. These elements are so bound up together that if she makes mischief, as her demon urges her to do, she will be obliged to expose the truth about the Green Lady — and that would be disastrous. Add to this the proposal to end all publicity and official recognition of the spring, and you get some idea, perhaps, of the emotional turmoil that she suffered and that declares itself in this unhappy diary.”

“You do, indeed,” said Miss Emily abruptly and added: “One has much to answer for, I perceive. I have much to answer for. Go on.”

“In opposing the new plans for the spring, Miss Cost may have let off a head of emotional steam. She sent anonymous messages to Miss Pride. She was drawn into the companionship of the general front made against Miss Pride’s intentions. I think there is little doubt that she conspired with Trehern, and egged on ill-feeling in the village. She had received attention. She had her Festival in hand. She was somebody. It was, I daresay, all rather exciting and gratifying. Wouldn’t you think so?” he asked Dr. Mayne.

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” he said. “But, yes. You may be right.”

“Now, this was the picture,” Alleyn went on, “up to the time of the Festival. But when she came to write the final entry in her diary, which was last night, something had happened: something that had revived all her sense of injury and spite, something that led her to write: ‘Both — all of them — shall suffer. I’ll drag their names through the papers. Now. Tonight. I am determined. It is the end.’ ”

Another formidable onslaught roared down upon the Boy-and-Lobster and again the lights wavered and recovered.

“She doesn’t say, and we can’t tell, positively, what inflamed her. I am inclined to think that it might be put down to aesthetic humiliation.”

“What!” Patrick ejaculated.

“Yes. One has to remember that all the first-night agonies that beset a professional director are also visited upon the most ludicrously inefficient amateur. Miss Cost had produced a show and exposed it to an audience. However bad the show, she still had to undergo the classic ordeal. The reaction among some of the onlookers didn’t escape her notice.”

“Oh dear!” Jenny said. “Oh dear!”

“But this is all speculation, and a policeman is not allowed to speculate,” Alleyn said. “Let us get back to hard facts, if we can. Here are some of them: Miss Cost attended early service this morning and afterwards walked to the spring to collect a necklace. It was in her hand when we found her. We know, positively, that she encountered and spoke to three people: Mrs. Carstairs and Dr. Mayne before church; Major Barrimore afterwards.”

“Suppose I deny that?” Barrimore said thickly.

“I can’t, of course, make any threats or offer any persuasion. You might, on consideration, think it wiser, after all, to agree that you met and tell me what passed between you. Major Barrimore,” Alleyn explained generally, “has already admitted that he was spying upon Miss Pride, who had gone to the enclosure to put up a notice which he afterwards removed.”

Miss Emily gave a sharp exclamation.

“It was later replaced.” Alleyn turned to Barrimore and stood over him. “Shall I tell you what I think happened? I think hard words passed between you and Miss Cost, and that she was stung into telling you her secret. I think you parted from her in a rage, and that when you came back to the hotel this morning you bullied your wife. You had better understand, at once, that your wife has not told me this. Finally, I believe that Miss Cost may even have threatened to reveal your former relationship with herself. She suggests in her diary that she has some such intention. Now. Have you anything to say to all this?”

Patrick said: “You had better say nothing.” He walked over to his mother and put his arm about her shoulders.

“I didn’t do it,” Barrimore said. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. I shall move on,” Alleyn said and spoke generally. “Among her papers, we have found a typewritten list of dates. It is a carbon copy. The top copy is missing. Miss Cost had fallen into the habit of sending anonymous letters. As we know, only too well, this habit grows by indulgence. It is possible, having regard for the dates in question, that this document has been brought to the notice of the person most likely to be disturbed by it. Possibly, with a print of a photograph. Now, this individual has, in one crucial respect, given a false statement as to time and circumstance, and because of that—”

There was a tap at the door. Fox opened it. A voice in the passage shouted: “I can’t wait quietlike, mister. I got to see ’im.” It was Trehern.

Fox said: “Now then, what’s all this?” and began to move out. Trehern plunged at him, head down, and was taken in a half-nelson. Bailey appeared in the doorway. “You lay your hands off of me,” Trehern whined. “You got nothing against me.”

“Outside,” said Fox.

Trehern, struggling, looked wildly around the assembled company and fixed on Alleyn. “I got something to tell you, mister,” he said. “I got something to put before all of you. I got to speak out.”

“All right, Fox,” Alleyn said, and nodded to Bailey — who went out and shut the door. Fox relaxed his hold. “Well, Trehern, what is it?”

Trehern wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and blinked. “I been thinking,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I been thinking things over. Ever since you come at me up to my house and acted like you done and made out what you made out, which is not the case. I bean’t a quick-brained chap, mister, but the light has broke and I see me way clear. I got to speak, and speak public.”

“Very well. What do you want to say?”

“Don’t you rush me, now, mister. What I got to say is a mortal serious matter and I got to take my time.”

“Nobody’s rushing you.”

“No, nor they better not,” he said. His manner was half-truculent, half-cringing. “It concerns this-yurr half-hour in time which was the matter which you flung in my teeth. So fur so good. Now. This-yurr lady”—he ducked his head at Miss Emily—“tells you she seen my lil’ chap in the road roundabouts twenty to eight on this-yurr fatal morning. Right?”

“Certainly,” said Miss Pride.

“Much obliged. And I says, So she might of, then, for all I know to the contrariwise, me being asleep in my bed. And I says I uprose at five past eight. Correct?”

“That’s what you said, yes.”

“And God’s truth if I never speak another word. And my lil’ chap was then to home in my house. Right. Now, then. Furthermore to that, you says the Doctor saw him at that same blessed time, twenty to eight, which statement agrees with the lady.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. And you says — don’t rush me — you says the Doctor was in his launch at that mortal moment.”

Alleyn glanced at Mayne. “Agreed?” he asked.

“Yes. I saw Wally from the launch.”

Trehern moved over to Dr. Mayne. “That’s a bloody lie, Doctor,” he said. “Axcusing the expression. I face you out with it, man to man. I seen you, Doctor, clear as I see you now, moving out in thikky launch of yourn at five to ten bloody minutes past eight, and, by God, I reckon you’re not telling lies for the fun of it. I reckon as how you got half an hour on your conscience, Dr. Mayne, and if the law doesn’t face you out with it I’m the chap to do the law’s job for it.”

“I have already discussed the point with Superintendent Alleyn,” Mayne said, looking at Trehern with profound distaste. “Your story is quite unsupported.”

“Is it?” Trehern said. “Is it, then? That’s where you’re dead wrong. You mind me. And you t’other ladies and gents, and you, mister.” He turned back to Alleyn. “After you shifted off this evening, I took to thinking. And I remembered. I remembered our young Wal come up when I was looking out of my winder, and I remembered he said in his por simple fashion: ‘Thik’s Doctor’s launch, bean’t she?’ You ax him, mister. You face him up with it and he’ll tell you.”

“No doubt!” said Mayne. He looked at Alleyn. “I imagine you accept my statement,” he said.

“I haven’t said so,” Alleyn replied. “I didn’t say so at the time, if you remember.”

“By God, Alleyn!” he said angrily, and controlled himself. “This fellow’s as shifty as they come. You must see it. And the boy! Of what value is the boy’s statement — if you get one from him? He’s probably been thrashed into learning what he’s got to say.”

“I never raised a hand—” Trehern began but Alleyn stopped him.

“I was coming to this point,” he said, “when we were interrupted. It may as well be brought out by this means as any other. There are factors, apart from those I’ve already discussed, of which Trehern knows nothing. They may be said to support his story.” He glanced at Miss Emily. “I shall put them to you presently, but I assure you they are cogent. In the meantime, Dr. Mayne, if you have any independent support for your own version of your movements, you might like to say what it is. I must warn you—”

“Stop.”

Margaret Barrimore had moved out into the room. Her hands writhed together, as they had done when he saw her in the garden, but she had an air of authority and was, he thought, in command of herself.

She said: “Please don’t go on, Mr. Alleyn. There’s something that I see I must tell you.”

“Margaret!” Dr. Mayne said sharply.

“No,” she said. “No. Don’t try to stop me. If you do, I shall insist on seeing Mr. Alleyn alone. But I’d rather say it here, in front of you all. After all, everybody knows, now, don’t they? We needn’t pretend any more. Let me go on.”

“Go on, Mrs. Barrimore,” Alleyn said.

“It’s true,” she said. “He didn’t leave the bay in his launch at half past seven or whenever it was. He came to the hotel to see me. I said I had breakfast alone. I wasn’t alone. He was there. Miss Cost had told him she was going to expose — everything…She told him when they met outside the church, so he came to see me and ask me to go away with him. He wanted us to make a clean break before it all came out. He asked me to meet him in the village tonight. We were to go to London and then abroad. It was all very hurried. Only a few minutes. We heard somebody coming. I asked him to let me think, to give me breathing space. So he went away. I suppose he went back to the bay.”

She walked over to Mayne and put her hand on his arm. “I couldn’t let you go on,” she said. “It’s all the same, now. It doesn’t matter, Bob. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be together.”

“Margaret, my dear,” said Dr. Mayne.

There was a long silence. Fox cleared his throat.

Alleyn turned to Trehern.

“And what have you to say to that?” he asked.

Trehern was gaping at Mrs. Barrimore. He seemed to be lost in some kind of trance.

“I’ll be going,” he said at last. “I’ll be getting back-along.” He turned and made for the door. Fox stepped in front of it.

Barrimore had got to his feet. His face, bedabbled with blood, was an appalling sight.

“Then it’s true,” he said very quietly. “She told me. She stood there grinning and jibbering. She said she’d make me a public laughingstock. And when I said she could go to hell, she — d’you know what she did? — she spat at me. And I–I—”

His voice was obliterated by a renewed onslaught of the gale: heavier than any that had preceded it. A confused rumpus broke out. Some metal object, a dustbin perhaps, racketted past the house and vanished in a diminishing series of irregular clashes, as if it bumped down the steps. There was a second monstrous buffet. Somebody — Margaret Barrimore, Alleyn thought — cried out, and at the same moment the lights failed altogether.

The dark was absolute and the noise, intense. Alleyn was struck violently on the shoulder and cannoned into something solid and damp: Fox. As he recovered, he was hit again and, putting out his hand, felt the edge of the door.

He yelled to Fox: “Come on!” and, snatching at the door, dived into the passage. There, too, it was completely dark. But less noisy. He thought he could make out the thud of running feet on carpet. Fox was behind him.

A flashlight danced on a wall. “Give it me,” Alleyn said. He grabbed it, and it displayed for an instant the face of Sergeant Bailey.

“Missed him!” Bailey said. “I missed him.”

“Out of my way,” Alleyn said. “Come on, you two. Fox — get Coombe.”

He ran to the stairhead and flashed his light downwards. For a split second it caught the top of a head. He went downstairs in a controlled plunge, using the torch, and arrived in the entrance hall as the front door crashed. His flashlight discovered, momentarily, the startled face of the night porter, who said: “Here, what’s the matter!” and disappeared, open-mouthed.

The door was still swinging. Alleyn caught it and was once more engulfed in the storm.

It was raining again, heavily. The force of the gale was such that he leaned against it and drove his way towards the steps in combat with it. Two other lights — Bailey’s and Thompson’s, he supposed — dodged eccentrically across the slanting downpour. He lost them when he reached the steps and found the iron rail. But there was yet another lancet of broken light beneath him. As Alleyn went down after it, he was conscious only of noise and idiot violence. He slipped, fell — and recovered. At one moment, he was hurled against the rail.

“These bloody steps,” he thought. “These bloody steps.”

When he reached the bottom flight he saw his quarry, a dark, foreshortened, anonymous figure, veer through the dull light from Miss Cost’s shop window. “Pender’s got a candle or a torch,” Alleyn thought.

The other’s torch was still going: a thin erratic blade. “Towards the jetty,” Alleyn thought. “He’s making for the jetty.” And down there were the riding lights of the hotel launch, jouncing in the dark.

Here, at last, the end of the steps…Now he was in seawater, sometimes over his feet. The roar of the channel was all-obliterating. The gale flattened his lips and filled his eyes with tears. When he made the jetty, he had to double up and grope with his left hand, keeping the right, with Fox’s torch still alive, held out in front: he was whipped by the sea.

He had gained ground. The other was moving on again, doubled up like Alleyn himself, and still using a torch. There was no more than thirty feet between them. The riding lights danced near at hand and shuddered when the launch banged against the jetty.

The figure was poised: it waited for the right moment. A torchlight swung through the rain and Alleyn found himself squinting into the direct beam. He ducked and moved on, half-dazzled, but aware that the launch rose and the figure leaped to meet it. Alleyn struggled forward, took his chance, and jumped.

He had landed aft, among the passengers’ benches; had fallen across one of them and struck his head on another. He hung there, while the launch bucketted under him, and then he fell between the benches and lay on the heaving deck, fighting for breath and helpless. His torch had gone and he was in the dark. There must have been a brief rent in the night sky, because a company of stars careened across his vision, wheeled and returned. The deck tilted again and he saw the hotel windows, glowing. They curtsied and tipped. The power’s on, he thought — and a sudden deadly sinking blotted everything out. When he opened his eyes he thought with astonishment: I was out. Then he heard the engine and felt the judder of a propeller racing above water. He laid hold of a bench and dragged himself to his knees. He could see his opponent, faintly haloed by light from the wheelhouse, back towards him, wrestling with the wheel itself. A great sea broke over them. The windows along Portcarrow front lurched up and dived out of sight again.

Alleyn began to crawl down the gangway between rows of fixed seats, clinging to them as he went. His feet slithered. He fell sideways and, propping himself up, managed to drag off his shoes and socks. His head cleared and ached excruciatingly. The launch was now in mid-channel, taking the seas full on her beam and rolling monstrously. He thought, She’ll never make it, and tried to remember where the life belts should be.

Did that other, fighting there with the wheel, know Alleyn was aboard? How had the launch been cast off? Were the mooring-lines freed from their cleats, and was she now without them? Or had they been loosed from the bollards while he was unconscious? What should he do? Keep observation! he thought sourly. An exquisite jab of pain shot through his eyeballs.

The launch keeled over and took in a solid weight of sea. He thought, Well, this is it, and was engulfed. The iron legs of the bench bit into his hands. He hung on, almost vertical, and felt the water drag at him like an octopus. It was disgusting. The deck kicked. They wallowed for a suspended moment and then, shuddering, recovered and rose. The first thing he saw was the back of the helmsman. Something rolled against his chest: he unclenched his left hand and felt for it. The torch.

Street lamps along the front came alive and seemed dramatically near-at-hand. At the same time the engine was cut. He struggled to his feet and moved forward. He was close, now, to the figure at the wheel. There was the jetty. Their course had shifted, and the launch pitched violently. His left hand knocked against the back of a seat and a beam of light shot out from the torch and found the figure at the wheel. It turned.

Mayne and Alleyn looked into the other’s face.

Mayne lurched out of the wheelhouse. The launch lifted prodigiously, tilted, and dived, nose down. Alleyn was blinded by a deluge of sea water. When he could see again, Mayne was on the port gunwale. For a fraction of time he was poised, a gigantic figure against the shore lights. Then he flexed his knees and leaped overboard.

The launch went about and crashed into the jetty. The last thing Alleyn heard was somebody yelling high above him.

He was climbing down innumerable flights of stairs. They were impossibly steep — perpendicular — but he had to go down. They tipped and he fell outwards and looked into an abyss laced with flashlights. He lost his hold, dropped into nothing, and was on the stairs again, climbing, climbing. Somebody was making comfortable noises. He looked into a face.

“Fox,” he said, with immense satisfaction.

“There, now!” said Inspector Fox.

Alleyn went to sleep.

When he woke, it was to find Troy nearby. Her hand was against his face. “So, there you are,” he said.

“Hullo,” said Troy, and kissed him.

The wall beyond her was dappled with sunshine and looked familiar. He puzzled over it for a time, and, because he wanted to lie with his face closer to her hand, turned his head and was stabbed through the temples.

“Don’t move,” Troy said, “You’ve taken an awful bash.”

“I see.”

“You’ve been concussed and all.”

“How long?”

“About thirty-four hours.”

“This is Coombe’s cottage?”

“That’s right, but you’re meant not to talk.”

“Ridiculous,” he said and dozed off again.

Troy slid her hand carefully from under his bristled jaw and crept out of the room.

Superintendent Coombe was in his parlour with Sir James Curtis and Fox. “He woke again,” Troy said to Curtis, “just for a moment.”

“Say anything?”

“Yes. He’s…” Her voice trembled. “He’s all right.”

“Of course, he’s all right. I’ll take a look at him.”

She returned with him to the bedroom and stood by the window while Curtis stooped over his patient. It was a brilliant morning. The channel was dappled with sequins. The tide was low and three people were walking over the causeway: an elderly woman, a young man and a girl. Five boats ducked and bobbed in Fisherman’s Bay. The hotel launch was still jammed in the understructure of the jetty and looked inconsequent and unreal, suspended above its natural element. A complete write-off, it was thought.

“You’re doing fine,” Curtis said.

“Where’s Troy?”

“Here, darling.”

“Good. What happened?”

“You were knocked out,” Curtis said. “Coombe and two other chaps managed to fish you up.”

“Coombe?”

“Fox rang him from the hotel as soon as you’d set off on your wild-goose chase. They were on the jetty.”

“Oh, yes. Yelling. Where’s Fox?”

“You’d better keep quiet for a bit, Rory. Everything’s all right. Plenty of time.”

“I want to see Fox, Curtis.”

“Very well, but only for one moment.”

Troy fetched him.

“This is more like it, now,” Fox said.

“Have you found him?”

“We have, yes. Yesterday evening, at low tide.”

“Where?”

“About four miles along the coast.”

“It was deliberate, Fox.”

“So I understand. Coombe saw it.”

“Yes. Well now, that’s quite enough,” said Curtis.

Fox stepped back.

“Wait a minute,” Alleyn said. “Anything on him? Fox? Anything on him?”

“All right. Tell him.”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn, there was. Very sodden. Pulp almost, but you can make it out. The top copy of that list, and the photograph.”

“Ah!” Alleyn said. “She gave them to him. I thought as much.”

He caught his breath and then closed his eyes. “That’s right,” Curtis said. “You go to sleep again.”

“My sister, Fanny Winterbottom,” said Miss Emily, two days later, “once remarked with characteristic extravagance (nay, on occasion, vulgarity) that, wherever I went, I kicked up as much dust as a dancing dervish. The observation was inspired more by fortuitous alliteration than by any degree of accuracy. If, however, she were alive today, she would doubtless consider herself justified. I have made disastrous mischief in Portcarrow.”

“My dear Miss Emily, aren’t you, yourself, falling into Mrs. Winterbottom’s weakness for exaggeration? Miss Cost’s murder had nothing to do with your decision on the future of the spring.”

“But it had,” said Miss Emily, smacking her gloved hand on the arm of Superintendent Coombe’s rustic seat. “Let us have logic. If I had not persisted with my decision, her nervous system, to say nothing of her emotions (at all times unstable) would not have been exacerbated to such a degree that she would have behaved as she did.”

“How do you know?” Alleyn asked. “She might have cut up rough on some other provocation. She had her evidence. The possession of a dangerous instrument is, in itself, a danger. Even if you had never visited the Island, Miss Emily, Barrimore and Mayne would still have laughed at the Festival.”

“She would have been less disturbed by their laughter,” said Miss Emily. She looked fixedly at Alleyn. “I am tiring you, no doubt,” she said. “I must go. Those kind children are waiting in the motor. I merely called to say au revoir, my dear Rodrigue.”

“You are not tiring me in the least, and your escort can wait. I imagine they are very happy to do so. It’s no good, Miss Emily. I know you’re eaten up with curiosity.”

“Not curiosity. A natural dislike for unexplained details.”

“I couldn’t sympathize more. What details?”

“No doubt you are always asked when you first began to suspect the criminal. When did you first begin to suspect Dr. Mayne?”

“When you told me that, at about twenty to eight, you stood with your back to the enclosure, looking down at Fisherman’s Bay, and saw nobody but Wally Trehern.”

“And I should have seen Dr. Mayne?”

“You should have seen him pulling out from the fishermen’s jetty in his launch. And then Trehern, quite readily, said he saw the Doctor leaving in his launch about five past eight. Why should he lie about the time he left? And what, as Trehern pointed out, did he do in the half-hour that elapsed?”

“Did you not believe that poor woman when she accounted for the half-hour?”

“Not for a second. If he had been with her, she would have said so when I first interviewed her. He has a patient in the hotel, and she could have quite easily given that as a reason and would have wanted to provide him with an alibi. Did you notice his look of astonishment when she cut in? Did you notice how she stopped him before he could say anything? No, I didn’t believe her and I think he knew I didn’t.”

“And that, you consider, was why he ran away?”

“Partly that, perhaps. He may have felt,” Alleyn said, “quite suddenly, that he couldn’t take it. He may have had his moment of truth. Imagine it, Miss Emily. The blinding realization that must come to a killer — the thing that forces so many of them to give themselves up or to bolt or to commit suicide. Suppose we had believed her and they had gone away together. For the rest of his life he would have been tied to the woman he loved by the most appalling obligation it’s possible to imagine.”

“Yes,” she said. “He was a proud man, I think. You are right. Pray go on.”

“Mayne had spoken to Miss Cost before church. She was telling Mrs. Carstairs she would go to the spring after the service and collect the necklace that had been left on the shelf. She ran after Mayne, and Mrs. Carstairs went in to church. We don’t know what passed between them; but I think she may, poor creature, have made some final advance and been rebuffed. She must have armed herself with her horrid little snapshot and list of dates, and been carrying them about in her bag, planning to call on him, precipitate a final scene and then confront him with her evidence. In any case she forced them on him and very likely told him she was going to give the whole story to the press.”

“Did she…?”

“Yes. It was in the mailbag.”

“You said, I think, that you did not, normally, intercept Her Majesty’s mail.”

“I believe I did,” said Alleyn blandly. “Nor do we. Normally.”

“Go on.”

“He knew she was going to the spring. He was no doubt on the lookout as he washed his hands at the sink in the Tretheways’ cottage. It’s below a back window from which you get an uninterrupted view of Wally’s Way and the enclosure. He must have seen Wally mopping and mowing at you. He probably saw you pin up your notice. He saw Barrimore tear it down, and go away. He went up and let himself in. He had admittance disks and used one when we sent for him. He hid behind the top boulder and waited for Miss Cost. He knew, of course, that there were loose rocks up there. He was extremely familiar with the terrain.”

“Ah, yes.”

“When it was over he scraped away his footprints. Later on, when we were there, he was very quick to get up to the higher level and walk over it. Any prints of his that might be left would thus appear to be innocuous. Then he went back in his launch, at ten minutes past eight, and waited to be sent for to examine the body.”

“It gives me an unpleasant frisson when I remember that he also examined mine,” said Miss Emily. “A cool, resourceful man. I rather liked him.”

“So did I,” Alleyn said. “I liked him. He intended us, of course, to follow up the idea of mistaken identity, but he was too clever to push it overmuch. If we hadn’t discovered that you visited the spring, he would have said he’d seen you. As it was, he let us find out for ourselves. He hoped Wally would be thought to have done it and would have given evidence of his irresponsibility and seen him bestowed in a suitable institution, which, as he very truly observed, might be the best thing for him, after all.”

“I shall do something about that boy,” said Miss Emily. “There must be special schools. I shall attend to it.” She looked furiously at Alleyn. “What would you have done if the lights had not failed, or if you had caught up with him?”

“Routine procedure, Miss Emily. Asked him to come to Coombe’s office and make a statement. I doubt if we had a case against him. Too much conjecture. I hoped, by laying so much of the case open, to induce a confession. Once the Wally theory was dismissed, I think Mayne would not have allowed Barrimore, or anyone else, to be arrested. But I’m glad it turned out as it did.”

“You do not,” Miss Emily observed, “feel thwarted of your prey.”

“No, Miss Emily. Not this time.” And, after a pause, Alleyn repeated: “I liked him.”

Fox came through the gate into Coombe’s garden. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said laboriously. “J’espère que vous êtes en bonne santé ce matin.”

Miss Emily winced. “Mr. Fox,” she said in slow but exquisite French. “You are, I am sure, a very busy man, but if you can spare an hour twice a week, I think I might be able to give you some assistance with your conversation. I should be delighted to do so.” Fox asked her if she would be good enough to repeat her statement and, as she did so, blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, “c’est bonne—no, blast—pardon — bien amiable de vous, I mean de votre part. Would you really? I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”

“Alors, c’est entendu,” said Miss Emily.

Patrick and Jenny sat in his car down by the waterfront. Miss Emily’s luggage and Jenny’s and Patrick’s suitcases were roped into the open boot. Miss Emily had settled to spend a few days at the Manor Park Hotel and had invited them both to be her guests. Patrick felt he should stay with his mother, but she had urged him to go.

“It made me feel terribly inadequate,” he said. “As if somehow I must have failed her. And yet, you know, I thought we got on awfully well together, always. I’m fond of my mama.”

“Of course you are. And she adores you. I expect it’s just that she wants to be by herself until — well, until the first ghastly shock’s over.”

“By herself? With him there?”

“He’s not behaving badly, Patrick. Is he?”

“No. Oddly enough, no.” He looked thoughtfully at Jenny. “I knew about Bob Mayne,” he said. “Of course I did. I’ve never been able to make out why I didn’t like it. Not for conventional reasons. If you say Oedipus complex I shall be furious.”

“I won’t say it, then.”

“The thing is, I suppose one doesn’t like one’s mama being a femme fatale. And she is, a bit, you know. I’m so sorry for her,” he said violently, “that it makes me angry. Why should that be? I really don’t understand it at all.”

“Do you know, I think it’s impossible for us to take the idea of older people being in love. It’s all wrong, I expect, and I daresay it’s the arrogance of youth, or something.”

“You may be right…Jenny, I love you with all my heart. Could we get married, do you think?”

“I don’t see anything against it,” said Jenny.

After a longish interval, Jenny said: “Miss Emily’s taking her time, isn’t she? Shall we walk up to the cottage and say good-bye to that remarkable man?”

“Well — if you like.”

“Come on.”

They strolled along the seafront, holding hands. A boy was sitting on the edge of the terrace, idly throwing pebbles into the channel.

It was Wally.

As they came up he turned and, when he saw them, held out his hands.

“All gone,” he said.

The End