Dead Water

VI Green Lady

When he arrived downstairs it was to find Major Barrimore and the office clerk dealing with a group of disgruntled visitors who were relinquishing their rooms. The Major appeared to hang on to his professional aplomb with some difficulty. Alleyn waited and had time to read a notice that was prominently displayed and announced the temporary closing of the spring owing to unforeseen circumstances.

Major Barrimore made his final bow, stared balefully after the last guest and saw Alleyn. He spread his hands. “My God!” he said.

“I’m very sorry.”

“Bloody people!” said the Major in unconscious agreement with Jenny. “God, how I hate bloody people.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“They’ll all go! The lot! They’ll cackle away among themselves and want their money back and change their minds and jibber and jabber; and in the bloody upshot, they’ll xxxx-off. The whole bloody boiling of them. And the next thing: a new draft! Waltzing in and waltzing out again. What the xxxxxx.” His language grew more fanciful; he sweated extremely. A lady with a cross face swept out of the lounge and up the stairs. He bowed to her distractedly. “That’s right, madam,” he whispered after her. “That’s the drill. Talk to your husband and pack your bags and take your chronic eczema to hell out of it.” He smiled dreadfully at Alleyn. “And what can I do for you?” he demanded.

“I hardly dare ask you for a room.”

“You can have the whole xxxx pub. Bring the whole xxxx Yard.”

Alleyn offered what words of comfort he could muster. Major Barrimore received them with a moody sneer, but presently became calmer. “I’m not blaming you,” he said. “You’re doing your duty. Fine service, the police. Always said so. Thought of it myself when I left my regiment. Took on this damned poodlefaking instead. Well, there you are.”

He booked Alleyn in, and even accepted, with gloomy resignation, the news that Miss Emily would like to delay her departure for another night.

As Alleyn was about to go he said: “Could you sell me a good cigar? I’ve left mine behind and I can’t make do with a pipe.”

“Certainly. What do you smoke?”

“Las Casas, if you have them.”

“No can do. At least — Well, as a matter of fact, I do get them in for myself, old boy. I’m a bit short. Look here — let you have three, if you like. Show there’s no ill feeling, but not a word to the troops. If you want more, these things are smokeable.”

Alleyn said: “Very nice of you but I’m not going to cut you short. Let me have one Las Casas and I’ll take a box of these others.”

He bought the cigars.

The Major had moved to the flap end of the counter. Alleyn dropped his change and picked it up. The boots, he thought, looked very much as if they’d fit. They were wet round the welts and flecked with mud.

He took his leave of the Major.

When he got outside the hotel he compared the cigar band with the one he had picked up and found them to be identical.

Coombe was waiting for him. Alleyn said: “We’d better get the path cordoned off as soon as possible. Where’s Pender?”

“At the spring. Your chaps are on their way. Just made the one good train. They should be here by five. I’ve laid on cars at Dunlowman. And I’ve raised another couple of men. They’re to report here. What’s the idea, cordoning the top path?”

“It’s that outcrop,” Alleyn said and told him about the Major’s cigars. “Of course,” he said, “there may be a guest who smokes his own Las Casas and who went out in a downpour at the crack of dawn to hide behind a rock, but it doesn’t seem likely. We may have to take casts and get hold of his boots.”

“The Major! I see!”

“It may well turn out to be just one of those damn’ fool things. He says he got up late.”

“It’d fit. In a way, it’d fit.”

“At this stage,” Alleyn said. “Nothing fits. We collect. That’s all.”

“Well, I know that,” Coombe said quickly. He had just been warned against the axiomatic sin of forming a theory too soon. “Here are these chaps, now,” he said.

Two policemen were approaching the jetty.

Alleyn said: “Look, Coombe. I think our next step had better be the boy. Dr. Mayne saw him and so did Miss Pride. Could you set your men to patrol the path and then join me at Trehern’s cottage?”

“There may be a mob of visitors there. It’s a big attraction.”

“Hell! Hold on. Wait a bit, would you?”

Alleyn had seen Jenny Williams coming out of the old pubroom. She wore an orange-coloured bathing dress and a short white coat and looked as if she had twice her fair share of sunshine.

He joined her. “It’s all fixed with Miss Emily,” she said. “I’m a lady’s companion as from tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Patrick and I are thinking of a bathe.”

“I don’t know what we’d have done without you. And loath as I am to put anything between you and the English Channel, I have got another favour to ask.”

“Now, what is all this?”

“You know young Trehern, don’t you? You taught him? Do you get on well with him?”

“He didn’t remember me at first. I think he does now. They’ve done their best to turn him into a horror but — yes — I can’t help having a — I suppose it’s a sort of compassion,” said Jenny.

“I expect it is,” Alleyn agreed. He told her he was going to see Wally and that he’d heard she understood the boy and got more response from him than most people. Would she come down to the cottage and help with the interview?

Jenny looked very straight at him and said: “Not if it means you want me to get Wally to say something that may harm him.”

Alleyn said: “I don’t know what he will say. I don’t in the least know whether he is in any way involved in Miss Cost’s death. Suppose he was. Suppose he killed her, believing her to be Miss Emily. Would you want him to be left alone to attack the next old lady who happened to annoy him? Think.”

She asked him, as Miss Emily had asked him, what would be done with Wally if he was found to be guilty. He gave her the same answer: nothing very dreadful. Wally might be sent to an appropriate institution. It would be a matter for authorized psychiatrists. “And they do have successes in these days, you know. On the other hand, Wally may have nothing whatever to do with the case. But I must find out. Murder,” Alleyn said abruptly, “is always abominable. It’s hideous and outlandish. Even when the impulse is understandable and the motive overpowering, it is still a terrible, unique offense. As the law stands, its method of dealing with homicides is, as I think, open to the gravest criticism. But for all that, the destruction of a human being remains what it is: the last outrage.”

He was to wonder, after the case had ended, why on earth he had spoken as he did.

Jenny stared out, looking at nothing. “You must be an unusual kind of cop,” she said. And then: “O.K. I’ll tell Patrick and put on a skirt. I won’t be long.”

The extra constables had arrived and were being briefed by Coombe. They were to patrol the path and stop people climbing about the hills above the enclosure. One of them would be stationed near the outcrop.

Jenny reappeared wearing a white skirt over her bathing dress.

“Patrick,” she said, “is in a slight sulk. I asked him to pick me up at the cottage.”

“My fault, of course. I’m sorry.”

“He’ll get over it,” she said cheerfully.

They went down the hotel steps. Jenny moved ahead. She walked very quickly past Miss Cost’s shop, not looking at it. A group of visitors stared in at the window. The door was open and there were customers inside.

Coombe said: “The girl that helps is carrying on.”

“Yes. All right. Has she been told not to destroy anything — papers — rubbish— anything?”

“Well, yes. I mean, I said: Just serve the customers and attend to the telephone calls. It’s a substation for the Island. One of the last in the country.”

“I think the shop would be better shut, Coombe. We can’t assume anything at this stage. We’ll have to go through her papers. I suppose the calls can’t be operated through the central station?”

“Not a chance.”

“Who is this assistant?”

“Cissy Pollock. She was that green girl affair in the show. Pretty dim type, is Cissy.”

“Friendly with Miss Cost?”

“Thick as thieves, both being hell-bent on the Festival.”

“Look. Could you wait until the shop clears and then lock up? We’ll have to put somebody on the board or simply tell the subscribers that the Island service is out of order.”

“The Major’ll go mad. Couldn’t we shut the shop and leave Cissy on the switchboard?”

“I honestly don’t think we should. It’s probably a completely barren precaution, but at this stage—”

“ ‘We must not,’ ” Coombe said, “ ‘allow ourselves to form a hard-and-fast theory to the prejudice of routine investigation.’ I know. But I wouldn’t mind taking a bet on it that Miss Cost’s got nothing to do with this case.”

“Except in so far as she happens to be the body?”

“You know what I mean. All right: she fixed the earlier jobs. All right: she may have got at that kid and set him on to Miss Pride. In a way, you might say she organized her own murder.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “You might indeed. It may well be that she did.” He glanced at his colleague. “Look,” he said. “Pender will be coming back this way any time now, won’t he? I suggest you put him in the shop just to see Miss Cissy Thing doesn’t exceed her duty? He can keep observation in the background and leave you free to lend a hand in developments at Wally’s joint or whatever it’s called. I’ll be damned glad of your company.”

“All right,” Coombe said. “If you say so.”

“This,” Alleyn thought, “is going to be tricky.”

“Come on,” he said and put his hand on Coombe’s shoulder. “It’s a hell of a bind, but, as the gallant Major would say, it is the drill.”

“That’s right,” said Superintendent Coombe. “I know that. See you later, then.”

Alleyn left him at the shop.

Jenny was waiting down by the seafront. They turned left, walked around the arm of the bay, and arrived at the group of fishermen’s dwellings. Boats pulled up on the foreshore, a ramshackle jetty and the cottages themselves, tucked into the hillside, all fell, predictably, into a conventional arrangement.

“In a moment,” said Jenny, “you will be confronted by Wally’s cottage, but not as I remember it. It used to be squalid and dirty and it stank to high heaven. Mrs. Trehern is far gone in gin and Trehern, as you know, is unspeakable. But somehow or another the exhibit has been evolved: very largely through the efforts of Miss Cost egged on — well—”

“By whom? By Major Barrimore?”

“Not entirely,” Jenny said quickly. “By the Mayor, who is called Mr. Nankivell, and by his Councillors and anybody in Portcarrow who is meant to be civic-minded. And principally, I’m afraid, by Mrs. Fanny Winterbottom and her financial advisors. Or so Patrick says. So, of course, does your Miss Emily. It’s all kept up by the estate. There’s a guild or something that looks after the garden and supervises the interior. Miss Emily calls the whole thing ‘complètement en toc.’ There you are,” said Jenny as they came face-to-face with their destination. “That’s Wally’s cottage, that is.”

It was, indeed, dauntingly pretty. Hollyhocks, daisies, foxgloves and antirrhinums flanked a cobbled path. Honeysuckle framed the door. Fishing nets of astonishing cleanliness festooned the fence. Beside the gate, in gothic lettering, hung a legend: wally’s cottage. admission 1-. westcountry cream-teas. ices.

“There’s an annex at the back,” explained Jenny. “The teas are run by a neighbour, Mrs. Trehern not being up to it. The Golden Record’s in the parlour with the other exhibits.”

“The Golden Record?”

“Of cures,” said Jenny shortly.

“Will Wally be on tap?”

“I should think so. And his papa, unless he’s ferrying. There are not nearly as many visitors as I’d expected. Oh!” exclaimed Jenny stopping short. “I suppose — will that be because of what’s happened? Yes, of course it will.”

“We’ll go in,” Alleyn said, producing the entrance money.

Trehern was at the receipt of custom.

He leered ingratiatingly at Jenny and gave Alleyn a glance in which truculence, subservience and fear were unattractively mingled. Wally stood behind his father. When Alleyn looked at him he grinned and held out his hands.

Jenny said: “Good morning, Mr. Trehern. I’ve brought Mr. Alleyn to have a look around. Hullo, Wally.”

Wally moved towards her: “You come and see me,” he said. “You come to school. One day soon.” He took her hand and nodded at her.

“Look at that, now!” Trehern ejaculated. “You was always the favourite, miss. Nobody to touch Miss Williams for our por little chap, is there, then, Wal?”

There were three visitors in the parlour. They moved from one exhibit to another, listened, and looked furtively at Jenny.

Alleyn asked Wally if he ever went fishing. He shook his head contemptuously and, with that repetitive, so obviously conditioned gesture, again exhibited his hands. A trained animal, Alleyn thought with distaste. He moved away and opened the Golden Record which was everything that might be expected of it: like a visitors’ book at a restaurant in which satisfied clients are invited to record their approval. He noted the dates when cures were said to have been effected and moved on.

The tourists left with an air of having had their money’s worth by a narrow margin.

Alleyn said: “Mr. Trehern, I am a police officer and have been asked to take charge of investigations into the death of Miss Elspeth Cost. I’d like to have a few words with Wally, if I may. Nothing to upset him. We just wondered if he could help us.”

Trehern opened and shut his hands as if he felt for some object to hold on by. “I don’t rightly know about that,” he said. “My little lad bean’t like other little lads, mister. He’m powerful easy put out. Lives in a world of his own, and not to be looked to if it’s straightout facts that’s required. No hand at facts, be you, Wal? Tell you the truth, I doubt he’s took in this terrible business of Miss Cost.”

“She’m dead,” Wally shouted. “She’m stoned dead.” And he gave one of his odd cries. Trehern looked very put out.

“Poor Miss Cost,” Jenny said gently.

“Poor Miss Cost,” Wally repeatedly cheerfully. Struck by some association of ideas he suddenly recited: “Be not froightened sayed the loidy, Ended now is all your woe,” and stopped as incontinently as he had begun.

Alleyn said, “Ah! That’s your piece you said yesterday, isn’t it?” He clapped Wally on the shoulder. “Hullo, young fellow, you’ve been out in the rain! You’re as wet as a shag. That’s the way to get rheumatism.”

Trehern glowered upon his son. “Where you been?” he asked.

“Nowheres.”

“You been mucking round they boats. Can’t keep him away from they boats,” he said ingratiatingly. “Real fisherman’s lad, our Wal. Bean’t you, Wal?”

“I dunno,” Wally said nervously.

“Come and show me these things,” Alleyn suggested. Wally at once began to escort him round the room. It was difficult to determine how far below normal he was. He had something to say about each regrettable exhibit and what he said was always, however uncouth, applicable. Even if it was parrot-talk, Alleyn thought, it at least proved that Wally could connect the appropriate remark with the appointed object.

Jenny stayed for a minute or two, talking to Trehern, who presently said something of which Alleyn only caught the tone of the voice. This was unmistakable. He turned quickly, saw that she was disconcerted and angry and called out: “How do you feel about tea and a bun? Wally: do you like ice cream?”

Wally at once took Jenny’s hand, and began to drag her to a door marked Teas at the end of the room.

There was nobody else in the tearoom. An elderly woman, whom Jenny addressed by name, took their order.

“Was he being offensive, that type in there?” Alleyn asked in French.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter in the least,” Jenny said. “What sort of tea do you like? Strong?”

“Weak and no milk.” Alleyn contemplated Wally, whose face was already daubed with ice cream. He ate with passionate, almost trembling, concentration.

“It was raining this morning, wasn’t it, Wally?”

He nodded slightly.

“Were you out in the rain?”

Wally laughed and blew ice cream across the table.

“Wally, don’t,” Jenny said. “Eat it properly, old boy. You were out in the rain, weren’t you? Your shoes are muddy.”

“So I wor, then. I don’t mind the rain, do I?”

“No,” Jenny said and added rather sadly, “You’re a big boy now.”

“I don’t suppose,” Alleyn suggested, “there was anybody else out in that storm, was there? I bet there wasn’t.”

“Was there, Wally? Out in the rain?”

“There wur! There wur!” he shouted and banged the table.

“All right. All right. Who was it?”

Wally thrust his tongue into the cone. “There wur,” he said.

“This is heavy work,” Alleyn observed mildly.

Jenny asked the same question and Wally at once said: “I seen’er. I seen the old b…Yah!”

“Who do you mean? Who did you see?”

He flourished his right arm: the gesture was as uncoordinated and wild as a puppet’s, but it was not to be mistaken. He made as if to throw something. Jenny caught back an exclamation.

“Who did you see? Was it—” Jenny looked at Alleyn, who nodded. “Was it Miss Pride?”

“Wally! who taught you that?”

“The kids,” he said proudly and began again: “Pridey-Pridey—”

“Stop. Don’t do that, Wally. Be quiet.” She said to Alleyn: “It’s true, I heard them, yesterday evening.”

Wally pushed the last of the cone into his mouth. “I want another,” he said indistinctly.

Coombe had come in from the parlour. Wally’s back was towards him. Alleyn gave a warning signal and Coombe stayed where he was. Trehern loomed up behind him, smirking and curious. Coombe turned and jerked his thumb. Trehern hesitated and Coombe shut the door in his face.

“More,” said Wally.

“You may have another,” Alleyn said, before Jenny could protest. “Tell me what happened when you were out in the rain this morning.”

He lowered his head and glowered. “Another one. More,” he said.

“Where was Miss Pride?”

“Up-along.”

“By the gate?”

“By the gate,” he repeated like an echo.

“Did you see her go away?”

“She come back.”

Jenny’s hand went to her lips.

Alleyn said: “Did Miss Pride come back?”

He nodded.

“Along the path? When?”

“She come back,” Wally shouted irritably. “Back!”

“A long time afterwards?”

“Long time.”

“And went into the spring? She went through the gate and into the spring? Is that right?”

“It’s my spring. She bean’t allowed up to my spring.” He again made his wild throwing gesture. “Get out!” he bawled.

“Did you throw a rock at Miss Pride? Like that?”

Wally turned his head from side to side. “You dunno what I done,” he said. “I ain’t telling.”

“Tell Miss Williams.”

“No, I won’t, then.”

“Did you throw stones, Wally?” Jenny asked. “One evening? Did you?

He looked doubtfully at her and then said: “Where’s my dad?”

“In there. Wally, tell me.”

He leaned his smeared face towards her and she stooped her head. Alleyn heard him whisper: “It’s a secret.”

“What is?”

“They stones. Like my dad said.”

“Is the rock a secret, too?”

He pulled back from her. “I dunno nothing about no rock,” he said vacantly. “I want another.”

“Was Miss Cost at the spring?” Alleyn asked.

Wally Scowled at him.

“Wally,” Jenny said, taking his hand, “did you see Miss Cost? In the rain? This morning? Was Miss Cost at the spring?”

“At the Fustyvell.”

“Yes, at the Festival. Was she at the spring this morning too? In the rain?”

“This is getting positively fugal,” Alleyn muttered.

“This morning?” Jenny repeated.

“Not this morning. At the Fustyvell,” said Wally. “I want another one.”

“In a minute,” Alleyn said. “Soon. Did you see a man this morning in a motorboat?” And, by a sort of compulsion, he added: “In the rain?”

“My dad’s got the biggest launch.”

“Not your dad’s launch. Another man in another launch. Dr. Mayne. Do you know Dr. Mayne?”

“Doctor,” said Wally vacantly.

“Yes. Did you see him?”

“I dunno.”

Alleyn said to Jenny: “Mayne noticed him at about half past seven.” He waited for a moment and then pressed on: “Wally: where were you when you saw the lady at the spring? Where were you?”

Wally pushed his forefinger round and round the table, leaving a greasy trail on the plastic surface. He did this with exaggerated violence and apparently no interest.

“You couldn’t get in, could you?” Alleyn suggested. “You couldn’t get through the gate.”

With his left hand, Wally groped under his smock. He produced a number of entrance disks, let them fall on the table and shoved them about with violent jabs from his forefinger. They clattered to the floor.

“Did you go into the spring this morning?”

He began to make a high whimpering sound.

“It’s no good,” Jenny said. “When he starts that, it’s no good. He’ll get violent. He may have an attack. Really, you mustn’t. Really. I promise, you mustn’t.”

“Very well,” Alleyn said. “I’ll get him his ice cream.”

“Never mind, Wally, it’s all right,” Jenny said. “It’s all right, now. Isn’t it?”

He looked at her doubtfully and then, with that too familiar gesture, reached his hand out towards her.

“Oh, don’t!” Jenny whispered. “Oh Wally, don’t show me your hands.”

When Wally had absorbed his second ice cream they all left the tearoom by a door that, as it turned out, led into the back garden.

Coombe said: “We’ve come the wrong way,” but Alleyn was looking at a display of grayish undergarments hung out to dry. A woman of unkempt appearance was in the yard. She stared at them with bleared disfavour.

“Private,” she said and pointed to a dividing fence. “You’m trespassing.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Trehern,” Jenny said. “We made a mistake.”

Trehern had come out through a back door. “Get in, woman,” he said. “Get in.” He took his wife by her arm and shoved her back into the house. “There’s the gate,” he said to Alleyn. “Over yon.”

Alleyn had wandered to the clothesline. A surplus length of line dangled from the pole. It had been recently cut.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you could spare me a yard of this. The bumper bar on my car’s loose.”

“Bean’t none to spare. Us needs it. Rotten anyways and no good to you. There’s the gate.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said as they went out, Wally trailing behind.

“Was it the same as the trip wire?” Alleyn asked Coombe.

“Certainly was. But I reckon they all use it.”

“It’s old but it’s been newly cut. Have you kept the trip wire?”

“Yes.”

“How was it fastened?”

“With iron pegs. They use them when they dry out their nets.”

“Well, let’s move on, shall we?”

Patrick was sitting in a dinghy alongside the fisherman’s jetty, looking aloof and disinterested. Wally made up to a new pair of sightseers.

“That was very nice of you,” Alleyn said to Jenny. “And I’m more than obliged.”

“I hated it. Mr. Alleyn, he really isn’t responsible. You can see what he’s like.”

“Do you think he threw the stones at Miss Emily the other night?”

She said very unhappily, “Yes.”

“So do I.”

“But nothing else. I’m sure: nothing more than that.”

“You may be right. I’d be very grateful, by the way, if you’d keep the whole affair under your hat. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “All right. Yes, of course, if you say so.”

“Thank you very much. One other thing. Have you any idea who the Green Lady could have been?”

Jenny looked startled. “No, I haven’t. Somehow or another, I’ve sort of forgotten to wonder. She may not have been real at all.”

“What did he say about her?”

“Only that she was very pretty and her hair shone in the sun. And that she said his warts would be all gone.”

“Nothing else?”

“No — nothing.”

“Has he got that sort of imagination — to invent her?”

Jenny said slowly, “I don’t think he has.”

“I don’t think so either.”

“Not only that,” Jenny said. “He’s an extraordinarily truthful little boy. He never tells lies — never.”

“That’s an extremely valuable piece of information,” Alleyn said. “Now, go and placate your young man.”

“I’ll be blowed if I do. He can jolly well come off it,” she rejoined, but Alleyn thought she was not altogether displeased with Patrick. He watched her climb down into the dinghy. It ducked and bobbed towards the far point of the bay. She looked up and waved to him. Her tawny hair shone in the bright sunshine.

“That’s a pleasing young lady,” said Coombe. “What did you make of the lad?”

“We’re not much further on, are we?”

“Aren’t we, though? He as good as said he threw the stones that evening, and what’s more he as good as let on his dad had told him to keep his mouth shut.”

“Yes. Yes, it looked like that, didn’t it?”

“Well, then?”

“He wouldn’t say anything about the rock. He says he saw Miss Pride leave and return. The figure that returned may have been Miss Cost.”

“Ah!” said Coombe with satisfaction.

“Dr. Mayne, you remember, noticed Wally dodging about the road up to the spring soon after half past seven. Miss Pride saw him at much the same time. Miss Pride got back to the pub at eight o’clock. She didn’t encounter Miss Cost. Say the seven o’clock service ended about ten to eight — we’ll have to find out about that — it would mean that Miss Cost would get to the causeway — when?”

“About eight.”

“Just after Miss Pride had gone indoors. And to the spring?”

“Say ten or a quarter past.”

“And I found her body at ten past nine.”

Coombe said: “The kid would have had time, between 7:30 and 8:15, to let himself into the enclosure and take cover behind that boulder. Before she came.”

“Why should he do that? He thought Miss Pride had gone. He saw her go. Why should he anticipate her return?”

“Just one of his silly notions.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “One of his silly notions. Put that boy in the witness-box, and we’d look as silly as he does. If he’s at the end of this case, Coombe, we’ll only get a conviction on factual evidence, not on anything the poor little devil says. Unmistakable prints of his boots behind the boulder for instance.”

“You saw the ground. A mess.” Coombe reddened. “I suppose I slipped up there. We were on the place before I thought.”

“It’s so easy,” Alleyn said, saving his face for him. “Happens to the best of us.”

“It was all churned up, wasn’t it? Almost as if…?”

“Yes?”

“Now I come to think of it, almost as if, before the Doctor and I went up, someone had kind of scuffled it.”

“Yes. Behind the boulder and the trace of the rock. There was a flat bit of stone — did you notice? — lying near the bank. Muddy edge. It might have been used to obliterate prints.”

“I suppose,” Coombe said, “in a quiet type of division like this, you get a bit rusty. I could kick myself. At my time of life!”

“It may not amount to much. After all, we can isolate your prints and Dr. Mayne’s from the rest.”

“Well, yes. Yes, you can do that, all right. But still…!”

Alleyn looked at his watch. It was just on noon. He suggested that they return to the mainland and call on the Rector. The tide was coming in and they crossed the channel by dinghy. There was Alleyn’s car by the jetty, with his luggage in it. If things had gone according to plan, he would have been halfway to Troy by now.

They left it where it stood. The rectory was a five minutes’ walk along the front. It stood between a small and charming Norman church and Dr. Mayne’s Convalescent Home: a pleasant late-Georgian house with the look, common to parsonages, of being exposed to more than its fair share of hard usage.

“It was a poorish parish, this,” Coombe said, “but with the turn things have taken over the last two years, it’s in better shape. The stipend’s gone up, for one thing. A lot of people that reckon they’ve benefitted by the spring make donations. It’d surprise you to know the amounts that are put into the restoration fund boxes. I’m People’s Warden,” he added; “should have been there myself at 10:30, for the family service. The Rector’ll be back home by now. It’s his busy day, of course.”

They found Mrs. Carstairs briskly weeding. She wore a green linen dress and her hair, faded yellow, made an energetic sort of halo round her head. Her churchgoing hat, plastic raincoat, gloves and prayer-book were scattered in a surrealistic arrangement, along the border. When Alleyn was introduced she shook hands briskly and said she supposed he’d come about this dreadful business and wanted to see her husband — who was, of course, appalled.

“He’s in the study,” she said to Coombe. “Those accounts from the dry-rot people are all wrong again, Mr. Coombe. And the Mayor suggests a combined memorial service. But we don’t quite think — however.…”

“I’d really like a word with you, if I may,” Alleyn said. “We’re trying to trace Miss Cost’s movements early this morning.”

“Oh, dear! Yes. Well, of course.”

She confirmed Dr. Mayne’s account. Miss Cost had attended the first service at seven o’clock, and before church they had met at the gate.

“She was in a great fuss, poor thing, because of my necklace.”

“Your necklace?”

“Yes. It’s really rather a nice old one. Pinchbeck and paste, but long and quite good. I lent with reluctance, but she was so keen to have it because of the glitter; and then, of course, what must her great Cissy do but drop it at the first thunderclap and, in the stampede, nobody remembered. I said we’d retrieve it after church, or why not let Cissy go? But no: she made a great to-do, poor Miss Cost (when one thinks) and insisted that she would go herself. She was rather an on-goer: conversationally, if you know what I mean: on and on, and I wanted to go into church and say my prayers and it was pouring. So then she saw Dr. Mayne and she was curious to know if it was Mrs. Tretheway’s twins, though of course in the event it wasn’t twins (that was all nonsense), so I’m afraid I left her to tackle him, as she clearly was dying to do. And after church I saw her streak off through the rain before anyone could offer. Isn’t it dreadful?” Mrs. Carstairs asked energetically. “Well, isn’t it?…Adrian! Can you spare a moment, dear?”

“Coming.”

The Rector, wearing his cassock, emerged through French windows. He said how extraordinary it was that Alleyn should have been at Portcarrow; added that they were lucky to have him, and then became doubtful and solemn.

“One finds it hard to believe,” he said. “One is appalled.”

Alleyn asked him when the first service ended, and he said at about a quarter to eight.

“I’d expected a large congregation. There are so many visitors. But the downpour, no doubt, kept a lot of folk away and there were only six communicants. The nine o’clock was crowded.”

Alleyn wondered absently why clergymen were so prone to call people “folk,” and asked Mr. Carstairs if he knew Miss Cost very well. He seemed disturbed and said: Well, yes, in so far as she was a member of his congregation. He glanced at his wife and added: “Our friendship with Miss Cost was perhaps rather limited by our views on the spring. I could not sympathize with or, indeed, approve of her, as I thought, rather extravagant claims. I thought them woolly,” said the Rector. “Woolly and vulgar.” He expounded, carefully, his own attitude, which, in its anxious compromise, declared, Alleyn thought, its orthodoxy.

“And you saw her,” he asked, “after the service?”

They said simultaneously that they did.

“I’m one of those parsons who come out to the porch and see folk off,” the Rector explained. “But Miss Cost was on her way when I got there. Going down the path. Something about my wife’s necklace. Wasn’t it, Dulcie?”

“Yes, dear. I told Mr. Alleyn.”

Coombe said: “The necklace has been recovered and will be returned in due course, Mrs. Carstairs.”

“Oh, dear!” she said. “Will it? I–I don’t think—”

“Never mind, dear,” said her husband.

Alleyn asked if anybody else from the Island had been at the first service. Nobody, it appeared. There were several at the nine o’clock.

“The Barrimores, for instance?”

No, not the Barrimores.

There was a silence, through which the nonattendance of the Barrimores was somehow established as a normal state of affairs.

“Although,” Mrs. Carstairs said, in extenuation of a criticism that no one had voiced, “Margaret used to come quite regularly at one time, Adrian. Before Wally’s warts, you remember?”

“Not that there’s any connection, Dulcie.”

“Of course not, dear. And Patrick and nice Jenny Williams have been to Evensong, we must remember.”

“So we must,” her husband agreed.

“Poor things. They’ll all be terribly upset, no doubt,” Mrs. Carstairs said to Alleyn. “Such a shock to everyone.”

Alleyn said carefully: “Appalling. And apart from everything else, a great worry for Barrimore, one imagines. After all it won’t do his business any good, this sort of catastrophe.”

They looked uncomfortable, and faintly shocked. “Well,” they both said — and stopped short.

“At least,” Alleyn said casually, “I suppose the Boy-and-Lobster is his affair, isn’t it?”

“It’s the property of the estate,” Coombe said. “Miss Pride’s the landlord. But I have heard they put everything they’d got into it.”

“She did,” Mrs. Carstairs said firmly. “It was Margaret Barrimore’s money, wasn’t it, Adrian?”

“My dear, I don’t know. In any case—”

“Yes, dear. Of course,” said Mrs. Carstairs, turning pink. She glanced distractedly at the knees of her linen dress. “Oh, look!” she said. “Now I shall have to change. It was that henbane that did it. What a disgrace I am. Sunday and everything.”

“You melt into your background, my dear,” the Rector observed. “Like a wood-nymph,” he added with an air of recklessness.

“Adrian, you are awful,” said Mrs. Carstairs automatically. It was clear that he was in love with her.

Alleyn said: “So there would be a gap of about an hour and a quarter between the first and second services?”

“This morning, yes,” said the Rector. “Because of the rain, you see, and the small attendance at seven.”

“How do you manage?” Alleyn asked Mrs. Carstairs. “Breakfast must be quite a problem.”

“Oh, there’s usually time to boil an egg before nine. This morning, as you see, we had over an hour. At least,” she corrected herself, “You didn’t, did you, dear? Adrian had to make a visit: poor old Mr. Thomas,” she said to Coombe. “Going, I’m afraid.”

“So you were alone, after all. When did you hear of the tragedy, Mrs. Carstairs?”

“Before matins. Half past ten. Several people had seen the — well, the ambulance and the stretcher, you know. And Adrian met Sergeant Pender and — there it was.”

“Is it true?” the Rector asked abruptly. “Was it — deliberate? Pender said — I mean…?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How very dreadful,” he said. “How appallingly dreadful.”

“I know,” Alleyn agreed. “A woman, it appears, with no enemies. It’s incomprehensible.”

Coombe cleared his throat. The Carstairses glanced at each other quickly and as quickly looked away.

“Unless, I suppose,” Alleyn said, “you count Miss Pride.”

“There, I’m afraid,” the Rector said, and Alleyn wondered if he’d caught an overtone of relief, “there, it was all on Miss Cost’s side, poor soul.”

“You might say,” his wife added, “that Miss Pride had the whip hand.”

“Dulcie!”

“Well, Adrian, you know what I mean.”

“It’s quite beside the point,” said the Rector with authority.

A telephone rang in the house. He excused himself and went indoors.

“There was nothing, I suppose, in her day-to-day life to make people dislike her,” Alleyn said. “She seems, as far as I can make out, to have been a perfectly harmless obsessive.”

Mrs. Carstairs began to pick up her scattered belongings, rather as if she was giving herself time to consider. When she straightened up, with her arms full, she was quite red in the face.

“She wasn’t always perfectly kind,” she said.

“Ah! Which of us is?”

“Yes, I know. You’re quite right. Of course,” she agreed in a hurry.

“Did she make mischief?” he asked lightly.

“She tried. My husband… Naturally, we paid no attention. My husband feels very strongly about that sort of thing. He calls it a cardinal sin. He preaches very strongly against. Always.” Mrs. Carstairs looked squarely at Alleyn. “I’m offending, myself, to tell you this. I can’t think what came over me. You must have a — have a talent for catching people off guard.”

He said wryly: “You make my job sound very unappetizing. Mrs. Carstairs, I won’t bother you much longer. One more question and we’re off. Have you any idea who played those ugly tricks on Miss Pride? If you have, I do hope you will tell me.”

She seemed, he thought, to be relieved. She said at once: “I’ve always considered she was behind them — Miss Cost.”

“Behind them? You thought she encouraged someone else to take the active part?”

“Yes.”

“Wally Trehern?”

“Perhaps.”

“And was that what you were thinking of when you said Miss Cost was not always kind?”

“Oh no!” she ejaculated and stopped short. “Please don’t ask me any more questions, Mr. Alleyn. I shall not answer them, if you do.”

“Very well,” he said. He thanked her and went away, followed, uncomfortably, by Coombe.

They lunched at the village pub. The whole place was alive with trippers. The sun glared down, the air was degraded by transistors and the ground by litter. Groups of sightseers in holiday garments crowded the foreshore, eating, drinking and pointing out the Island to each other. The tide was full. The hotel launch and a number of dinghies plied to and fro, and their occupants stared up at the enclosure. It was obvious that the murder of Miss Cost was now common knowledge.

The enclosure itself was not fully visible from the village, being masked by an arm of Fisherman’s Bay, but two constables could be seen on the upper pathway. Visitors returning from the Island told each other, and anybody that cared to listen, that you couldn’t get anywhere near the spring. “There’s nothing to see,” they said. “The coppers have got it locked up. You wouldn’t know.”

When they had eaten a flaccid lunch they called on the nearest J.P. and picked up a search-warrant for Wally’s cottage. They went on to the station, where Alleyn collected a short piece of the trip wire. It was agreed that he would return to the Boy-and-Lobster; Coombe was to remain at the station, relieving his one spare constable, until the Yard men arrived. He would then telephone Alleyn at the Boy-and-Lobster. Pender would remain on duty at Miss Cost’s shop.

Coombe said: “It’s an unusual business, this. You finding the body, and then this gap before your chaps come in.”

“I hope you’ll still be on tap, but I do realize it’s taking more time than you can spare.”

“Well, you know how it is.” He waited for a moment and then said: “I appreciate your reluctance to form a theory too soon. I mean, it’s what we all know. You can’t. But as I’m pulling out, I can’t help saying it looks a sure thing to me. Here’s this dopey kid as good as letting on he pitched in with the stones. There’s more than a hint that his old man was behind it, and a damn good indication that he set the trip wire. The kid says Miss Pride came back, and there’s every likelihood he mistook Miss Cost for her. I reckon he’d let himself into the enclosure and was up by the boulder. He looked down and saw the umbrella below and let fly at it. I mean — well, it hangs together, doesn’t it?”

“Who do you think planted the figurine in Miss Pride’s sitting-room and sent her the anonymous messages and rang her up?”

“Well, she reckons Miss Cost.”

“So Miss Cost’s death was the end product of the whole series? Laid on, you might say, by herself?”

“In a sense. Yes.”

“Has it struck you at all,” Alleyn asked, “that there’s one feature of the whole story about which nobody seems to show the slightest curiosity?”

“I can’t say it has.”

Alleyn took from his pocket the figurine that he had wrapped in paper and in his handkerchief. He opened it up and, holding it very gingerly, stood it on Coombe’s desk. The single word, Death, gummed to a sheet of paper, was still fixed in position.

“Nobody,” Alleyn said, “as far as I can gather, has ever asked themselves who was the original Green Lady.”

“That piece of paper,” Alleyn said, “is not the kind used for the original messages. It’s the same make as this other piece, which is a bit of the Boy-and-Lobster letter paper. The word Death is not in a type that is used in your local rag. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s from a London sporting paper called the Racing Supplement. The printer’s ink, as you see, is a bluish black, and the type’s distinctive. Was Miss Cost a racing fan?”

“Her?” Coombe said. “Don’t be funny.”

“The Major is. He takes the Racing Supplement.”

“Does he, by gum!”

“Yes. Have you got a dabs-kit handy?”

“Nothing very flash, but, yes: we’ve got the doings.”

Alleyn produced his box of cigars. “He opened this up. There ought to be good impressions inside the lid. Bailey can give it the full works, if necessary, but we’ll take a fly at it, shall we?”

Coombe got out his insufflator and a lens. They developed a good set of prints on the lid, and turned to the paper impaled over the figurine’s head.

After a minute or two Alleyn gave a satisfied grunt.

“Fair enough,” he said. “The prints of index and thumb are as good as you’d ask. I think I’ll call on the gallant Major.”

He left Coombe still poring lovingly over the exhibits, walked down to his car, collected his suitcases and crossed by the hotel launch to the Island. Trehern was in charge. His manner unattractively combined truculence with servility.

It was now two o’clock.

The Major, it presently transpired, was in the habit of taking a siesta.

“He got used to it in India,” Mrs. Barrimore said. “People do.”

Alleyn had run into her at the door of the old pub. She was perfectly composed and remote in her manner: a beautiful woman who could not, he thought, ever be completely unaware of the effect she made. It was inescapable. She must, over and over again, have seen it reflected in the eyes of men who looked at, and at once recognized, her. She was immensely attractive.

He said: “Perhaps, in the meantime, I may have a word with you?”

“Very well. In the parlour, if you like. The children are out, just now.”

“The children?”

“Jenny and Patrick. I should have said ‘the young,’ I expect. Will you come in?”

He could hardly recognize the woman he had seen in her garden veering this way and that like a rudderless ship and unable to control her hands. She sat perfectly still and allowed him to look at her while she kept her own gaze on her quietly interlaced fingers.

He supposed she must have had a hand in the transformation of the old bar-parlour into a private living-room: if so she could have taken little interest in the process. Apart from the introduction of a few unexceptionable easy-chairs, one or two photographs, a noncommittal assembly of books and a vase of the flowers she had so mishandled in the garden, it must be much as it was two years ago: an impersonal room.

Alleyn began by following the beaten path of routine investigation. He tried to establish some corroboration of her alibi — though he did not give it this name — for the period covered by Miss Emily’s visit to the enclosure up to the probable time of Miss Cost’s death. There was none to be had. Nobody had visited the kitchen-dining-room while she drank her coffee and ate her toast. The servants were all busy in the main building. Jenny and Patrick had breakfasted in the public dining-room; her husband was presumably asleep. Alleyn gathered that they occupied separate rooms. She had no idea how long this solitary meal had lasted. When it was over she had attended to one or two jobs; interviewed the kitchen staff and then gone up to her room and changed from a housecoat to a day dress. When she came downstairs again, she had found the young people in the parlour. Alleyn had arrived soon afterwards.

“And for the rest of the morning,” he asked casually, “did you go out at all?”

“No further than the garden,” she said after a fractional pause. “I went into the garden for a time.”

“To cut flowers?” he suggested, looking at those in the room.

She lifted her eyes to his for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “to cut flowers. I do the flowers on Sunday as a rule: it takes quite a time. Jenny helped me,” she added as an afterthought.

“In the garden?”

Again the brief look at him, this time, perhaps, fractionally less controlled. “No. Not in the garden. In the house. Afterwards.”

“So you were alone in the garden?”

She said quickly, with the slight hesitation he had noticed before in her speech: “Yes. Alone. Why d-do you keep on about the garden? What interest can it have for you? It was after — afterwards. Long afterwards.”

“Yes, of course. Did the news distress you very much, Mrs. Barrimore?”

The full, unbridled mouth, so much at variance with the rest of her face, moved as if to speak; but, as in a badly synchronized sound-film, her voice failed. Then she said: “Naturally. It’s a terrible thing to have happened, isn’t it?”

“You were fond of Miss Cost?”

Something in her look reminded him, fantastically, of the strange veiling of a bird’s eyes. Hers were heavy-lidded and she had closed them for a second. “Not particularly,” she said. “We had nothing—” She stopped, unaccountably.

“Nothing in common?”

She nodded. Her hands moved but she looked at them and refolded them in her lap.

“Had she made enemies?”

“I don’t know of any,” she said at once, as if she had anticipated the question. “I know very little about her.”

Alleyn asked her if she subscribed to the theory of mistaken identity, and she said that she did. She was emphatic about this, and seemed relieved when he spoke of it. She was, she said, forced to think that it might have been Wally.

“Excited, originally, by Miss Cost herself?”

“I think it’s possible. She was…It doesn’t matter.”

“Inclined to be vindictive?”

She didn’t answer.

“I’m afraid,” Alleyn said, “that in these cases one can’t always avoid speaking ill of the dead. I did rather gather from something in Mrs. Carstairs’s manner—”

“Dulcie Carstairs!” she exclaimed, spontaneously and with animation. “She never says anything unkind about anybody!”

“I’m sure she doesn’t. It was just that — Well, I thought she was rather desperately determined not to do so, in this case.”

She gave him a faint smile. It transfigured her face.

“Dear Dulcie,” she murmured.

“She and the Rector are horrified, of course. They struck me as being such a completely unworldly pair, those two.”

“Did they? You were right. They are.”

“I mean — not only about Miss Cost, but about the whole business of the spring’s being more or less discredited by the present owner. The events of the last two years must have made a great difference to them, I suppose.”

“Yes,” she said. “Enormous.”

“Were they very hard up before?”

“Oh yes. It was a dreadfully poor parish. The stipend was the least that’s given, I believe, and they’d no private means. We were all so sorry about it. Their clothes! She’s nice-looking but she needs careful dressing,” said Mrs. Barrimore, with all the unconscious arrogance of a woman who would look lovely in a sack. “Of course everyone did what they could. I don’t think she ever bought anything for herself.”

“She looked quite nice this morning, I thought.”

“Did she?” For the first time, Margaret Barrimore spoke as if there was some kind of rapprochement between them. “I thought men never noticed women’s clothes,” she said.

“Do you bet me I can’t tell you what you wore yesterday at the spring?”

“Well?”

“A white linen dress with a square neck and a leather belt. Brown Italian shoes with large buckles. Brown suede gloves. A wide string-coloured straw hat, with a brown velvet ribbon. A brown leather bag. No jewelry.”

“You win,” said Mrs. Barrimore. “You don’t look like the sort of man who notices but I suppose it’s part of your training and I shouldn’t feel flattered. Or should I?”

“I should like you to feel flattered. And now I’m going to ruin my success by telling you that Mrs. Carstairs, too, wore a linen dress, this morning.” He described it. She listened to this talk about clothes as if it were a serious matter.

“White?” she asked.

“No. Green.”

“Oh yes. That one.”

“Was it originally yours?”

“If it’s the one I think it is, yes.”

“When did you give it to her?”

“I don’t in the least remember.”

“Well — as long as two years ago?”

“Really, I’ve no idea.”

“Try.”

“But I don’t remember. One doesn’t remember. I’ve given her odd things from time to time. You make me feel as if I’m parading — as if I’m making a lot of it. As if it were charity. Or patronage. It was nothing. Women do those sorts of things.”

“I wouldn’t press it if I didn’t think it might be relevant.”

“How can it be of the slightest interest?”

“A green dress? If she had it two years ago? Think.”

She was on her feet with a quick controlled movement.

“But that’s nonsense! You mean — Wally?”

“Yes. I do. The Green Lady.”

“But — most people have always thought he imagined her! And even if he didn’t — there are lots of green dresses in the summertime.”

“Of course. What I’m trying to find out is whether this was one of them. Is there nothing that would call to mind when you gave it to her?”

She waited for a moment, looking down at her hands.

“Nothing. It was over a year ago, I’m sure.” She turned aside. “Even if I could remember, which I can’t, I don’t think I should want to tell you. It can’t have any bearing on this ghastly business — how could it? — and, suppose you’re right, it’s private to Dulcie Carstairs.”

“Perhaps she’d remember.”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t for a moment believe she would think of playing a — a fantastic trick like that. It’s not like her. She was never the Green Lady.”

“I haven’t suggested she was, you know.” Alleyn walked over to her. She lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was ashen.

“Come,” he said, “don’t let us fence any more. You were the Green Lady, weren’t you?”