Dead Water

VIII The Shop

They found Bailey and Thompson outside, locked in their mackintoshes with an air of being used to it and with their gear stowed inside waterproof covers. Rain cascaded from their hat brims.

“We’ll go back to the pub,” Alleyn said.

The Tretheways’ cottage was across the lane from the Treherns’. Alleyn knocked at the back door and was invited in by the proud father: an enormous grinning fellow. The latest addition was screaming very lustily in the bedroom. The father apologized for this drawback to conversation.

“ ’Er be a lil’ maid, ’er be,” he said, “and letting fly with ’er vocal power according.”

They stood by the kitchen window, which looked across the lane toward the spring. Seeing this, Alleyn asked him if he’d happened to notice Wally in the lane at about the time the baby was born or soon after, and was given the reasonable answer that Mr. Tretheway’s attention was on other matters. The baby had indeed been born at 7:30, and Dr. Mayne had in fact left very soon afterwards.

Alleyn congratulated Tretheway, shook his hand, rejoined his colleagues and told them what he’d gleaned.

“So, why does Trehern say he saw the doctor leave about five past eight?” Fox asked. “There’s usually only one reason for that sort of lie, isn’t there? Trying to rig the time so that you look as if you couldn’t have been on the spot. That’s the normal caper.”

“So it is, then,” Alleyn agreed with a reasonable imitation of the local voice. “But there are loose ends here. Or are there?”

“Well, yes,” Fox said. “In a way.”

“Bailey — what did you get? Any fisherman’s boots superimposed on the general mess? Or boy’s boots? I couldn’t find any.”

“Nothing like that, Mr. Alleyn. But, as you said yourself, this flat slice of stone’s been used to cut out recent prints. We’ve picked up enough to settle that point,” Bailey said grudgingly. “Not much else. The only nice jobs are the ones left after this morning’s rain by a set of regulation tens, and another of brogues or gentleman’s country shoes, size nine and a half, ripple soles and in good repair.”

“I know. The Super, and the Doctor.”

“That’s right, sir, from what you’ve mentioned.”

“What about the stuff near the outcrop and behind it?”

“What you thought, Mr. Alleyn. They match. Handsewn, officer’s type. Ten and a half, but custom made. Worn but well kept.”

“In a sense you might be describing the owner. Did you tell Carey he could go off duty?”

“Yes sir. There seemed no call for him to stay. We’ve got all the casts and photographs we want. I used salt in the plaster, seeing how the weather was shaping. It was O.K. Nice results.”

“Good. It’s getting rougher. Look at that sea.”

In the channel between Island and village, the tide now rolled and broke in a confusion of foam and jetting spray. Out at sea there were whitecaps everywhere. The horizon was dark and broken. The causeway was lashed by breakers that struck, rose, fell across it and withdrew, leaving it momentarily exposed and blackly glinting in what remained of the daylight. The hotel launch bucketted and rolled at the jetty. A man in oilskins was mounting extra fenders. Above the general roar of sea and rain, the thud of the launch’s starboard side against the legs of the jetty could be clearly heard.

Light shone dimly behind the windows of Miss Cost’s Gifte Shoppe.

“P.C. Pender’s locked up in there with Miss Cissy Pollock on the switchboard,” Alleyn muttered. “I’ll just have a word with him.” He tapped on the door. After a moment, it was opened a crack and Pender said: “Bean’t no manner of use pesterin—” and then saw Alleyn. “Beg pardon, sir, I’m sure,” he said. “Thought you was one of they damned kids come back.” He flung open the door. Alleyn called to Fox and the others and they went in.

The shop smelt fustily of cardboard, wool and gum. In the postal section, Miss Cissy Pollock bulged at a switchboard: all eyes and teeth when she saw the visitors.

Pender said that a call had come through for Alleyn from Dunlowman. “Sir James Curtis, it were, sir,” he said with reverence. Curtis was the Home Office pathologist. “Wishful to speak with you. I intercepted the call, sir, and informed the station and the Boy-and-Lobster.”

“Where was he?”

“Dunlowman mortuary, sir, along with the body and the Doctor. I’ve got the number.”

“Aw, dear!” Miss Pollock exclaimed. “Bean’t it shocking though!” She had removed her headphones.

Alleyn asked if she could put him through. She engaged to do so and directed him to an instrument in a cubbyhole.

The mortuary attendant answered and said Sir James was just leaving but he’d try to catch him. He could be heard pounding off down a concrete passage. In a minute or two the great man spoke.

“Hullo, Rory, where the devil have you been? I’ve done this job for you. Want the report?”

“Please.”

It was straightforward enough. Death by drowning, following insensibility caused by a blow on the head. The piece of rock was undoubtedly the instrument. Contents of stomach, Sir James briskly continued, showed that she’d had a cup of tea and a biscuit about an hour and three quarters before she died. On Dr. Mayne’s evidence he would agree that she had probably been dead about an hour when Alleyn found her. Sir James had another case more or less on the way back to London and would like to get off before he himself was drowned. Would Alleyn let him know about the inquest? Dr. Mayne would tell him anything else he wanted to hear and was now on his way back to Portcarrow. “I’m told you’re on an island,” said Sir James, merrily. “You’ll be likely to stay there if the weather report’s to be trusted. What book will you choose if you can only have one?”

“The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,” said Alleyn and hung up.

He told Pender that he and Fox would return after dinner and asked him what he himself would do for a meal. Pender said that there was a cut loaf and some butter and ham in Miss Cost’s refrigerator, and would it be going too far if he and Cissy made sandwiches? There was also some cheese and pickle. They could, he said, be replaced.

“You can’t beat a cheese and pickle sandwich,” Fox observed, “if the cheese is tasty.”

Alleyn said that under the circumstances he felt Pender might proceed on the lines indicated, and left him looking relieved.

They climbed the hotel steps, staggering against the gale, and entered the Boy-and-Lobster. It was now five minutes to eight.

Alleyn asked the reception clerk if he could find rooms for his three colleagues and learned that the guests had dwindled to thirty. All incoming trains and buses had been met at Dunlowman and intending visitors told about the situation. Accommodation had been organized with various establishments over a distance of fifteen miles, and, in view of the weather forecast and the closing of the spring, most of the travellers had elected, as the clerk put it, to stay away. “We can be cut off,” he said, “if it’s really bad. It doesn’t often happen, but if this goes on it might.” The guests in residence had all come by car and were now at dinner.

Alleyn left the others to collect their suitcases and arranged to meet them in the dining-room. He went to his own room, effected a quick change and called on Miss Emily, who was four doors away.

She was finishing her dinner, sitting bolt upright peeling grapes. A flash of red wine was before her and a book was at her elbow with a knife laid across to keep it open. She was perfectly composed.

“I’ve only looked in for a moment,” he said. “We’re running late. How are you, Miss Emily? Bored to sobs, I’m afraid.”

“Good evening, Rodrigue. No, I am not unduly bored though I have missed taking my walk.”

“It’s no weather for walking, I assure you. How are they treating you?”

“This morning the chambermaid’s manner was equivocal and at luncheon I found the waiter impertinent. Tonight, however, there is a marked change. It appears that I am, or was, suspected of murder,” said Miss Emily.

“What makes you think so?”

“Before taking my siesta I ventured out on the balcony. There was a group of children on the steps leading to the hotel. When they saw me they began to chant. I will not trouble you with the words. The intention was inescapable.”

“Little animals.”

“Oh, perfectly. It was of no moment.”

There was a tap on the door and a waiter came in.

“Thank you,” said Miss Emily. “You may clear.”

Alleyn watched the man for a moment and then said: “I’d like a word with you, if you please.”

“With me, sir?”

“Yes. I am a superintendent of Scotland Yard, in charge of investigations into the death of Miss Elspeth Cost. I think perhaps the staff of the hotel should be informed that this lady is associated with me in the case and may be regarded as an expert. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. I’m sure I hope Madam has no complaints, sir.”

“I hope so, too. She hasn’t made any, but I shall do so if any more idiotic nonsense is circulated. You may say so to anybody that is interested.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the waiter and withdrew.

“Chose remarquable!” said Miss Emily. “So now, it appears I am a detectrice.”

“It’ll be all over the hotel in five minutes and Portcarrow will have it by morning…About your transport to Dunlowman—”

“Do not trouble yourself. The young man — Patrick — has offered to drive us,” Miss Emily said with an air of amusement.

“I see. It may be pretty rough going, across to the village, if this weather persists.”

“No matter.”

“Before I go, would you mind very much if we went over one incident? The few minutes, round about twenty to eight, when you hung your notice by the spring?”

“Certainly,” Miss Emily said. She repeated her story, she had seen Wally down on the road. He had whooped, chanted, waved his arms and afterwards disappeared. She had seen nobody else, and had returned to the hotel with her umbrella between herself and the prospect.

“Yes,” he said. “I know. I just wanted to hear it again. Thank you, Miss Emily. You don’t ask me how the case progresses, I notice.”

“You would tell me, no doubt, if you wished to do so.”

“Well,” he said. “’I always think it’s unlucky to talk at this stage. But it does progress.”

“Good. Go and have your dinner. If you are not too fatigued I should be glad if you would call upon me later in the evening.”

“When do you retire?”

“Not early. I find I am restless,” said Miss Emily. They fell silent. The wind made a sudden onslaught on her windows. “Perhaps it is the storm,” she said.

“I’ll see if there’s a light under your door. Au revoir, then, Miss Emily.”

“Au revoir, my dear Rodrigue. Enjoy, if that is not too extravagant a word, your dinner. The dressed crab is not bad. The filet mignon, on the other hand, is contemptible.”

She waved her hand and he left her.

Fox, Bailey and Thompson were already in the dining-room, Alleyn had been given a table to himself. As there was not room at theirs, he took it, but joined them for a minute or two before he did so.

Everyone else had gone except Jenny and Patrick, who sat at the family table, nursing balloon glasses. They had an air of subdued celebration and as often as they looked at each other, broke into smiles. When Jenny saw Alleyn, she waggled her fingers at him.

Alleyn said: “Afraid it’s a case of pressing on, chaps. We’ll meet in the hall, afterwards, and go down to the shop. Have you ordered drinks?”

“Not so far, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Well, have them with me. What shall it be? Waiter!”

They settled for beer, Alleyn went to his own table and was fawned upon by Miss Emily’s waiter. Jenny and Patrick passed by, and Jenny paused to say: “We’re going to try and whip up a bit of joie de vivre in the lounge — as they do in ships. Patrick’s thought up a guessing game. Come and help.”

“I’d love to,” Alleyn said, “but I’m on a guessing game of my own, bad luck to it.” He looked at Patrick. “I hear you’ve offered to do the driving tomorrow. Very civil of you. Miss Emily’s looking forward to it.”

“It’s going to be a rough crossing if this keeps up.”

“I know.”

“Will she mind?”

“Not she. At the age of sixty, she was a queen pin in the Résistance and hasn’t noticed the passage of time. Get her to tell you how she dressed up a couple of kiwis as nuns.”

“Honestly!” Jenny exclaimed.

“It’s quite a story.”

The waiter came up to say that Dr. Mayne had arrived and was asking for Alleyn.

“Right,” Alleyn said. “I’ll come.”

“In the writing-room, sir.”

It was a small deserted place off the entrance hall. Dr. Mayne had removed his mackintosh and hung it over the back of a chair. He was shaking the rain off his hat when Alleyn came in. “What a night!” he said. “I thought I wouldn’t make it.”

“How did you cross?”

“In my launch. Damned if I know how she’ll take it going back. The causeway’s impossible. Sir James thought you’d like to see me, and I had to come over, anyway, to a patient.”

Alleyn said: “I’m glad to see you. Not so much about the p.m.: Curtis made that clear enough. I wanted to check up one or two points. Have a drink, won’t you?”

“I certainly will. Thank you.”

Alleyn found a bell-push. “I hope you won’t mind if I don’t join you,” he said. “I’ve had my allowance and I’ve got a night’s work ahead of me.”

“I suppose you get used to it — like a G.P.”

“Very much so, I imagine. What’ll you have?”

Dr. Mayne had a whisky-and-soda. “I thought I’d take a look at Miss Pride while I’m here,” he said. “She’s recovered, of course, but she had quite a nasty cut in her neck. I suppose I mustn’t ask about the police view of that episode. Or doesn’t it arise?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It arises in a sort of secondary way, if only to be dismissed. What do you think?”

“On the face of it, Wally Trehern. Inspired by his father, I daresay. It’s Miss Pride’s contention and I think she may well be right.”

“I think so, too. Does it tie up with the general pattern of behaviour — from your point-of-view?”

“Oh, yes. Very characteristic. He gets overexcited and wildish. Sometimes this sort of behaviour is followed up by an attack of petit mal. Not always, but it’s quite often the pattern.”

“Can’t anything be done for the boy?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. When they start these attacks in early childhood it’s a poorish prospect. He should lead a quiet, regular life. It may well be that his home background and all the nonsense of producing him as a showpiece is bad for him. I’m not at all sure,” Dr. Mayne said, “that I shouldn’t have taken his case up with the child welfare people, but there’s been no marked deterioration and I’ve hesitated. Now — Well, now, one wonders.”

“One wonders… what exactly?”

“(A) if he shouldn’t, in any case, be removed to a suitable institution; and (B) whether he’s responsible for heaving that rock at Miss Cost.”

“If he did heave it, it must have been about half an hour after you saw him doing his stuff on Wally’s Way.”

“I know. Sir James puts the death at about eight o’clock, give-and-take twenty minutes. I wish I’d watched the boy more closely but of course there was no reason to do so. I was swinging the launch round.”

“And it was about 7:40, wasn’t it?”

“About that, yes. Within a couple of minutes, I should say.”

“You didn’t happen to notice Miss Pride? She was in the offing too, and saw Wally.”

“Was she, by George! No, I didn’t see her. The top of the wheelhouse would cut off my view, I fancy.”

“What exactly was Wally doing? Sorry to nag on about it, but Miss Pride may have missed some little pointer. We need one badly enough, Lord knows.”

“He was jumping about with his back towards me. He waved his arms and did a sort of throwing gesture. Now that you tell me Miss Pride was up by the gates, I should think his antics were directed at her. I seem to remember that the last thing I saw him do was take a run uphill. But it was all quite momentary, you know.”

“His father says Wally was in the house at five past eight.”

Dr. Mayne considered this. “It would still be possible,” he said. “There’s time, isn’t there?”

“On the face of it — yes. Trehern also says that at five past eight, or soon afterwards, he saw you leave in your launch.”

“Does he, indeed! He lies like a flatfish,” said Dr. Mayne. He looked thoughtfully at Alleyn. “Now, I wonder just why,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder.”

“So do I, I assure you.” They stared meditatively at each other. Alleyn said: “Who do you think was the original Green Lady?”

Dr. Mayne was normally of a sallow complexion, but now a painful red blotted his lean face and transfigured it. “I have never considered the matter,” he said. “I have no idea. It’s always been supposed that he imagined the whole thing.”

“It was Mrs. Barrimore.”

“You can have no imaginable reason for thinking so!” he said angrily.

“I’ve the best possible reason,” said Alleyn. “Believe me. Every possible reason.”

“Do you mean that Mrs. Barrimore, herself, told you this?”

“Virtually, yes. I am not,” Alleyn said, “trying to equivocate. I asked her, and she said she supposed she must congratulate me.”

Dr. Mayne put his glass down and walked about the room with his hands in his pockets. Alleyn thought he was giving himself time. Presently he said: “I can’t, for the life of me, make out why you concern yourself with this. Surely it’s quite beside the point.”

“I do so because I don’t understand it. Or am not sure that I understand it. If it turns out to be irrelevant, I shall make no more of it. What I don’t understand, to be precise, is why Mrs. Barrimore should be so distressed at the discovery.”

“But, good God, man, of course she’s distressed! Look here. Suppose — I admit nothing — but suppose she came across that wretched kid, blubbing his eyes out because he’d been baited about his warts. Suppose she saw him trying to wash them off and, on the spur of the moment, remembering the history of wart cures, she made him believe they would clear up if he thought they would. Very well. The boy goes home, and they do. Before we know — she knows — where she is, the whole thing blows up unto a highly publicized nine days’ wonder. She can’t make up her mind to disabuse the boy or disillusion the people that follow him. It gets out of hand. The longer she hesitates, the harder it gets.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “I know. That all makes sense and is perfectly understandable.”

“Very well, then!” he said impatiently.

“She was overwhelmingly anxious that I shouldn’t tell her husband.”

“I daresay,” Dr. Mayne said shortly. “He’s not a suitable subject for confidences.”

“Did she tell you?…All right,” Alleyn said answering the extremely dark look Dr. Mayne gave him. “I know I’m being impertinent. I’ve got to be.”

“I am her doctor. She consulted me about it. I advised her to say nothing.”

“Yes?”

“The thing was working. Off and on, as always happens in these emotional — these faith-cures, if you like — there are authentic cases. With people whose troubles had a nervous connotation, the publicizing of this perfectly innocent deception would have been harmful.”

“Asthma, for one?”

“Possibly.”

“Miss Cost, for instance?”

“If you like.”

“Was Miss Cost a patient of yours?”

“She was. She had moles that needed attention. She came into my nursing home and I removed them. About a year ago, it would be.”

“I wish you’d tell me what she was like.”

“Look here, Alleyn, I really do not see that the accident of my being called out to examine the body requires me to disregard my professional obligations. I do not discuss my patients, alive or dead, with any layman.”

Alleyn said mildly: “His Worship the Mayor seems to think she was a near-nymphomaniac.”

Dr. Mayne snorted.

“Well, was she?”

“All right. All right. She was a bloody nuisance, like many another frustrated spinster. Will that do?”

“Nicely, thank you. Do you imagine she ever suspected the truth about the Green Lady?”

“I have not the remotest idea but I should think it most unlikely. She, of all people! Look at that damn farce of a show, yesterday. Look at her shop! Green ladies by the gross. If you want my opinion on the case, which I don’t suppose you do—”

“On the contrary, I was going to ask for it.”

“Then: I think the boy did it, and I hope that, for his sake, it will go no further than finding that he’s irresponsible and chucked the rock aimlessly or at least with no idea of the actual damage it would do. He can then be removed from his parents, who are no good to him anyway, and given proper care and attention. If I’m asked for an opinion at the inquest that will be it.”

“Tidy. Straightforward. Obvious.”

“And you don’t believe it?”

“I should like to believe it,” said Alleyn.

“I need hardly say I’d be interested to know your objections.”

“You may say they’re more or less mechanical. No,” Alleyn said correcting himself. “That’s not quite it, either. We’ll just have to press on and see how we go. And press on I must, by the same token. My chaps’ll be waiting for me.”

“You’re going out?”

“Yes. Routine, you know. Routine.”

“You’ll be half-drowned.”

“It’s not far. Only to the shop. By the way, did you know we’re moving Miss Pride in the morning? She’s going to the Manor Park Hotel outside Dunlowman.”

“But why? Isn’t she comfortable here?”

“It’s not particularly comfortable to be suspected of homicide.”

“But — oh, good Lord!” he exclaimed disgustedly.

“The village louts shout doggerel at her and the servants have been unpleasant. I don’t want her to be subjected to any more Portcarrow humour in the form of practical jokes.”

“There’s no chance of that, surely. Or don’t you think Miss Cost inspired that lot?”

“I think she inspired them, all right, but they might be continued in her permanent absence; the habit having been formed and Miss Pride’s unpopularity having increased.”

“Absolute idiocy!” he said angrily. “I think, as a matter of fact, I’ve probably stopped the rot, but it’s better for her to get away from the place.”

“You know, I very much doubt if the channel will be negotiable in the morning. This looks like being the worst storm we’ve had for years. In any case, it’ll be devilishly awkward getting her aboard the launch. We don’t want a broken leg.”

“Of course not. We’ll simply have to wait and see what the day brings forth. If you’re going to visit her, you might warn her about the possibility, will you?”

“Yes, certainly.”

They were silent for a moment. A sudden onslaught of the gale beat against the Boy-and-Lobster and screamed in the chimney. “Well, good night,” Alleyn said.

He had got as far as the door when Dr. Mayne said: “There is one thing you perhaps ought to know about Elspeth Cost.”

“Yes?”

“She lived in a world of fantasy. Again, with women of her temperament, condition and age, it’s a not unusual state of affairs, but with her its manifestations were extreme.”

“Was she, in consequence, a liar?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “It follows on the condition. You may say she couldn’t help it.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Alleyn said.

“It may not arise.”

“You never know. Good night, then, Mayne.”

When they were outside and the hotel doors had shut behind them, they were engulfed in a world of turbulence: a complex uproar into which they moved, leaning forward, with their heads down. They slipped on concrete steps, bumped into each other and then hung on by an iron rail and moved down crabwise towards the sea. Below them, riding lights on the hotel launch tipped, rose, sank and shuddered. A single street lamp near the jetty was struck across by continuous diagonals of rain. On the far side, black masses heaved and broke against the front, obscured and revealed dimly lit windows and flung their crests high above the glittering terrace. As the three men came to the foot of the steps they were stung and lashed by driven spume.

Miss Cost’s shop window glowed faintly beyond the rain. When they reached it they had to bang on the door and yell at Pender before he heard them above the general clamour. It opened a crack. “Easy on, souls,” Pender shouted, “or she’ll blow in.” He admitted them, one by one, with his shoulder to the door.

The interior fug had become enriched by a paraffin heater that reeked in Miss Cissy Pollock’s corner, and by Pender, who breathed out pickled onions. Miss Pollock, herself a little bleary-eyed now, but ever-smiling, still presided at the switchboard.

“Wicked night,” Pender observed, bolting the door.

“You must be pretty well fed up, both of you,” Alleyn said.

“No, sir, no. We be tolerably clever, thank you. Cissy showed me how her switchboard works. A simple enough matter to the male intelligence, it turned out to be, and I took a turn at it while she had a nap. She come back like a lion refreshed and I followed her example. Matter of fact, sir, I was still dozing when you hammered at the door, warn’t I, Ciss? She can’t hear with they contraptions on her head. A simple pattern of a female, she is, sir, as you’ll find out for yourself if you see fit to interrogate her, but rather pleased than otherwise to remain.” He beamed upon Miss Pollock, who giggled.

Fox gravely contemplated Sergeant Pender. He was a stickler for procedure.

Alleyn introduced Pender to his colleagues. They took off their coats and hats and he laid down a plan of action. They were to make a systematic examination of the premises.

“We’re not looking for anything specific,” he said. “I’d like to find out how she stood, financially. Correspondence, if any. It would be lovely if she kept a diary and if there’s a dump of old newspapers, they’ll have to be gone over carefully. Look for any cuts. Bailey, you’d better pick up a decent set of prints if you can find them. Cash box — tooth glass — she had false teeth — take your pick. Thompson, will you handle the shelves in here? You might work the back premises and the bedroom, Fox. I’ll start on the parlour.”

He approached Cissy Pollock, who removed her headphones and simpered.

“You must have known Miss Cost very well,” he began. “How long have you been here with her, Miss Pollock?”

A matter of a year and up, it appeared. Ever since the shop was made a post office. Miss Cost had sold her former establishment at Dunlowman and had converted a cottage into the premises as they now stood. She had arranged for a wholesale firm to provide the Green Ladies, which she herself painted, and for a regional printer to reproduce the rhyme-sheets. Cissy talked quite readily of these activities, and Miss Cost emerged from her narrative as an experienced businesswoman. “She were proper sharp,” Cissy said appreciatively. When Alleyn spoke of yesterday’s Festival she relapsed briefly into giggles but this seemed to be a token manifestation, obligatory upon the star performer. Miss Cost had inaugurated a Drama Circle of which the Festival had been the first fruit, and Cissy herself the leading light. He edged cautiously towards the less public aspects of Miss Cost’s life and character. Had she many close friends? None that Cissy knew of though she did send Christmas cards. She hardly got any herself, outside local ones.

“So you were her best friend, then?”

“Aw, well…” said Cissy, and shuffled her feet.

“What about gentleman friends?”

This produced a renewed attack of giggles. After a great deal of trouble he elicted the now familiar story of advance and frustration. Miss Cost had warned Cissy repeatedly of the gentlemen and had evidently dropped a good many dark hints about improper overtures made to herself. Cissy was not pretty and was no longer very young. He thought that, between them, they had probably indulged in continuous fantasy and the idea rather appalled him. On Major Barrimore’s name being introduced in a roundabout fashion, she became uncomfortable and said, under pressure, that Miss Cost was proper set against him, and that he’d treated her bad. She would say nothing more under this heading. She remembered Miss Cost’s visit to the hospital. It appeared that she had tried the spring for her moles but without success. Alleyn ventured to ask if Miss Cost liked Dr. Mayne. Cissy with a sudden burst of candour, said she fair worshipped him.

“Ah!” said Sergeant Pender, who had listened to all this with the liveliest attention. “So she did then, and hunted the poor chap merciless, didn’t she, Ciss?”

“Aw, you do be awful, George Pender,” said Cissy, with spirit.

“Couldn’t help herself, no doubt, and not to be blamed for it,” he conceded.

Alleyn again asked Cissy if Miss Cost had any close women friends. Mrs. Carstairs? Or Mrs. Barrimore, for instance?

Cissy made a prim face that was also, in some indefinable way, furtive. “She weren’t terrible struck on Mrs. Barrimore,” she said. “She didn’t hold with her.” “Oh? Why was that, do you suppose?” “She reckoned she were sly,” said Cissy and was not to be drawn any further.

“Did Miss Cost keep a diary, do you know?” Alleyn asked, and as Cissy looked blank, he added: “A book. A record of day-to-day happenings?”

Cissy said Miss Cost was always writing in a book of an evening but kept it away careful-like, she didn’t know where. Asked if she had noticed any change in Miss Cost’s behaviour over the last three weeks, Cissy gaped at Alleyn for a second or two and then said Miss Cost had been kind of funny.

“In what way, funny?”

“Laughing,” said Cissy. “She took fits to laugh, suddenlike. I never see nothing to make her.”

“As if she was — what? Amused? Excited?”

“Axcited. Powerful pleased, too. Sly-like.”

“Did you happen to notice if she sent any letters to London?”

Miss Cost had on several occasions put her own letters in the mailbag but Cissy hadn’t got a look at them. Evidently, Alleyn decided, Miss Cost’s manner had intrigued her assistant. It was on these occasions that Miss Cost laughed.

At this juncture, Cissy was required at the switchboard. Alleyn asked Pender to follow him into the back room. He shut the door and said he thought the time had come for Miss Pollock to return to her home. She lived on the Island, it appeared, in one of the Fisherman’s Bay cottages. Alleyn suggested that Pender had better see her to her door as the storm was so bad. Bailey and Thompson could be shown how to work the switchboard during his absence.

When they had gone, Alleyn retired to the parlour and began operations upon Miss Cost’s desk, which, on first inspection, appeared to be a monument to the dimmest kind of disorder. Bills, dockets, trade leaflets and business communications were jumbled together in ill-running drawers and overcrowded pigeonholes. He sorted them into heaps and secured them with rubber bands.

He called out to Fox, who was in the kitchen: “As far as I can make out she was doing very nicely indeed, thank you. There’s a crack-pot sort of day book. No outstanding debts and an extremely healthy bank statement. We’ll get at her financial position through the income tax people, of course. What’ve you got?”

“Nothing to rave about,” Fox said.

“Newspapers?”

“Not yet. It’s a coal range, though.”

“Damn.”

They worked on in silence. Bailey reported a good set of impressions from a tumbler by the bed, and Thompson, relieved of the switchboard, photographed them. Fox put on his mackintosh and retired with a torch to an outhouse, admitting, briefly, the cold and uproar of the storm. After an interval he returned, bland with success, and bearing a coal-grimed, wet, crumpled and scorched fragment of newsprint.

“This might be something,” he said and laid it out for Alleyn’s inspection.

It was part of a sheet from the local paper from which a narrow strip had been cleanly excised. The remainder of a headline read: “…to well-known beauty spot” and underneath: “The Natural Amenities Association. At a meeting held at Dunlowman on Wednesday it was resolved to lodge a protest at the threat to Hatcherds Common, where it is proposed to build…”

“That’s it, I’m sure,” Alleyn said. “Same type. The original messages are in my desk, blast it, but one of them reads threat (in these capitals) ‘to close You are warned’: a good enough indication that she was responsible. Any more?”

“No. This was in the ash-bin. Fallen into the grate, most likely, when she burned the lot. I don’t think there’s anything else but I’ll take another look by daylight. She’s got a bit of a darkroom rigged up out there. Quite well equipped, too, by the look of it.”

“Has she now? Like to take a slant at it, Thompson?”

Thompson went out and presently returned to say it was indeed a handy little job of a place and he wouldn’t mind using it. “I’ve got that stuff we shot up at the spring,” he said. “How about it, sir?”

“I don’t see why not. Away you go. Good. Fox, you might penetrate to the bedchamber. I can’t find her blasted diary anywhere.”

Fox retired to the bedroom. Pender came back and said it was rougher than ever out of doors, and he didn’t see himself getting back to the village. Would it be all right if he spent the rest of the night on Miss Cost’s bed? “When vacant, in a manner of speaking,” he added, being aware of Fox’s activities. Fox emerged from a pitchpine wardrobe, obviously scandalized by Sergeant Pender’s unconventional approach, but Alleyn said he saw nothing against the suggestion and set Pender to tend the switchboard and help Thompson.

He returned to his own job. The parlour was a sort of unfinished echo of the front shop. Rows of plastic ladies, awaiting coats of green, yellow and pink paint, smirked blankly from the shelves. There were stacks of rhyme-sheets and stationery, and piles of jerkins, still to be sewn up the sides. Through the open door he could see the kitchen table with a jug and sugar-basin and a dirty cup with a sodden crust in its saucer. Miss Cost would have washed them up, no doubt, if she had returned from early service and not gone walking through the rain to her death.

In a large envelope he came across a number of photographs. A group of village maidens, Cissy prominent among them, with their arms upraised in what was clearly intended for corybantic ecstasy. Wally, showing his hands. Wally with his mouth open. Miss Cost, herself, in a looking-glass with her thumb on the camera trigger and smiling dreadfully. Several snapshots, obviously taken in the grounds of the nursing home, with Dr. Mayne, caught in moments of reluctance shading into irritation. View of the spring and one of a dark foreign-looking lady with an intense expression.

He heard Fox pull a heavy piece of furniture across the wooden floor and then give an ejaculation.

“Anything?” Alleyn asked.

“Might be. Behind the bed-head. A locked cupboard. Solid, mortise job. Now, where’d she have stowed the key?”

“Not in her bag. Where do spinsters hide keys?”

“I’ll try the chest of drawers for a start,” said Fox.

“You jolly well do. A favourite cache. Association of ideas. Freud would have something to say about it.”

Drawers were wrenched open, one after another.

“By gum!” Fox presently exclaimed. “You’re right, Mr. Alleyn. Two keys. Here we are.”

“Where?”

“Wrapped up in her com’s.”

“In the absence of a chastity belt, no doubt.”

“What’s that, Mr. Alleyn?”

“No matter. Either of them fit?”

“Hold on. The thing’s down by the skirting board. Yes. Yes, I do believe… Here we are.”

A lock clicked.

“Well?”

“Two cash boxes, so far,” Fox said, his voice strangely muffled.

Alleyn walked into the bedroom and was confronted by his colleague’s stern, up-ended beneath an illuminated legend which read:

This was supported by a bookshelf on which the works of Algernon Blackwood and Dennis Wheatley predominated.

Fox was on his knees with his head to the floor and his arm in a cupboard. He extracted two japanned boxes and put them on the unmade bed, across which lay a rumpled nightgown embroidered with lazy-daisies.

“The small key’s the job for both,” he said. “There you are, sir.”

The first box contained rolled bundles of banknotes and a well-filled cashbag; the second, a number of papers. Alleyn began to examine them.

The top sheet was a carbon copy with a perforated edge. It showed, in type, a list of dates and times covering the past twelve months.

There were twenty entries. Two, placed apart from the others, and dated the preceding year, were heavily underlined.

“From a duplicating book in her desk,” Alleyn said. “A page has been cut out. It’ll be the top copy of this one.”

“Typewritten,” Fox commented. “There’s a decrepit machine in the parlour. We’ll check, but I think this’ll be it.”

“Do the dates mean anything to you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“The underlined item does. Year before last. July 22nd—5 p.m. That’s the date and time of the Wally’s warts affair. Yesterday was the second anniversary.”

“Would the others be notes of later cures? Was any record kept?”

“Not to begin with. There is, now. The book’s on view at Wally’s cottage. We can check, but I don’t think that’s the answer. The dates are too closely bunched. They give — let’s see; they give three entries for August of last year, one for September, and then nothing until April 27th of this year. Then a regular sequence over the last three months up to — yes, by George! — up to a fortnight ago. What do you make of it, Br’er Fox? Any ideas?”

“Only that they’re all within licensing hours. Very nice bitter they serve up at the Boy-and-Lobster. It wouldn’t go down too badly. Warm in here, isn’t it?”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him. “You’re perfectly right,” he said. He went into the shop. “Pender,” he called out, “who’s the bartender in the evenings at the Boy-and-Lobster?”

“In the old days, sir, it were always the Major hisself. Since these yurr princely extensions, however, there be a barmaid in the main premises and the Major serves in a little wee fancy kind of place, behind the lounge.”

“Always?”

“When he’m capable,” said Pender drily, “which is pretty well always. He’m a masterpiece for holding his liquor.”

Pender returned to the shop. “There’s one other thing,” Alleyn said to Fox. “The actual times she’s got here between April and July grow later as the days grow longer.”

“So they do,” Fox said. “That’s right. So they do.”

“Well: let it simmer. What’s next? Exhibit Two.”

It was an envelope containing an exposed piece of film and a single print. Alleyn was about to lay the print on Miss Cost’s pillow. This bore the impress of her head and a single gray hair. He looked at it briefly, turned aside, and dropped the print on her dressing-table. Fox joined him.

It was a dull, indifferent snapshot: a tangle of bracken, a downward slope of broken ground and the top of a large boulder. In the foreground, out of focus, was the image of wire netting.

“Above the spring,” Alleyn said. “Taken from the hillside. Look here, Fox.”

Fox adjusted his spectacles. “Feet,” he said. “Two pairs. Courting couple!”

“Very much so. Miss Cost’s anathema. I’m afraid Miss Cost begins to emerge as a progressively unattractive character.”

“Shutter-peeping,” said Fox. “You don’t get it so often among women.”

Alleyn turned it over. Neatly written across the back was the current year, and “June 17th—7:30 p.m.”

“Last month,” Alleyn said. “Bailey!” he called out. “Here a minute, would you?” Bailey came in. “Take a look at this. Use a lens. I want you to tell me if you think the man’s shoes in this shot might tally with anything you saw at the spring. It’s a tall order, I know.”

Bailey put the snapshot under a lamp and bent over it. Presently he said: “Can I have a word with Thompson, sir?” Sergeant Thompson was summoned from outer darkness. “How would this blow up?” Bailey asked him. “Here’s the neg.”

“It’s a shocking neg,” Thompson said. He added grudgingly: “She’s got an enlarger.”

Alleyn said: “On the face of it, do you think there’s any hope of a correspondence, Bailey?”

Bailey, still using his lens, said: “Can’t really say, sir. The casts are in my room at the pub.”

“What about you, Thompson? Got your shots of the prints?”

“They’re in the dish, now.”

“Well, take this out and see what you make of it. Have you found her camera?”

“Yes. Lovely job,” Thompson said. “You wouldn’t have expected it. Very fast.” He named the make with reverence.

“Pender,” Alleyn said, re-entering the shop, “do you know anything about Miss Cost’s camera?”

Pender shook his head and then did what actors call a “double-take.” “Yes, I do, though,” he said. “It was give her in gratitude by a foreign lady that was cured of a terrible bad rash. She was a patient up to hospital, and Miss Cost talked her into the spring.”

“I see. Thompson, would it get results around about 7:30 on a summer evening?”

“Certainly would. Better than this affair, if properly handled.”

“All right. See what you can do.”

Bailey and Thompson went away and Alleyn rejoined Fox in the bedroom.

“Fox,” Alleyn said distastefully, “I don’t know whose feet the male pair may prove to be, but I’m damn sure I’ve recognized the female’s.”

“Really, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Yes. Very good buckskin shoes with very good buckles. She wore them to the Festival. I’m afraid it’s Mrs. Barrimore.”

“Fancy!” said Fox, after a pause, and he added with his air of simplicity: “Well, then, it’s to be hoped the others turn out to be the Major’s.”

There were no other papers and no diary in either of the boxes.

“Did you reach to the end of the cupboard?” Alleyn asked Fox.

“No, I didn’t. It’s uncommonly deep. Extends through the wall and under the counter in the shop,” Fox grumbled.

“Let me try.”

Alleyn lay on the bedroom floor and reached his long arm into the cupboard. His fingers touched something — a book? “She must have used her brolly to fish it out,” he grunted. “Hold on. There are two of them — no, three. Here they come. I think… Yes. Yes, Br’er Fox. This is it.”

They were large commercial diaries and were held together with a rubber band. He took them into the parlour and laid them out on Miss Cost’s desk. When he opened the first he found page after page covered in Miss Cost’s small skeleton handwriting. He read an entry at random.

Alleyn read on for a minute or two. “It would take a day to get through it,” he said. “This is her first visit to the Island. Two years ago.”

“Interesting?”

“Excruciating. Where’s that list of dates?”

Fox put it on the desk.

Alleyn turned the pages of the diary. References to Major B., later K., though veiled in unbelievable euphemisms, became more and more explicit. In this respect alone, Alleyn thought, the gallant Major has a lot to answer for. He turned back to the entry for the day after Wally’s cure. It was ecstatic:

She ran on in this vein for the whole of the entry. Alleyn read it with a sensation of exasperated compassion. The entry itself was nothing to his purpose. But across it, heavily inked, Miss Cost on some later occasion had put down an enormous mark of interrogation and, besides this, had added a note: “Sept. 30th—8:45.”

This was the second of the two underlined dates on the paper. He turned to it in the diary:

Alleyn, looking increasingly grim, went over the entries for the whole list. Throughout two summers, Miss Cost had hunted her evening quarry with obsessive devotion, and had recorded the fruits of the chase as if in some antic game book: time, place and circumstance. On each occasion that she spied upon her victims, she had found the enclosure padlocked but had taken up a point of vantage on the hillside. At no stage did she give the names of the lovers, but their identity was inescapable.

“Mrs. Barrimore and Dr. Mayne,” Alleyn said. “To hell with this case!”

“Awkward!” observed Fox.

“My dear old Fox, it’s dynamite. And it fits,” Alleyn said, staring disconsolately at his colleague. “The devil of it is, it fits.”

He began to read the entries for the past month. Dr. Mayne, Miss Cost weirdly concluded, was not to blame. He was a victim, caught in the toils, unable to free himself and therefore unable to follow his nobler inclination towards Miss Cost herself. Interlarded with furious attacks upon Miss Emily and covert allusions to the anonymous messages were notes on the Festival, a savage comment on Miss Emily’s visit to the shop, and a distracted reference to the attack of asthma that followed it. “The dark forces of evil that emanate from this woman” were held responsible. There followed a number of cryptic asides. (“Trehern agrees. It’s right. I know it’s right!”).

“It is the Cause, it is the Cause, my soul,” Alleyn muttered, disconsolately. “The old, phony argument.”

Fox, who had been reading over his shoulder, said: “It’d be a peculiar thing if she’d worked Trehern up to doing the job, and then got herself mistaken for the intended victim!”

“It sounds very neat, Br’er Fox, but in point of fact, it’s lousy with loose ends. I can’t take it. Just let’s go through the other statements, now.”

They did this and Fox sighed over the result. “I suppose so,” he said — and added, “I like things to be neat, and they so seldom are.”

“You’re a concealed classicist,” Alleyn said. “We’d better go back to this ghastly diary. Read on.”

They had arrived at the final week: Rehearsals for the Festival. Animadversions upon Miss Emily. The incident of the Green Lady on Miss Emily’s desk.

Alleyn turned a page and there, facing them, was the last entry Miss Cost was to make in her journal.

“Yesterday evening,” Alleyn said. “After the debacle at the spring.”

The thunderstorm, he was not surprised to find, was treated as a judgment. Nemesis, in the person of one of Miss Cost’s ambiguous deities, had decided to touch up the unbelievers with six of the cosmic best. Among these offenders Miss Emily was clearly included, but it emerged that she was not the principal object of Miss Cost’s spleen. “Laugh at your peril,” she ominously wrote, “at the Great Ones.” And, as if stung by this observation, she continued, in a splutter of disjointed venom, to threaten some unnamed persons. “At last!” she wrote…

“And so it was,” Fox said, looking up over his spectacles. “Poor thing. Very sad, really, these cases. Do you see your way through all this, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I think I do, Br’er Fox. I’m afraid I do. And I’ll tell you why.”

He had scarcely begun, when Bailey, moving rather more quickly than he was wont, came through from the shop.

“Someone for you, sir. A Miss Williams. She says it’s urgent.” Alleyn went to the telephone.

Jenny sounded as if it were very urgent indeed.

“Mr. Alleyn? Thank God! Please come up here, quickly. Please do. Miss Emily’s rooms. I can’t say anything else.” Alleyn heard a muffled ejaculation. A man shouted distantly and a woman screamed. There was a faint but unmistakable crash of broken glass. “Please come!” said Jenny.

“At once,” Alleyn said. And to Fox: “Leave Pender on the board, and you others follow as quick as you can. Boy-and-Lobster, Room 35 to the right of the stairhead on the first flight.”

Before they had time to answer he was out of the shop and had plunged, head down, into the storm outside.