Clutch of Constables

Chapter 8 – Routine continued

“At this point,” Alleyn said, “I’m going to jump the gun and show you a photograph of post-mortem marks across the back at waist level and diagonally across the shoulder-blades of the body. Here are her wrists, similarly scarred. These marks were classed as having been inflicted after death. As you see they have all the characteristics of post-mortem scarring. What do they suggest? Yes?”

“The cord, sir,” ventured Carmichael in the second row. “The cord that attached the bawdy to the suitcase.”

“I’m afraid that’s not quite accurate. These grooves are narrow and deep and only appear on the back. Now look at this. That’s the cord, laid beside the marks. You can see it tallies. So far you are right, Carmichael. But you see that the higher marks cross each other in the form of an X with a line underneath. Have another shot. What are they?”

From somewhere towards the back a doubtful voice uttered the word ‘flagellation’ and followed it with an apologetic little cough. Someone else made the noise ‘gatcha’ upon which there was a muffled guffaw.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Alleyn said. “However: to press on with Mr Fox’s investigations. He found nothing else of interest at the Crossdyke end and moved to the stretch of river below Ramsdyke weir where the body was found. Above Ramsdyke near the hollow called Wapentake Pot, the road from Crossdyke and Tollardwark was undergoing repairs. There were loose stones and rubble. It crosses Dyke Way and Dyke Way leads down to a bridge over The River where the Roman canal joins it. Downstream from here is the weir with its own bridge, a narrow affair with a single handrail. It’s here that the effluent from a factory enters the mainstream and brews a great mass of detergent foam over the lower reaches.

“The weir bridge is narrow, green, wet and slithery with foam blown back from the fall. It is approached from the road by concrete steps and a cinder path.

“Along this path, Mr Fox again found a thread or two of dark blue synthetic caught on a bramble. Here’s the photograph. And I may tell you that a close search of the pyjamas revealed a triangular gap that matched the fragment from Crossdyke. Classic stuff.

“The path is bordered on one side by a very old wall from which a number of bricks had worked loose.

“Now for the weir bridge. Nearly three days had passed between the night she disappeared and our work on it. A pretty dense film of detergent had been blown back and it was a particularly awkward job to examine it without destroying any evidence there might be. However. There was a notice warning people that it was dangerous to use the bridge and the lock-keeper said he didn’t think anyone had been on it for at least a week.

“Mr. Fox found some evidence of recent gloved hand-holds on the rail. No prints were obtainable. For a distance of about twelve feet from the bank the actual footway looked to be less thickly encrusted than the remaining stretch of the bridge. Mr Fox reckoned that there was a sort of family resemblance between the appearance of the bridge and the drag over the heel prints on the bank at Crossdyke. Here are Thompson’s blow-ups for comparison. You can see how bad, from our point of view, the conditions were on the bridge.

“Now, out of all this, what sort of picture do you begin to get. Yes? All right, Carmichael?”

Carmichael rose, fixed Alleyn with his blue stare and delivered.

“To re-cap, sir,” Carmichael began ominously. “As a wur-r-r—king hypothesis, it could be argued that the bawdy of the deceased had been passed from the deck of the vessel into the possession of the persons who received it and that it had maybe been drawped and dragged in the process, sir, thus pairtially obleeterating the heel prints. Furthermore it could be reasonably deduced, sir, that the bawdy was transported by means of the motor-bike to Ramsdyke where it was conveyed by hand to the weir bridge, dragged some twelve feet along it and consigned to the watter.”

He stopped, cleared his throat and raised his hand: “As a rider to the above, sir, and proceeding out of it, “ he said. ”A suitcase, being the personal property of deceased, and packed with her effects, was removed from her cabin and transferred by the means already detailed, with the bawdy, to the said weir and there, weighted with stones and gravel and a half-brick, attached to the bawdy by the cord produced. The bawdy and the suitcase were then as detailed consigned to the watter.”

He resumed his seat and gave Alleyn a modest smile.

“Yes, Carmichael, yes,” Alleyn said, “and what about the post-mortem marks of the cord?”

Carmichael rose again.

“For want of an alternative,” he said with the utmost complacency, “I would assume as a wurrking premiss, sir, that the deed bawdy was lashed to the person of the cyclist thus rendering the spurious appearance of a pillion-rider.”

“Revolting as the picture you conjure up may be,” Alleyn said. “I’m afraid you’re right, Carmichael.”

“Shall we say deed right, sir?” Carmichael suggested with an odiously pawky grin.

“We shall do nothing of the sort, Carmichael. Sit down.”

-1-

“It’s a horrid picture that begins to emerge, isn’t it?” Alleyn said as he eased the diary out of the sponge-bag and laid it with elaborate care on a folded towel. “The body is lashed to the cyclist’s back and over it is dragged the dull magenta gown, hiding the cord. The arms are pulled round his waist and the wrists tied. The head, one must suppose, lolls forward on the rider’s shoulder.

“And if anyone was abroad in the night on the road from Crossdyke to Ramsdyke they might have seen an antic show: a man on a Route-Rocket with what seemed to be either a very affectionate or a very drunken rider on his pillion: a rider whose head lolled and jerked preposterously and who seemed to be glued to his back.”

“What about the suitcase?” asked Tillottson.

“Made fast. It’s not weighted at this stage. The stones were collected at the weir.”

“Roadside heap,” Fox put in. “Loose brick. Shingle. We’ve got all that.”

“Exactly, Br’er Fox. Fish out a sponge from my bag, would you?”

Fox did so. Alleyn pressed it over the surfaces of the diary, mopping up the water that seeped out. “It’s when he gets to Ramsdyke,” he went on, “that the cyclist’s toughest job begins. Presumably he’s single-handed. He has to dismount, carry his burden, a ghastly pick-a-back, presumably, down to the weir. He unlooses and dumps it, returns for the case, puts in the stones and shingle, humps the case to the body, adds a loose half-brick, ties the body to the case and pushes both of them far enough along the footbridge to topple them into the weir.”

“Do I,” Fox blandly inquired, “hear the little word conjecture?”

“If you do you can shut up about it. But you don’t hear it all that clearly, old boy. Find me another theory that fits the facts and I’ll eat the dust.”

“I won’t give you the satisfaction, Mr Alleyn.”

“Find something to slide under the diary, will you? I want to turn it over. A stiff card will do. Good. Here we go. Now, the sponge again. Yes. Well, from here, the sinister cyclist and his moll begin to set-up their disappearing act. All we know is that they had paid their bill at the Star and that they lit off some time that night or early next morning. Presumably with a fabulous Fabergé bibelot representing the Signs of the Zodiac in their possession.”

“Hi!” Tillottson ejaculated. “D’you reckon?”

“This really is conjecture,” Alleyn said. “But I don’t mind betting we do not find the damned jewel on board the Zodiac.”

“River bed? Swept of the body, like?”

“I don’t see him leaving it on the body, you know.”

“I suppose not. No.”

“It may have been the motive,” Fox said. “If it’s all that fabulous.”

“Or it may have been a particularly lush extra: a kind of bonus in the general scheme of awards.”

Tillottson said: “You don’t lean to the notion that this cyclist character—”

“Call him Smith,” Fox suggested sourly. “I’ll bet nobody else ever has.”

“This Smith, then. You don’t fancy he did the killing?”

“No,” Alleyn said. “I don’t. I think she was killed on board the Zodiac. I think the body was handed over to Smith together with the suitcase and probably the Fabergé jewel. Now, dare we take a look inside this diary.”

It had deteriorated since poor Hazel Rickerby-Carrick had examined it after its first immersion. The block of pages had parted company with the spine and had broken into sections. The binding was pulpy and the paper softened.

“Should we dry it out first?” Fox asked.

“I’ll try one gingerly fiddle. Got a broadish knife in the station?”

Tillottson produced a bread knife. With infinite caution Alleyn introduced it into the diary at the place where the condition of the edges suggested a division between the much used and still unused sections. He followed the knife blade up with a wider piece of card and finally turned the top section back.

Blotched, mottled, in places blistered and in others torn, it was still for the most part legible.

“Waterproof ink,” Alleyn said. “God bless the self-propelling pencil.”

And like the writer, when she sat in her cabin on the last day of her life, Alleyn read the final entry in her diary.

“I’m at it again. Trying too hard, as usual—”

And like her, having read it, he turned the page and drew a blank.

-2-

“So there it is,” Alleyn said. “She writes that she returned from compline at St Crispin-in-the-Fields to the motor-vessel Zodiac. She doesn’t say by what road but as Troy followed the same procedure and returned by Ferry Lane and did not encounter her, it may be that she took a different route.”

“She could,” Tillottson said. “Easily. Weyland Street, it’d have to be.”

“All right. She was wearing rubber-sole shoes. At some stage in her return trip she retired into a dark shop-entry to remove a pebble or something from one of her sneakers. From this position, she overheard a conversation between two or more — from the context I would think more—people that, quote, ‘froze’ and ‘riveted’ her. One of the voices; it was a whisper, she failed to identify. The other—or others—she no doubt revealed on the subsequent page which has been torn out of the diary. Now. My wife has told me that after Lazenby rescued the diary she thought she saw, for a fractional moment, paper with writing on it, clutched in his left hand. That evening at Crossdyke, Miss Rickerby-Carrick, who was in a state of violent excitement, intimated that she wanted urgently to confide in Troy, to ask her advice. No doubt she would have done so—but Troy got a migraine and instead of exploring Crossdyke went early to bed. Miss R-C. joined the others and inspected the ruins and was shown how to catch butterflies by Caley Bard. Troy, who was feeling better, saw this episode through her porthole.

“She also saw Miss Rickerby-Carrick peel off from the main party, run down the hill and excitedly latch on to Dr. Natouche who was walking down the lane. She seemed to show him something that she held in the palm of her hand. Troy couldn’t see what it was.”

“That’s interesting,” said Fox.

“Dr Natouche has subsequently told Troy that she asked him about some sort of tranquilliser pill she’d been given by Miss Hewson. He did not, I think, actually say that she showed him this pill when they were in the lane: Troy simply supposes that was what it was.”

“Might it,” Tillottson ventured, “have been this what you call it—furbished jewel?”

“Fah-ber-zhay,” murmured Mr Fox who spoke French. “And she wore that round her neck on a cord, Bert.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, leaving it, “that night she disappeared and in my opinion, that night, very late, she was murdered.

“The next day, Natouche told Troy he was concerned about Miss Rickerby-Carrick. He didn’t say in so many words that he thought she might commit suicide but Troy got the impression that he did in fact fear it.

“I’ll round up the rest of the bits and pieces gleaned by my wife, most of which, but I think not all, you have already heard, Tillottson.”

“Er — well — yerse.”

“Here they are, piecemeal. Pollock started life as a commercial artist and changed to real estate. He does a beautiful job of lettering when told exactly what’s wanted.

“Natouche makes pretty maps.

“Miss Hewson was shown the Fabergé bibelot by its owner.

“Miss Hewson seems to be very keen on handing out pills.

“The Hewsons were disproportionately annoyed when they heard that the return visit to Tollardwark would be on early-closing day. They hired a car from Longminster to do their shop-crawl in Tollardwark and on that trip bought their stuff at Jo Bagg’s in Ferry Lane.

“In their loot was an oil painting, purporting to be a signed Constable. Hewson said they’d posted it on to their address in London but I saw it in one of their suitcases.

“The cyclists watched the Zodiac sail from Norminster and re-appeared that evening at Ramsdyke. Troy thought she heard them—but says of course she might be wrong—during the night in Tollardwark.

“Mrs Bagg complains about cyclists hanging round their yard on Tuesday. A screech, as of the cupboard door, attracted her attention.

“The Baggs say the roll of prints was not in the cupboard a few days before the Hewsons found it there.

“Lazenby is a one-eyed man and conceals the condition. Troy, who can give no valid reason, thinks he’s not a parson, an opinion that evidently is not shared by the Bishop of Norminster who had him to stay and sent him in the episcopal car to the Zodiac. He says he’s an Australian. We send his prints and a description to the Australian police. We also send the Hewsons’ over to the FBI in New York.”

Fox made a note of it.

“The Hewsons,” Alleyn continued, “are expensively equipped photographers.

“Pollock irritates Caley Bard. Miss Rickerby-Carrick irritates everybody. Caley Bard irritates the Hewsons, Pollock, and possibly, Lazenby.

“Pollock and the Hewsons are racially prejudiced against Natouche. Bard and Lazenby are not.

“A preliminary examination of the body in question supports the theory that she was killed by an attack from behind on the carotids.

“Andropulos would have been a passenger in the Zodiac if Foljambe hadn’t killed him—by sudden and violent pressure from behind on the carotids.”

Alleyn broke off, stared absently at the diary, waited for a moment and then said: “Some of these items are certainly of the first importance, others may be of none at all. Taken as a whole do you think they point to any one general conclusion?”

“Yes,” Fox said. “I do. I certainly do.”

“What?” Tillottson asked.

“Conspiracy.”

“I agree with you,” said Alleyn. “Between whom?”

“You mean—what’s the gang?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Now.” Fox dragged his great palm across his mouth. “Why don’t we say it?” he asked.

“Say what? That the real question is not only one of conspiracy but of who’s running the show? And more particularly: is it the Jampot?”

“That’s right. That’s it. Cherchez,” said Mr Fox with his customary care, “le Folichon. Où,” he added, “le Pot à Confiture, which is what they’re beginning to call him in the Sûreté.

“You made your mark, evidently, in Paris.”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” Fox said heavily. “But let it pass. Yes, Mr Alleyn. I reckon it’s the Jampot on this job.”

“Why,” Tillottson asked, “are you so sure, Teddy?”

“Well, take a look at it, Bert. Take a look at the lot Mr Alleyn’s just handed us. Three items point to it, you know, now don’t they?”

Yerse,” Mr Tillottson concurred after a long pause. ”I get you. Yerse.”

Alleyn was bent over the diary. His long forefinger touched the rag of paper that was the remnant of the last entry. He slipped his nail under it and disclosed another and then another torn marginal strip still caught in the binding. “Three pages gone,” he said, “and it’s not unreasonable to suppose they would have told us what she overheard from her dark entry in Tollardwark. Wrenched out in a hurry, and, I suppose, either burnt or thrown overboard. The latter almost certainly. They were wet and pulpy. Torn out whether purposely or accidentally, and into The River with them.”

“That’ll be the story,” Fox agreed heavily. “And the inference is — by Lazenby.”

“If Troy’s right. She’s not certain.”

Mr Tillottson who had been in a hard, abstracted stare since his last utterance now said: “So it’s a field of five — six if you count the Skipper and that’d be plain ridiculous. I’ve known Jim Tretheway these five years, decent wee man.”

“He’s not all that wee,” Fox said mildly.

“The Doctor, Mr Bard, Mr Hewson, the Reverend and Pollock. And if you’re right one of them’s the toughest proposition in what they call the international crime world. You wouldn’t credit it, though, would you? Here!” Mr Tillottson said, struck by a new thought. “You wouldn’t entertain the idea of the whole boiling being in cahoots, would you? If so: why? Why go river-cruising if they’re a pack of villains in a great big international racket. Not for kicks you’d think, now, would you?”

“Of the lot that remains on board, excluding the Tretheways,” Alleyn said, “I incline to think there’s only one non-villain. I’ll give you my reasons, such as they are, and I fully admit they wouldn’t take first prize in the inescapable logic stakes. But still. Here they are.”

His colleagues listened in massive silence. Fox sighed heavily when he had finished. “And that,” he said, “followed out, leaves us with only one guess for the identity of the Jampot. Or does it?”

“I think it does. If, if, if and it’s a hell of a big if.”

“I’ll back it,” Fox said. “What’s our next bit of toil?”

“We don’t wait for the report on the p.m. I think, Br’er Fox, we cut in and use our search-warrant. What’s the time? Five past nine. If they’ve gone to bed it’s just too bad. Back to Ramsdyke Lock with us. Did you pick up a bit of nosh, by the way?”

Pickle and beef sandwiches and a couple of half-pints.”

“We’ll sink them on the trip. Hark bloody forrard away.”

-3-

If events do, as some would have us believe, stamp an intangible print upon their surroundings, this phenomenon is not instantaneous. Murder doesn’t scream instantly from the walls of a room that may be drenched in blood. Clean the room up and it is just a room again. If violence of behaviour or of emotion does, in fact, project itself upon its immediate surroundings, like light upon photographic film, the process seems to be cumulative rather than immediate. It may be a long time after the event that people begin to think: this is an unhappy house. Or room. Or place. Or craft.

The saloon in that most pleasant of water-wanderers, the Zodiac, wore its usual after-dark aspect. Its cherry-coloured window-curtains were drawn and its lamps were lit. It was cosy. The more so, perhaps, because the river mist known as the Creeper had now shut the craft off from her surroundings.

The six remaining passengers occupied themselves in much the same way as they had done before Hazel Rickerby-Carrick disappeared in the night. The Hewsons, Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock played Scrabble. Caley Bard read. Dr Natouche, a little removed, as always, put some finishing touches to his map of the The River. Behind the bar, Mrs Tretheway read a magazine. The Skipper was ashore and the boy Tom was in bed.

Troy’s Zodiac picture with its vivid impersonations of the passengers was now framed and had replaced its begetter above the bar. There they all were, preposterously masquerading as Heavenly bodies, skipping round Mr Pollock’s impeccable lettering.

The Virgin was gone for good and the Goat, as Troy had thought of herself, was removed to Norminster but there, Alleyn thought, were all the others, mildly employed, with a killer and a single detached person among them.

When Alleyn and Fox arrived in the saloon, the Scrabble players became quieter still. Miss Hewson’s forefinger, pushing a lettered tile into place, stopped and remained, pointed down, like an admonitory digit on a monument. Pollock’s head, bent over the Scrabble-board, was not raised though his eyes were and looked at Alleyn from under his brows, showing rims of white. Lazenby, who had been attending to the score, let his pencil remain in suspended action. Hewson, pipe gripped in teeth, held the head of a match against the box but did not strike it.

For a few seconds this picture was presented like an unheralded still at the cinema; then it animated as if there had been no hitch in its mild progression.

“I’m sorry,” Alleyn said, “that we have to make nuisances of ourselves again but there it is. In police work it’s a case of set a nuisance to catch a nuisance.”

“Well!” Caley Bard ejaculated. “I must say that as reassuring remarks go, I don’t think much of that one. If it was meant to reassure.”

“It was meant as a sort of apology,” Alleyn said, “but I see your point. Please don’t let us disturb anybody. We’ve come to tidy up a loose end of routine and I’m afraid we shall have to ask you all to be very patient and stay out of your cabins until we’ve done so. We won’t be long about it, I hope.”

After a considerable silence Mr Hewson predictably said: “Yeah?” and leant back in his chair with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. He turned his left ear with its hearing aid towards Alleyn. “ ‘Stay out of our cabins,’ ” he quoted with what seemed to be intended as a parody of Alleyn’s voice. “Is that so? Now, would that be a kind of polite indication of a search, Superintendent?

“I’m glad it sounded polite,” Alleyn rejoined cheerfully. “Yes. It would.”

“You got a warrant?” Pollock asked.

“Yes, indeed. Would you like to see it?”

“Of course we don’t want to see it,” Caley Bard wearily interjected. “Don’t be an ass, Pollock.”

Pollock muttered: “I’m within my rights, aren’t I?”

Alleyn said: “Miss Hewson, I’ll start with your cabin, if that suits you, and as soon as I’ve finished, you will be free to use it. At the same time Inspector Fox will take a look at yours, Mr Hewson.”

“A second look,” Mr Hewson sourly amended.

“That’s right,” Alleyn said. “So it is. A formality, you might call it.”

“You might,” Mr Hewson conceded. “I wouldn’t.”

Miss Hewson said: “Gee, Earl, if I hadn’t clean forgotten! Gee, how crazy can you get? Look, Mr Alleyn: look, Superintendent, I got to ‘fess up’ right now, about that problem-picture. There’s been a kind of misunderstanding between Brother and me. He calculated I’d sent it off and I calculated he had.”

“Just the darnedest thing,” Mr Hewson put in with a savage glance at his sister.

“Certainly is,” she agreed. “And so what do you know? There it is just exactly where it’s been all this time. In the bottom of a grip in my stateroom.”

“Fancy,” said Alleyn. “I shall enjoy taking a second look. Last time I saw it, it was in an otherwise empty case in the deceased’s cabin, which, by the way, I locked.”

A fairly long silence was decorated with a stifled giggle from Caley Bard.

Miss Hewson said breathlessly: “Well, pardon me, again. I guess I’m kind of nervously exhausted. I meant to say the spare cabin.”

Mr Hewson said angrily, “O.K. O.K. So it wasn’t posted. So we acted like it was. Why? I’ll tell you precisely why, Superintendent. This picture’s a work of art. Ask your lady-wife. And this work of art maybe was executed by this guy Constable which would make it a very, very interesting proposition commercially. And we paid out real money, real British money, if that’s not a contradiction in terms, for this work of art and we don’t appreciate the idea of having it removed from our possession by anybody. Repeat: anybody. Period. Cops or whoever. Period. So whadda-we-do?” Mr Hewson asked at large and answered himself with perhaps a slight loss of countenance. “We anticipate,” he said, “the event. We make like this picture’s already on its way.”

“And so I’m sure it would be,” Alleyn said cheerfully, “if it wasn’t for a large and conspicuous constable on duty outside the Ramsdyke Lock post-office.”

Mr Hewson’s face became slightly pink but his gaze which was directed at Alleyn did not shift. His sister coughed with refinement, said: “Pardon me,” and looked terrified.

“You can’t win,” Mr Pollock observed to nobody in particular and added after a moment’s reflection: “It’s disgusting.”

“If we’re not going to keep you up till all hours,” Alleyn said, “we’d better begin. Anybody really want to see the search-warrant, by the way?”

“I certainly do,” Mr Hewson announced. “It may be a very crude notion but I certainly do want that thing.”

“But not at all,” Alleyn rejoined. “Very sensible of you. Here it is.”

Fox displayed the warrant and the Hewsons and Mr Pollock looked upon it with distaste. Mr Lazenby said generally that it was a fair go and he had no complaints. Caley Bard tipped Alleyn one of his cock-eyed winks but offered no comment and Dr Natouche interrupted his work on the map to produce the key of his cabin and lay it on the table. This action seemed to rattle everybody but Caley Bard who merely remarked that his own cabin was unlocked.

“Thank you so much,” Alleyn said. “We do carry one or two of those open-sesame jobs but this will be quicker.” He picked up the key. “Any more?” he asked.

“You know something?” Mr Hewson said. “If you hadn’t gotten those other honest-to-God cops around I’d say you were some kind of phoney laugh with the pay-off line left out.”

“You would?” Alleyn said absently. “Sorry. There’s no joke anywhere that I can see, I promise you that.”

It turned out that the only other locked cabin apart from Natouche’s and the Hewsons’ was Mr Pollock’s. He handed over his key with as bad a grace as he could muster, turned his back on the company and sucked his teeth.

Before he left, Alleyn walked over to the corner table where Dr Natouche still concerned himself with his map of the water-ways. He drew back, rested his dark hands and looked placidly at what he had done. “I am an amateur of maps,” he said, perhaps by way of excuse.

If this was a true example of his work he was right. The chart with its little tentative insets and its meticulous lettering was indeed the work of a devoted amateur. It was so fine and so detailed that it almost needed a lens to examine it. Alleyn followed the line of The River to Longminster. There he saw, predictably, the Minster itself but there, too, was an inn-sign and beside it a thin, gallant and carefully drawn female figure with a dark cropped head.

He looked down at Dr Natouche’s head with its own short-cropped fuzz and at the darkish scalp beneath. The two men did not speak to each other.

Alleyn and Fox embarked on their search.

They found the “Constable” still in place, took possession of it, moved into Miss Hewson’s cabin and methodically emptied the drawers and luggage.

“Funny,” Mr Fox remarked, laying out a rather dreary night-gown with infinite care upon Miss Hewson’s bed. “I always expect American ladies’ lingerie to be more troublante than this type of stuff.”

Alleyn stared at him. “I am speechless,” he said.

“Why do you make out they were so anxious we wouldn’t get a look at that picture?”

“You tell me.”

“Well,” Fox said. “I’ve been trying to set up a working theory. Suppose it was all on the level. Suppose this picture was in the cupboard when this Jo Bagg bought the sideboard.”

“Which it wasn’t, if his story’s right.”

“Quite so. Suppose, then, it’d been on the premises and somebody shoved it in the cupboard and the Baggs hadn’t taken any notice of it and suppose the Hewsons just happened to pick it up like they said and pay for it all fair and above board. In that case what’s wrong with letting us have a look at it? They showed it off willingly enough last night, by all accounts. He kind of hinted they were afraid we might confiscate. They may have been looking at British telly exports in the States, of course, and taken some fanciful notion of how we go to work but personally I didn’t think their yarn stood up.”

“I agree. Playing it by ear, they were, I don’t mind betting.”

“All right, then. Why? People only go on in that style because they’ve got something to hide. What would they have to hide about this picture? I can only think of one answer. What about you, Mr Alleyn?”

“That it’s a racket and they’re in on it.”

“Just so. The thing’s a forgery and they know it. From that it’s a short step to supposing Jo Bagg never had it. The Hewsons brought it with them and planted it in the cupboard when the Baggs weren’t looking.”

“I don’t think so, Br’er Fox. Not from the account Bagg gave of the sale.”

“No? I wasn’t there, of course, when he gave it,” Fox admitted.

“How do you like the possibility of the motor-cyclists planting it? They were hanging about Bagg’s yard on Tuesday and the screech of the cupboard door seems to have drawn old Mrs B.’s baleful attention to them.”

“Could be. Could well be. Come to that, they might be salting the district with carefully planted forgeries.”

“They might, at that. Look at these, Fox.”

Alleyn had drawn out of a pocket in Miss Hewson’s dressing-case, a folder of colour photographs and film. He laid the prints out on the lid of the suitcase. Three of them were of Ramsdyke Lock. He put the painting on the deck beside them.

“Same thing,” Fox said.

“Yes. Taken from precisely the same spot and by the look of the trees, in spring. Presumably on the previous visit that old Mrs Bagg went on about. But look. There’s that difference we noticed.”

“The trees. Yes. Yes. In the painting they’re smaller and—well—different.”

“Very thorough. Wouldn’t do, you see, to have them is they are now. They had to go back to the Constable era. I wouldn’t mind betting,” Alleyn said. “That those trees have been copied from an actual Constable or a reproduction of one.”

“Who by?”

Alleyn didn’t reply at once. He restored the photographs to the dressing-case and after another long look at the picture, rolled it carefully and tied it up. “We’ll take possession of this,” he said, “and thus justify the Hewsons’ worst forebodings. I’ll write a receipt. Everything in order here? We’ll move on, Br’er Fox, to the other locked cabin: I simply can’t wait to call, in his absence, on Mr Pollock.”

-4-

Thompson and Bailey had arrived. They went quietly round the cabins collecting prints from tooth glasses and were then to move to the sites of the motor-bicycle traces. Tillottson was in his station in Tollardwark hoping for news of the cyclists and, optimistically, for reports from America and Australia to come through London. Meanwhile the appropriate department was setting up an exhaustive check on the deceased and on the two passengers, Natouche and Caley Bard, who lived in England. Caley had given a London address and his occupation as: “Crammer of ill-digested raw-material into the maws of unwilling adolescents.” In other words, he was a free-lance coach to a tutorial firm of considerable repute.

Troy was in bed and asleep at the Percy Arms in Norminster and Alleyn and Fox had completed their search of the cabins.

“A poor, thin time we’ve had of it,” Alleyn said. “Except for that one small thing.”

“The Pollock exhibit?”

“That’s right.”

In Mr Pollock’s cabin they had found in the breast pocket of his deplorable suit a plastic wallet containing a print of the Hewson photograph of Ramsdyke Lock and several envelopes displaying trial sketches for the words with which he had subsequently embellished Troy’s picture. He had evidently taken a lot of trouble over them, interrupting himself from time to time to doodle. It was his doodling that Alleyn had found interesting.

“Very neat, very detailed, very meticulous,” he had muttered. “Not the doodles of a non-draughtsman. No. I wonder what the psychiatric experts have to say under this heading. Someone ought to write a monograph: ‘Doodling and the Unconscious’ or: ‘How to—’.” And he had broken off in the middle of the sentence to stare at the last of Mr Pollock’s trial efforts. He held it out to Fox to examine.

“The Crab is Followed—” Mr Pollock had printed and then repeated, with slight changes, several of the letters. But down one side of the envelope he had made a really elaborate doodle.

It was a drawing of a tree, for all the world twin to the elm that overhung the village pond in Miss Hewson’s oil painting.

“Very careless,” Alleyn had said as he put it in his pocket. “I’m surprised at him.”

When they returned to the saloon they found the Hewsons, and Mr Pollock and Mr Lazenby, still up and still playing Scrabble. Caley Bard and Dr Natouche were reading. Mrs Tretheway had gone to bed.

Bailey and Thompson passed through, carrying their gear. The passengers watched them in silence.

When they had gone Alleyn said: “We’ve done our stuff down there and the cabins are all yours. I’m very sorry if we’ve kept you up too late. Here are the keys.” He laid them on the table. ”And here,” he said, holding up the rolled canvas, “is your picture, Miss Hewson. We would like to take charge of it for a short time, if you please. I’ll give you this receipt. I assure you the canvas will come to no harm.”

Miss Hewson had turned, as Fox liked to say, as white as a turnip and really her skin did have something of the aspect of that unlovely root. She looked from Alleyn to her brother and then wildly round the group of passengers as if appealing against some terrible decision. She rose to her feet, pulled at her underlip with uncertain fingers and had actually made a curious little whining sound when her brother said: “Take it easy, Sis. You don’t have to act this way. It’s O.K.: take it easy.”

Mr Hewson had very large, pale hands. Alleyn saw his left hand clench and his right hand close round his sister’s forearm. She gave a short cry of pain, sank back in her chair and shot what seemed to be a look of terror at her brother.

“My sister’s a super-sensitive girl, Superintendent,” Mr Hewson said. “She gets nervous very, very easy.”

“I hope there is no occasion for her to do so now,” Alleyn said. “I understand this is not your first visit to this district, Mr Hewson. You were here in the spring, weren’t you?”

Dr Natouche lowered his book and for the first time seemed to listen to what was being said; Caley Bard gave an exclamation of surprise. Miss Hewson mouthed inaudibly and fingered her arm and Mr Lazenby said, “Really? Is that so? Your second visit to The River? I didn’t realise,” as if they were all making polite conversation.

“That is so,” Mr Hewson said. “A flying visit. We were captivated and settled to return.”

“When did you book your passages in the Zodiac?” Alleyn asked.

A silence, broken at last by Mr Hewson.

“Pardon me, I should have put that a little differently, I guess. We made our reservations before we left the States. I should have said we were enchanted to learn when we got here that the Zodiac cruise would cover this same territory.”

“On your previous visit, did you take many photographs?”

“Some. Yes, sir: quite some.”

“Including several shots here at Ramsdyke, of exactly the same subject as the one in this picture?”

Mr Hewson said: “Maybe. I wouldn’t remember off hand. We certainly do get around to taking plenty of pictures.”

“Have you seen this particular photograph, Mr Pollock?”

Mr Pollock lounged back in his seat, put his hands in his trouser pockets and assumed a look of cagey impertinence with which Alleyn was very familiar.

“Couldn’t say, I’m sure,” he said.

“Surely you’d remember. The photograph that is taken from the same place as the painting?”

“Haven’t the vaguest.”

“You mean you haven’t seen it?”

“Know what?” Mr Pollock said. “I don’t get all this stuff about photos. It doesn’t mean a thing to me. It’s silly.”

Mr Pollock’s tree doodle and the Hewsons’ photograph of Ramsdyke Lock dropped on the table in front of him.

“These were in the pocket of your suit.”

“What of it?”

“The drawing is a replica of a tree in the painting.”

“Fancy that.”

“When did you make this drawing?”

For the first time he hesitated but said at last. “After I seen the picture. It’s kind of recollection. I was doodling.”

“While you practised your lettering?”

“That’s right. No!” he said quickly. “After.”

“It would have to be after, wouldn’t it? Because you’d done the lettering on the Zodiac drawing before you saw the picture. A day or more before. Hadn’t you?”

“That’s your idea: I didn’t say so.”

“Mr Pollock: I suggest that your first answer is the true one. I suggest that you did in fact ‘doodle’ this very accurate drawing when you were practising your lettering a couple of days ago and that you did it, subconsciously or not, out of your knowledge of the picture. Your very vivid and accurate recollection of the picture with which you were already as familiar as if—” Alleyn paused. Mr Pollock had gone very still. “—as if you yourself had painted it,” said Alleyn.

Dr Natouche rose, murmured, “Excuse me, please,” and went up on deck.

“You don’t have to insult me,” Pollock said, “in front of that nigger.”

Caley Bard walked over and looked at him as if he was something nasty he’d caught in his butterfly net.

“You bloody little tit,” he said. “Will you shut up, you perfectly bloody little tit?”

Pollock stared at him with a kind of shrinking defiance that was extremely unpleasant to see.

“Sorry,” Caley said to Alleyn and returned to his seat.

“—as if you yourself had painted it,” Alleyn repeated. “Did you paint it, Mr Pollock?”

“No. And that’s it. No.”

And that was it as far as Mr Pollock was concerned. He might have gone stone deaf and blind for all the response he made to anything else that was said to him.

“It’s very hot in here,” said Mr Lazenby.

It was indeed. The summer night had grown sultry. There were rumours of thunder in the air and sheet-lightning made occasional irrelevant gestures somewhere a long way beyond Norminster.

Mr Lazenby pulled the curtain back from one of the windows and exposed a white blank. The Creeper had risen.

“Very close,” Mr Lazenby said and ran his finger under his dog-collar. “I think,” said he in his slightly parsonic, slightly Australian accents, “that we’re entitled to an explanation, Superintendent. We’ve all experienced a big shock, you know. We’ve found ourselves alongside a terrible tragedy in the death and subsequent discovery of this poor girl. I’m sure there’s not one of us doesn’t want to see the whole thing cleared up and settled. If you reckon all this business about a painting picked up in a yard has something to do with the death of the poor girl, well: good on you. Go ahead. But, fair dinkum. I don’t myself see how there can be the remotest connection.”

“With which observation,” Mr Hewson said loudly, “I certainly concur. Yes, sir.”

“The connection,” Alleyn said, “if there is one, will I hope declare itself as the investigation develops. In the meantime, if you don’t mind, we’ll push along with preliminaries. Will you cast your minds back to Monday night when you all explored Toll’ark?”

The group at the table eyed him warily. From behind his book Caley said: “O.K. I’ve cast mine, such as it is, back.”

“Good. What did you do in Toll’ark?”

“Thwarted of my original intention which was to ask your wife if she’d explore the antiquities with me, I sat in the Northumberland Arms drinking mild-and-bitter and listening to the dullest brand of Mummerset-type gossip it would be possible to conceive. When the pub closed I returned, more pensive than pickled, to our gallant craft.”

“By which route?”

“By a precipitous, rather smelly and cobbled alley laughingly called Something Street—wait—It was on a shop wall. I’ve got it. Weyland Street.”

“Meet any of the other passengers?”

“I don’t think so. Did we?” Caley asked them.

They slightly shook their heads.

“You, Mr Lazenby, attended compline in the church. Did you return alone to the Zodiac?”

“No,” he said easily. “Not all the way. I ran into Stan and we went back together. Didn’t we, Stan?”

Mr Pollock, answering to his first name, nodded glumly.

“We know that Mr and Miss Hewson, followed by my wife and then by Dr Natouche returned to The River by way of Ferry Lane where they all met, outside Bagg’s second-hand premises. We also know,” Alleyn said, “that Miss Rickerby-Carrick returned alone, presumably not by Ferry Lane. As Weyland Street is the only other direct road down to The River it seems probable that she took that way home. Did either of you see her?”

“No,” Pollock said instantly and very loudly.

“No,” Lazenby agreed.

“Mr Lazenby,” Alleyn said, taking a sudden and outrageous risk, “what did you do with the papers you tore out of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s diary?”

A gust of misted air moved the curtain over an open window on the starboard side and the trees above Ramsdyke Lock soughed and were silent again.

“I don’t think that’s a very nice way of talking,” said Mr Lazenby.

Miss Hewson had begun quietly to cry.

“There are ways and ways of putting things,” Mr Lazenby continued, “and that way was offensive.”

“Why?” Alleyn asked. “Do you say you didn’t tear them out?”

“By a mishap, I may have done something of the sort. Naturally. I rescued the diary from a watery grave,” he said, attempting some kind of irony.

“Which was more than anybody did for its owner,” Caley Bard remarked. They looked at him with consternation.

“It was a very, very prompt and praiseworthy undertaking,” said Mr Hewson stuffily. “She was very, very grateful to the Reverend. It was the Action of a Man. Yes, sir. A Man.”

“As we could see for ourselves,” Caley remarked and bowed slightly to Mr Lazenby.

“It was nothing, really,” Mr Lazenby protested. “I’m a Sydneysider, don’t forget and I was in my bathers.”

“As I have already indicated,” Caley said.

“The pages,” Alleyn said, “were in your left hand when you sat on the bank just before the Zodiac picked you up. You had turned the leaves of the diary over while you waited.”

Mr Pollock broke his self-imposed silence. “Anybody like to make a guess where all this information came from?” he asked. “Marvellous, isn’t it? Quite a family affair.”

“Shut up,” Caley said and turned to Alleyn. “You’re right, of course, about this. I remember—I expect we all do—that the Padre had got a loose page in his hand. But, Alleyn, I do think there’s a very obvious explanation—the one that he has in fact given you. The damn’ diary was soaked to a sop and probably disintegrated in his hands.”

“It’s not in quite as bad shape as that.”

“Well—all right. But it had opened in the water, you know. And when he grabbed it, surely he might have loosened a couple of pages or more.”

“But,” Alleyn said mildly, “I haven’t for a moment suggested anything else. I only asked Mr Lazenby what he did with the loose page or pages.”

“Mr Bard is right. I did not tear them out. They came out.”

“Cometer pieces in ’is ’ands, like,” Caley explained.

“Very funny,” said Mr Pollock. “I don’t think.”

“I do not know,” Mr Lazenby announced with hauteur, “what I did with any pieces of pulpy paper that may or may not have come away in my hand. I remember nothing about it.”

“Did you read them?”

“That suggestion, Superintendent, is unworthy of you.”

Alleyn said: “Last Monday night on your way to the Zodiac you and Mr Pollock stopped near a dark entry in Weyland Street. What did you talk about?”

And now, he saw with satisfaction, they were unmistakably rattled. “They’re asking themselves,” he thought, “just how much I am bluffing. They know Troy couldn’t have told me about this one. They’re asking themselves where I could have picked it up and the only answer is the Rickerby-Carrick diary. I’ll stake my oath, Lazenby read whatever was on the missing pages and Pollock knows about it. What’s more they probably know the diary was in the suitcase and that we must have seen it. They’re dead scared we’ve found something which I wish to hell we had. If they’re as fly as I believe they are, there’s only one line for them to take and I hope they don’t take it.”

They took it, however. “I’m not making any more bloody statements,” Mr Pollock suddenly shouted, “till I’ve seen a lawyer and that’s my advice to all and sundry.”

“Dead right,” Mr Lazenby applauded. “Good on you.” And feeling perhaps that his style was inappropriate, he added, “We shall be absolutely within our rights to adopt this attitude. In my opinion it is entirely proper for us to do so.”

“Reverend Lazenby,” Mr Hewson said with fervour, “you said it. Boy, you certainly said it.”

Miss Hewson, who had been furtively dabbing at her eyes and nose gave a shatteringly profound sob.

“Ah, for Pete’s sake, Sis,” said Hewson.

“No! No! No!” she cried out on a note of real terror. “Don’t touch me. I’m not staying here. I’m going to my room. I’m going to bed.”

“Do,” Alleyn said politely. “Why not take one of your own pills?”

She caught her breath, stared at him and then blundered down the companionway to the lower deck.

“Poor girl,” said Mr Lazenby. “Poor dear girl.”

“There’s one other question,” Alleyn said. “In view of your decision of a moment ago you may not feel inclined to answer it. Unless—?” he smiled at Caley Bard.

“At the moment,” Caley said, “I’m not sending for my solicitor or taking vows of silence.”

“Good. Well, then, here it is. Miss Rickerby-Carrick wore on a cord round her neck, an extremely valuable jewel. She told Miss Hewson and my wife about it. It has not been found.”

“Washed off?” Caley suggested.

“Possible, of course. If necessary we’ll search the river-bed.”

Caley thought for a moment. “Look,” he then said. “She was a pretty scatty individual. I gather she was sleeping on deck or trying to sleep. She said she suffered from insomnia. My God, if she did it was fully orchestrated but that’s by the way. Suppose in the dead of night she was awake and suppose she took a hike along the tow-path in her navy pi-jams and her magenta gown with her bit of Fabergé tat around her neck? Grotesque it may sound but it would be entirely in character.”

“How,” Alleyn said, “do you know it was Fabergé, Mr Bard?”

“Because, for God’s sake, she told me. When we thundered about the Crossdyke ruins, butterfly hunting. I dare say she told everybody. She was scatty as a hen, poor wretch.”

“Well?”

“Well, and suppose she met an unsavoury character who grabbed the bauble and when she cut up rough, throttled her and shoved her in the river?”

“First collecting her suitcase from her cabin in the Zodiac?”

“Damn!” said Caley. “You would bring that up, wouldn’t you.”

“All the same,” Alleyn said, turning to the group round the table, “we can’t overlook the possibility of interference of some sort from outside.”

“Like who?” Hewson demanded.

“Like, for instance, a motor-cyclist and his girl who seem to have rather haunted the course of the Zodiac. Do you all know who I mean?”

Silence.

“Oh really!” Caley exclaimed, “this is too much! Of course we all know who you mean. They’ve turned up from time to time like prologues to the omens coming on in an early Cocteau film.” He addressed his fellow-passengers. “We’ve seen them, we’ve remarked upon them, why the hell shouldn’t we say so?”

They stirred uneasily. Lazenby said: “You’re right, of course, Mr Bard. No reason at all. A couple of young mods—we used to call them bodgies in Aussie—with I dare say no harm in them. They seem to be cobbers of young Tom’s.”

“Have any of you ever spoken to them?”

Nobody answered.

“You better ask the coloured gentleman,” Hewson said and Alleyn thought he heard a note of fear in his voice.

“Dr Natouche has spoken to them, you think?”

“I don’t think. I know. The first day when we went through the lock here. They were on the bridge and he came down the road from this helluva whatsit in the hillside. These two hobos shouted something and he walked up to them and said something and they kinda laughed and kicked up their machine and roared off.”

“Where were you?”

“Me? Walking up the hill with the mob.”

Hewson shifted his position slightly and continued, with considerable finesse, to emphasise the already richly offensive tone of his behaviour. “Mrs Alleyn,” he said, “was in the whatsit with the deceased. She’d been there for quite some time before the deceased got there. So’d he. Natouche. Yes, sir. Quite some time.”

This was said so objectionably that Alleyn felt the short hair rise on the back of his scalp. Fox, who had performed his usual trick of making his bulk inconspicuous while he took notes, let out a slight exclamation and at once stifled it.

Hewson, after a look at Alleyn’s face said in a great hurry: “Don’t get me wrong. Take it easy. Hell, Superintendent, I didn’t mean a thing.”

Alleyn raised his eyebrows at Fox who soundlessly formed the word ‘Tom?” and went below. Alleyn climbed the companionway leading to the upper deck and looked over the half-door. Dr Natouche leant on the port taffrail. He was wreathed in mist. His hands were clasped and his head bent as if he stared at them.

“Dr Natouche, can I trouble you again for a moment?”

“Certainly. Shall I come down?”

“If you please.” When he had come down, blinking a little in the light, Alleyn, watching Pollock and the Hewsons and Lazenby, was reminded of Troy’s first letter. These passengers, she had written, eyed Natouche with something that seemed very like fear.

He asked Natouche what had passed between him and the motor-cyclists. He waited for a moment or two and then said the young man had asked him if he was a passenger in the Zodiac. He thought from his manner that the question was intended as a covert insult of some sort, Dr Natouche said tranquilly, but he had answered that he was and the girl had burst out laughing.

“I walked away,” he said, “and the young man gave one of those cries—I think they are known as catcalls. It was not an unusual incident.”

“Can you remember them clearly? They sound sufficiently objectionable to be remembered.”

“They were dressed in black leather. The man was rather older than one expected. They both had long, very dark hair falling from their helmets to their shoulders. The man’s hair was oily. He had a broad face, small, deep-set eyes and a slightly prognathic jaw. The girl was sallow. She had large eyes and an outbreak of acne on her chin.”

Pollock made his standard remark. “Isn’t it marvellous?” and gave his little sneering laugh.

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “That’s very useful.”

Pollock now took action. He got up from the table, lounged across the saloon and stood with his hands in his pockets and his head on one side, quite close to Natouche.

“Ere,” he said. “You! ‘Doctor’. What’s the big idea?”

“I don’t understand you. I’m sorry.”

You don’t? I think you do. I see you talking to the ton-up combo and I never took the impression they was slinging off at you. I think that’s just your story like you lot always trot out: ‘Oh, dear, aren’t they all insultin’ to us noble martyrs’. I took a different impression. I took the impression you knew them two before. See?”

“You are mistaken.”

Alleyn said: “Did anyone else get such an impression?”

Hewson said: “Yeah, I guess I did. Yeah, sure I did.”

“Mr Lazenby?”

“I’m very loath to jump to conclusions. I’m not prepared to say positively. I must confess—”

“Well?”

“We were some way away, Superintendent, on the wapentake slope. I don’t think an impression at that distance has much value. But—well, yes I thought—vaguely, you know—that perhaps the Doctor had found some friends. Only a vague idea.”

“Mr Bard? What about you?”

Caley Bard drove his fingers through his hair and swore under his breath. He then said “I agree that any impression one may have taken at that remove is absolutely valueless. We could hear nothing that was said. Dr Natouche’s explanation fits as well as any other.”

“If he never seen them before how’s he remember all this stuff about jaws and pimples?” Pollock demanded. “After half a minute! Not likely!”

“But I fancy,” Alleyn said, “that in common with all the rest of you, Dr Natouche had ample opportunity to observe them at Norminster on the morning you embarked.”

“Here!” Pollock shouted. “What price this for a theory? What price him and them knocked it up between them? What price they did the clobbering and he handled the suitcase? Now then!”

He stared in front of him, sneering vaingloriously and contriving at the same time to look frightened. Natouche’s face was closed like a wall.

“I thought,” Caley said to Pollock, “you’d settled to keep your mouth shut until you got a solicitor. Why the devil can’t you follow your own advice and belt up?”

“Here, ’ere, ’ere!”

Fox returned with young Tom who, tousled with sleep and naked to the waist, looked very young indeed and rather frightened.

“Sorry to knock you up like this, Tom,” Alleyn said. “Mr Fox will have told you what it’s all about.”

Tom nodded.

“We just want to know if you can tell us anything about the ton-up couple. Friends of yours?”

Tom showed the whites of his eyes and said not to say friends exactly. He shifted his feet, curled his toes, looked everywhere but at Alleyn and answered in monosyllables. The passengers listened avidly. Alleyn wondered if he was wise to conduct this one-sided interview in front of them and thought that on the whole, it would probably pay off. He extracted, by slow degrees, that Tom had hobnobbed with the ton-up pair some time ago in a coffee-bar in Norminster. When? He couldn’t say exactly. Some time back. Early in the cruising season? Yes. Early on. He hadn’t seen them again until this cruise. Names? He wouldn’t know the surnames. The chap got called Pluggy and his girlfriend was Glenys. Did they live in the district? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t say where they lived.

This was heavy going. Caley sighed and took up his book. Dr Natouche had the air of politely attending a function that did not interest him. Pollock bit his nails. Lazenby assumed a tolerant smile and Hewson stared at Tom with glazed intensity.

Alleyn said: “Did they talk to you first or did you make up to them? In the coffee-bar?”

“They did,” Tom mumbled. “They wanted to know about places.”

“What sort of places?”

“Along The River. Back of The River.”

“Just any old places?”

No. It appeared, not quite that. They were interested in the second-hand trade. They wanted to know where there were junk shops or yards or used-parts dumps. Yes, he’d told them about Jo Bagg.

The passengers shifted their feet.

By a tortuous process something like a coherent story began to emerge. Alleyn thought he recognised the symptoms. The ton-ups had been adventurous figures to young Tom. They had a buccaneering air about them. They were cool. They were with it. They had flattered him. Troy had noticed when the Zodiac sailed, something furtive in their exchange of signals. Alleyn asked Tom abruptly what his parents thought of the acquaintanceship. He flushed scarlet and muttered indistinguishably. They had, it seemed, not approved. The Skipper’s attitude to ton-ups was evidently regrettably square. Alleyn gathered that he had asked Tom if he hadn’t got something better to do than hang round the moorings with a couple of freaks.

“Did they ever ask you to talk about any of the passengers?”

Tom was silent,

“This is important, Tom,” Alleyn said. “You know what’s happened, don’t you? You know why we’re here?”

He nodded.

“You wouldn’t want to see someone wrongfully accused, would you?”

He shook his head.

“Did they talk about any of the passengers?”

Tom’s dark eyes slewed round until they looked at Dr Natouche and then at the floor.

“Did they talk about Dr Natouche?”

He nodded again.

“What did they say?”

“They They said to—give him a message.”

“What message? Come along. As far as you can remember it, in their own words: what message?”

Tom, looking as if he was about to cry, blurted out. “They said to tell him from them he could—”

“Could what?”

A stream of obscenity quoted in the broken voice of an adolescent boy, jetted into the quiet decency of the little saloon.

“You asked,” Tom said miserably. “You asked. I can’t help it. It’s what they said. They don’t like—they don’t like—” He jerked his head at Natouche.

“Very well,” Alleyn said. “We’ll leave it at that.” He turned to Natouche. “I take it,” he said, “the message was not delivered?”

“No.”

“I should bloody well hope not,” said Caley Bard.

“Did they talk about any of the other passengers?” Alleyn pursued.

At Norminster they had asked, it appeared, about Troy. Only, Tom said, twisting himself about in a quite astonishing manner, only who she was and when she booked her passage.

“Did you know the answer?”

He knew she’d booked a cancellation that morning. He didn’t know then—Here Tom boggled and shuffled and was finally induced to say he didn’t know until later that she was the celebrated painter or who her husband was.

“And Miss Rickerby-Carrick — did they talk about her?”

Only, Tom mumbled, to say she was some balmy old tart.

“When did you last see them?”

This provoked another unhappy reaction. The dark, uncertain face whitened, the lips opened and moved but no sound came from them. Tom looked as if for tuppence he’d bolt.

Caley said: “This is getting a bit tough, Alleyn, isn’t it?” and Pollock at once began to talk about police methods. “This is nothing,” he said. “Nothing to what goes on in the cells. Don’t you answer ’im, kid. Don’t give ’im the satisfaction. They can’t make you. Don’t put yourself in wrong.”

Tom turned aside, ducked his head into the crook of his arms and gave way to ungainly tears. There were sounds of indignation from the passengers.

The Skipper had returned. His voice could be heard on deck and in a moment he came nimbly down the companionway followed by the Sergeant from Tollardwark.

The Skipper looked at his son. “What’s all this?” he asked.

Tom raised a tear-blubbered face, tried to say something and incontinently bolted to the lower deck.

Alleyn said: “I’ll have a word with you about this in a moment, Skipper,” and turned to the Sergeant.

“What is it?”

“Message from the Super at Toll’ark, sir.” He looked at the assembly and produced a note which he handed to Alleyn.

“Motor-bike couple picked up near Pontefract. Bringing them to Tollardwark at once. With article of jewellery.”