“And the iodine bottle,” pointed out Mr. Nark, “so you can’t give the inspector iodine, lethal or otherwise.”

“Thurr’s another first-aid box upstairs,” said Abel. “In bathroom cupboard. Will!” He looked into the public bar. “Will! Get t’other out of bathroom cupboard, my sonny. Look lively.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn. “Don’t bother. I’ll use this handkerchief.”

“No trouble, sir, and you’ll need a bit of antiseptic in that cut if you took it off a rusty nail. I’m a terror fur iodine, sir. I wurr a surgeon’s orderly in France, Mr. Alleyn, and learned hospital ways. Scientific ideas b’ain’t George Nark’s private property though you might think they wurr.”

Will Pomeroy came downstairs and into the private bar. He put a small first-aid box on the counter and returned to the public bar. Abel opened the box.

“ ’Tis spandy-new,” he said, “I bought it from a traveller only couple of days afore accident. Hullo! Yurr, Will!”

“What’s up?” called Will.

“Iodine bottle’s gone.”

“Eh?”

“Where’s iodine?”

“I dunno. It’s not there!” shouted Will.

“Who’s had it?”

“I dunno. I haven’t.”

“It really doesn’t matter, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn. “It’s bled itself clean. Perhaps there wasn’t any iodine.”

“Course there wurr,” said Abel. “Yurr’s lil’ bed whurr it lay. Damme, who’s been at it? Mrs. Ives!”

He stumped out and could be heard roaring angrily about the back premises.

Alleyn put a bit of lint over his finger and Miss Darragh stuck it down with strapping. He went upstairs, carrying his own glass of sherry and Fox’s. Fox was standing before the looking-glass in his room, knotting a sober tie. He caught sight of Alleyn in the glass.

“Lucky I brought my blue suit,” said Fox, “and lucky you brought your dress clothes, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Why didn’t you let me tell Colonel Brammington that we’d neither of us change, Foxkin?”

“No, no, sir. It’s the right thing for you to dress, just as much as it’d be silly for me to do so. Well, it’d be an affected kind of way for me to act, Mr. Alleyn. I never get a black coat and boiled shirt on my back except at the Lodge meetings and when I’m on a night-club job. The Colonel would only think I was trying to put myself in a place where I don’t belong. Did you find what you wanted, Mr. Alleyn?”

‘“Abel bought another first-aid set, two days before Watchman died. The iodine has been taken. He can’t find it.”

“Is that so?”

Fox brushed the sleeves of his coat and cast a final searching glance at himself in the glass. “I washed that razor blade,” he said.

“Thank you, Fox. I was a little too free with it. Bled all over Abel’s bar. Most convincing. What’s the time? Half-past seven. A bit early yet. Let’s think this out.”

“Right-o, sir,” said Fox. He lifted his glass of sherry. “Good luck, Mr. Alleyn,” he said.

ii

Decima had promised to come to Coombe Head at eight o’clock. Cubitt lay on the lip of the cliff and stared at the sea beneath him, trying, as Alleyn had tried, to read order and sequence into the hieroglyphics traced by the restless seaweed. The sequence was long and subtle, unpausing, unhurried. Each pattern seemed significant but all melted into fluidity and he decided, as Alleyn had decided, that the forces that governed these beautiful but inane gestures ranged beyond the confines of his imagination. He fell to appraising the colour and the shifting tones of the water, translating these things into terms of paint, and he began to think of how, in the morning, he would make a rapid study from the lip of the cliff.

“But I must fix one pattern only in my memory and watch for it to appear in the sequence, like a measure in some intricate saraband.”

He was so intent on this project that he did not hear Decima come and was startled when she spoke to him.

“Norman?”

Her figure was dark and tall against the sky. He rose and faced her.

“Have you risen from the sea?” he asked. “You are lovely enough.”

She did not answer and he took her hand and led her a little way over the headland to a place where their figures no longer showed against the sky. Here they faced each other again.

“I am so bewildered,” said Decima. “I have tried since this morning to feel all sorts of things. Shame. Compassion for Will. Anxiety. I can feel none of them. I can only wonder why we should so suddenly have fallen in love.”

“It was only sudden for you,” said Cubitt. “Not for me.”

“But — Is that true? How long…?”

“Since last year. Since the first week of last year.”

Decima drew away from him.

“But, didn’t you know? I thought last year that you had guessed.”

“About Luke? Yes, I guessed.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“I wish very much that it hadn’t happened,” said Decima. “Of that I am ashamed. Not for the orthodox reason but because it made such a fool of me; because I pretended to myself that I was sanely satisfying a need, whereas in reality I merely lost my head and behaved like a dairymaid.”

“Hullo,” said Cubitt. “You’re being very county. What’s wrong with dairymaids in the proletariat?”

“Brute,” muttered Decima and, between laughter and tears, stumbled into his arms.

“I love you very much,” whispered Cubitt.

“You’d a funny way of showing it. Nobody ever would have dreamed you thought anything about me.”

“Oh yes, they would. They did.”

“Who?” cried Decima in terror. “Not Will?”

“No. Miss Darragh. She as good as told me so. I’ve seen her eyeing me whenever you were in the offing. God knows I had a hard job to keep my eyes off you. I’ve wanted like hell to do this.”

But after a few moments Decima freed herself.

“This is going the wrong way,” she said. “There mustn’t be any of this.”

Cubitt said, “All right. We’ll come back to earth. I promised myself I’d keep my head. Here, my darling, have a cigarette, for God’s sake, and don’t look at me. Sit down. That’s right. Now listen. You remember the morning of that day?”

“When you and Sebastian came over the hill?”

“Yes. Just as you were telling Luke you could kill him. Did you?”

“No.”

“Of course you didn’t. Nor did I. But we made a botch of things this morning. Seb and I denied that we saw Luke as we came back from Coombe Head and I think Alleyn knew we were lying. I got a nasty jolt when he announced that he was going to see you. I didn’t know what to do. I dithered round and finally followed him, leaving Seb to come home by himself. I was too late. You’d told him?”

“I told him that Luke and I quarrelled that morning because Luke had tried — had tried to make love to me. I didn’t tell him… Norman: I lied about the rest. I said it hadn’t happened before. I was afraid. I was cold with panic. I didn’t know what you and Sebastian had told him. I thought if he found out that I had been Luke’s mistress and that we’d quarrelled, he might think… They say poison’s a woman’s weapon don’t they? It was like one of those awful dreams. I don’t know what I said. I lost my head. And that other man, Fox, kept writing in a book. And then you came and it was as if — oh, as if instead of being alone in the dark, and terrified, I had someone beside me.”

“Why wouldn’t you stay with me when they’d gone?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to think. I was muddled.”

“I was terrified you wouldn’t come here to-night, Decima.”

“I shouldn’t have come. What are we to do about Will?”

“Tell him.”

“He’ll be so bewildered,” said Decima, “and so miserable.”

“Would you have married him if this hadn’t happened?”

“I haven’t said I would marry you.”

“I have,” said Cubitt.

“I don’t know that I believe in the institution of marriage.”

“You’ll find that out when you’ve tried it, my darling.”

“I’m a farmer’s daughter. A peasant.”