“You’ll need to stoop a little, sir.”

Alleyn pushed through the thicket. His torchlight darted about in the rain and settled almost at once on a glistening mound.

“We got some groundsheets down and covered him,” the, sergeant said, “when it looked like rain.”

“Good.”

“And we’ve covered up the area round the corpse as best we could. Bricks and one or two planks from the old boatshed yonder. But I daresay the water’s got under just the same.”

Allyn said, “Fair enough. We couldn’t ask for better. I think before we go any nearer we’ll get photographs. Come through, Bailey. Do the best you can. As it stands and then uncovered, with all the details you can get, in case it washes out before morning. By Jove, though, I believe it’s lifting.”

They all listened. The thicket was loud with the sound of dripping foliage, but the heavy drumming of rain had stopped, and by the time Bailey had set up his camera, a waxing moon had ridden out over the valley.

When Bailey had taken his last flash-photograph of the area and the covered body, he took away the groundsheet and photographed the body again from many angles, first with the tweed hat over the face and then without it. He put his camera close to Colonel Cartarette’s face and it flashed out in the night with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. Only when all this had been done, did Alleyn, walking delicately, go closer, stoop over the head and shine his torch full on the wound.

“Sharp instrument?” said Fox.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “yes, a great puncture, certainly. But could a sharp instrument do all that, Br’er Fox? No use speculating till we know what it was.” His torchlight moved away from the face and found a silver glint on a patch of grass near Colonel Cartarette’s hands and almost on the brink of the stream. “And this is the Old ’Un?” he murmured.

The Chief Constable and Sergeant Oliphant both broke into excited sounds of confirmation. The light moved to the hands, lying close together. One of them was clenched about a wisp of green.

“Cut grass,” Alleyn said. “He was going to wrap his trout in it. There’s his knife, and there’s the creel beside him.”

“What we reckoned, sir,” said the sergeant in agreement.

“Woundy great fish, isn’t it?” said the Chief Constable, and there was an involuntary note of envy in his voice.

Alleyn said, “What was the surface like before it rained?”

“Well, sir,” the sergeant volunteered, “as you see, it’s partly gravel. There was nothing to see in the willows where the ground was dry as a chip. There was what we reckoned were the deceased’s footprints on the bank where it was soft and where he’d been fishing and one or two on the earthy bits near where he fell, but I couldn’t make out anything else and we didn’t try, for fear of messing up what little there was.”

“Quite right. Will it rain again before morning?”

The three local men moved back into the meadow and looked up at the sky.

“All over, I reckon, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Set fine,” said the deep-voiced constable.

“Clearing,” said Sir James Punston.

“Cover everything up again, Sergeant, and set a watch till morning. Have we any tips of any sort about times? Anybody known to have come this way?”

“Nurse Kettle, sir, who found him. Young Dr. Lacklander came back with her to look at him, and he says he came through the valley and over the bridge earlier in the evening. We haven’t spoken to anyone else, sir.”

“How deep,” Alleyn asked, “is the stream just here?”

“About five foot,” said Sergeant Oliphant.

“Really? And he lies on his right side roughly parallel with the stream and facing it. Not more than two feet from the brink. Head pointing down-stream, feet towards the bridge. The fish lies right on the brink by the strand of grass he was cutting to wrap it in. And the wound’s in the left temple. I take it he was squatting on his heels within two feet of the brink and just about to bed his catch down in the grass. Now, if, as the heelmarks near his feet seem to indicate, he kneeled straight over into the position the body still holds, one of two things must have happened, wouldn’t you say, Br’er Fox?”

“Either,” Fox said stolidly, “he was coshed by a left-handed person standing behind him or by a right-handed person standing in front of him and at least three feet away.”

“Which would place the assailant,” said Alleyn, “about twelve inches out on the surface of the stream. Which is not as absurd as it sounds when you put it that way. All right. Let’s move on. What comes next?”

The Chief Constable, who had listened to all this in silence, now said, “I gather there’s a cry of possible witnesses waiting for you up at Hammer. That’s Cartarette’s house up here on Watt’s Hill. If you’ll forgive me, Alleyn, I won’t go up with you. Serve no useful purpose. If you want me, I’m five miles away at Tourets. Anything I can do, delighted, but sure you’d rather be left in peace. I would in my day. By the way, I’ve told them at the Boy and Donkey that you’ll probably want beds for what’s left of the night. You’ll find a room at the head of the stairs. They’ll give you an early breakfast if you leave a note. Good-night.”

He was gone before Alleyn could thank him.

With the sergeant as guide, Alleyn and Fox prepared to set out for Hammer. Alleyn had succeeded in persuading the spaniel Skip to accept them, and after one or two false starts and whimperings he followed at their heels. They used torches in order to make their way with as little blundering as possible through the grove. Oliphant, who was in the lead, suddenly uttered a violent oath.

“What is it?” Alleyn asked, startled.

“Gawd!” Oliphant said. “I thought someone was looking at me. Gawd, d’you see that!”

His wavering torchlight flickered on wet willow leaves. A pair of luminous disks stared out at them from the level of a short man’s eyes.

“Touches of surrealism,” Alleyn muttered, “in Bottom Meadow.” He advanced his own torch, and they saw a pair of spectacles caught up in a broken twig.

“We’ll pluck this fruit with grateful care,” he said and gathered the spectacles into his handkerchief.

The moon now shone on Bottom Meadow, turning the bridge and the inky shadow it cast over the broken-down boatshed and punt into a subject for a wood engraving. A group of tall reeds showed up romantically in its light, and the Chyne took on an air of enchantment.

They climbed the river path up Watt’s Hill. Skip began to whine and to wag his tail. In a moment the cause of his excitement came into view, a large tabby cat sitting on the path in the bright moonlight washing her whiskers. Skip dropped on his haunches and made a ridiculous sound in his throat. Thomasina Twitchett, for it was she, threw him an inimical glance, rolled on her back at Alleyn’s feet and trilled beguilement. Alleyn liked cats. He stooped down and found that she was in the mood to be carried. He picked her up. She kneaded his chest and advanced her nose towards his.

“My good woman,” Alleyn said, “you’ve been eating fish.”

Though he was unaware of it at the time, this was an immensely significant discovery.