Fox said, “If I take your meaning, Mr. Alleyn, I think you think you do.”

CHAPTER VII

Watt’s Hill

“Things to be borne in mind,” Alleyn said, still speaking from the punt. “Point one: I found the daisy head in the prow. That is to say, on the same line with the other two heads but a bit further from the point of impact. Point two: this old crock has got a spare mooring line about thirty feet long. It’s still made fast at the other end and I’ve only got to haul myself back. I imagine the arrangement is for the convenience of Lady Lacklander, who, judging by splashes of old water-colour and a squashed tube, occasionally paints from the punt. It’s a sobering thought. I should like to see her, resembling one of the more obese female deities, seated in the prow of the punt, hauling herself back to harbourage. There is also, by the way, a pale-yellow giant hairpin in close association with two or three cigarette butts, some with lipstick and some not. Been there for some considerable time, I should say, so that’s another story.”

“Sir G.,” Fox ruminated, “and the girl-friend?”

“Trust you,” Alleyn said, “for clamping down on the sex-story. To return. Point three: remember that the punt-journey would be hidden from the dwellers on Watt’s Hill. Only this end of the bridge and the small area between it and the willow grove is visible to them. You can take him away now, Gripper.” Dr. Curtis covered the body with the groundsheet. P. C. Gripper and the constable-driver of the Yard car, assisted by Bailey and Thompson, carried Colonel Cartarette out of the willow grove and along the banks of his private fishing to Watt’s Lane, where the Swevenings hospital van awaited him.

“He was a very pleasant gentleman,” said Sergeant Oliphant. “I hope we get this chap, sir.”

“Oh, we’ll get him,” Fox remarked and looked composedly at his principal.

“I suggest,” Alleyn said, “that the killer saw Cartarette from the other bank, squatting over his catch. I suggest that the killer, familiar with the punt, slipped into it, let go the painter and was carried by what I’d like to call Shakespeare’s current across the stream and into this bay, where the punt grounded and left the scar of its prow in the bank there. I suggest that this person was well enough acquainted with the Colonel for him merely to look up when he heard the punt grate on the gravel and not rise. You can see the punt’s quite firmly grounded. Now if I stand about here, rather aft of amidships, I’m opposite the place where Cartarette squatted over his task and within striking distance of him if the blow was of the kind I think it was.”

“If,” said Fox.

“Yes, I know, ‘if.’ If you know of a better damn’ theory, you can damn’ well go to it,” Alleyn said cheerfully.

“O.K.,” Fox said. “I don’t, sir. So far.”

“What may at first look tiresome,” Alleyn went on, “is the position of the three decapitated daisy stalks and their heads. It’s true that one swipe of a suitable instrument might have beheaded all three and landed one daisy on the Colonel, a second on the bank and a third in the punt. Fair enough. But the same swipe couldn’t have reached the Colonel himself.”

Oliphant stared pointedly at the pole lying in the punt.

“No, Oliphant,” Alleyn said. “You try standing in this punt, whirling that thing round your head, swishing it through the daisies and catching a squatting man neatly on the temple with the end. What do you think our killer is… a caber-tosser from Braemar?”

“Do you reckon then,” Fox said, “that the daisies were beheaded by a second blow or earlier in the day? Or something?”

Sergeant Oliphant suddenly remarked, “Pardon me, but did the daisies necessairily have anything to do with the crime?”

“I think there’s probably a connection,” Alleyn rejoined, giving the sergeant his full attention. “The three heads are fresh enough to suggest it. One was in the Colonel’s coat and one was in the punt.”

“Well, pardon me, sir.” the emboldened sergeant continued with a slight modulation of his theme, “but did the punt necessarily have any bearing on the crime?”

“Unless we find a left-handed suspect, I think we must accept the punt as a working hypothesis. Have a look at the area between the punt and the place where the body lay and the patch of stones between the tuft from which the grass was cut and the place where the fish lay. It would be possible to step from the punt onto that patch of stones, and you would then be standing close to the position of Colonel Cartarette’s head. You would leave little or no trace of your presence. Now, on the willow-grove side of the body the ground is soft and earthy. The Colonel himself, Nurse Kettle and Dr. Lacklander have all left recognizable prints there. But there are no traces of a fourth visitor. Accept for the moment the theory that, after the Colonel had been knocked out, our assailant did step ashore onto the stony patch to deliver the final injury, or perhaps merely to make sure the victim was already dead. How would such a theory fit in with the missing trout, the punt and the daisies?”

Alleyn looked from Oliphant to Fox. The former had assumed that air of portentousness that so often waits upon utter bewilderment. The latter merely looked mildly astonished. This expression indicated that Mr. Fox had caught on.

Alleyn elaborated his theory of the trout, the punt and the daisies, building up a complete and detailed picture of one way in which Colonel Cartarette might have been murdered. “I realize,” he said, “that it’s all as full of ‘ifs’ as a passport to paradise. Produce any other theory that fits the facts and I’ll embrace it with fervour.”

Fox said dubiously, “Funny business if it works out that way. About the punt, now…”

“About the punt, yes. There are several pieces of cut grass in the bottom of the punt, and they smell of fish.”

“Do they, now?” said Fox appreciatively and added, “So what we’re meant to believe in is a murderer who sails up to his victim in a punt and lays him out. Not satisfied in his own mind that the man’s dead, he steps ashore and has another go with another instrument. Then for reasons you’ve made out to sound O.K., Mr. Alleyn, though there’s not much solid evidence, he swaps the Colonel’s fish for the Old ’Un. To do this he has to tootle back in the punt and fetch it. And by way of a change at some time or another he swipes the heads off daisies. Where he gets his weapons and what he does with the first fish is a great big secret. Is that the story, Mr. Alleyn?”

“It is and I’m sticking to it. Moreover, I’m leaving orders, Oliphant, for a number one search for the missing fish. And meet me,” Alleyn said to Fox, “on the other bank. I’ve something to show you.”

He gathered up the long tow-rope, pulled himself easily into the counter-current and so back across forty feet of water to the boatshed. When Fox, having come round by the bridge, joined him there, he was shaking his head.

“Oliphant and his boy have been over the ground like a herd of rhinos,” he said. “Getting their planks last night. Pity. Still… have a look here, Fox.”

He led the way into a deep hollow on the left bank. Here the rain had not obliterated the characteristic scars left by Lady Lacklander’s sketching stool and easel. Alleyn pointed to them. “But the really interesting exhibit is up here on the hillock. Come and see.”

Fox followed him over grass that carried faint signs of having been trampled. In a moment they stood looking down at a scarcely perceptible hole in the turf. It still held water. The grass nearby showed traces of pressure.

“If you examine that hole closely,” Alleyn said, “you’ll see it’s surrounded by a circular indentation.”

“Yes,” Fox said after a long pause, “yes, by God, so it is. Same as the injury, by God.”