They walked together down the well-deck on the port side. When they reached the little verandah aft of the engine house, they stopped while Alleyn lit his pipe. The night was still very warm, but they had run into a stiff breeze and the ship was alive with it. There was a high thrumming sound in the shrouds.

“Someone singing,” Alleyn said.

“Isn’t it the wind in those ropes? Shrouds, don’t they call them? I wonder why.”

“No. Listen. It’s clearer now.”

“So it is. Someone singing.”

It was a high, rather sweet voice and seemed to come from the direction of the passengers’ quarters.

“ ‘The Broken Doll,’ ” Alleyn said.

“A strangely old-fashioned choice.”

The thin commonplace tune evaporated.

“It’s stopped now,” said Alleyn.

“Yes. Should these women be warned, then?” Father Jourdain asked as they continued their walk. “Before the deadline approaches?”

“The shipping company is all against it and so’s the captain. My bosses tell me, as far as possible, to respect their wishes. They think the women should be protected without knowing it, which is all bloody fine for them. Makepiece, by the way, seems O.K. We’ll tell him, I think. He’ll be delighted to protect Miss Carmichael.”

Like the captain, Father Jourdain said, “That leaves Dale, Merryman, Cuddy and McAngus.” But unlike the captain he added, “I suppose it’s possible. I suppose so.” He put his hand on Alleyn’s arm. “You’ll think I’m ridiculously inconsistent; it’s only that I’ve remembered—” He stopped for a moment, and his fingers closed over Alleyn’s coatsleeve.

“Yes?” Alleyn said.

“You see, I’m a priest, an Anglo-Catholic priest. I hear confessions. It’s a humbling and an astonishing duty. One never stops being dumbfounded at the unexpectedness of sin.”

Alleyn said, “I suppose in a way the same observation might apply to my job.”

They walked on in silence, rounded the end of the hatch and returned to the port side. The lights in the lounge were out and great pools of shadow lay about the deck.

“It’s an awful thing to say,” Father Jourdain observed abruptly, “but do you know, for a moment I almost found myself wishing that rather than go in such frightful uncertainty, we knew, positively, that this murderer was on board.” He turned aside to sit on the hatch. The hatch-combing cast a very deep shadow along the deck. He seemed to wade into it as if it were a ditch.

“Ma-ma!”

The voice squeaked horridly from under his feet. He made a stifled sound and lurched against the hatch.

“Good heavens, what have I done!” cried Father Jourdain.

“By the sound of it,” Alleyn said, “I should say you’ve trodden on Esmeralda.”

He stooped. His hands encountered lace, a hard dead surface and something else. “Don’t move,” he said. “Just a moment.”

He carried a pencil-thin flashlamp in his pocket. The beam darted out like a replica in miniature of P. C. Moir’s torch.

“It was already broken. Look.”

It was indeed broken. The head had been twisted so far and with such violence that Esmeralda now grinned over her left shoulder at a quite impossible angle. The black lace mantilla was wound tightly round the neck and lying on the rigid bosom was a litter of emerald beads and a single crushed hyacinth.

“You’ve got your wish,” Alleyn said. “He’s on board, all right.”

Captain Bannerman pushed his fingers through his sandy hair and rose from his sitting-room table.

“It’s half-past two,” he said, “and for any good the stuff I drank last night does me, I might as well have not taken it. I need a dram and I advise you gentlemen to join me.”

He dumped a bottle of whisky and four glasses on the table and was careful not to touch a large object that lay there, covered with a newspaper. “Neat?” he asked. “Water? Or soda?”

Alleyn and Father Jourdain had soda and Tim Makepiece water. The captain took his neat.

“You know,” Tim said. “I can’t get myself geared to this situation. Really, it’s jolly nearly impossible to believe it.”

“I don’t,” said the captain. “The doll was a joke. A damn nasty, spiteful kind of joke, mind. But a joke. I’ll be sugared if I think I’ve shipped a Jack the Ripper. Now!”

“No, no,” Father Jourdain muttered. “I’m afraid I can’t agree. Alleyn?”

Alleyn said, “I suppose the joke idea’s just possible, given the kind of person and all the talk about these cases and the parallel circumstances.”

“There you are!” Captain Bannerman said triumphantly. “And if you ask me, we haven’t got far to look for the kind of chap. Dale’s a great card for practical jokes. Always at it on his own confession. Bet you what you like—”

“No, no!” Father Jourdain protested. “I can’t agree. He’d never perpetrate such an unlovely trick. No.”

Alleyn said, “I can’t agree either. In my opinion, literally it’s no joke.”

Tim said slowly, “I suppose you all noticed that — well, that Mr. McAngus was wearing a hyacinth in his coat.”

Father Jourdain and the captain exclaimed, but Alleyn said, “And that he dropped it when he clashed heads with Mr. Merryman. And that Mr. Merryman picked it up and threw it down on the deck.”

“Ah!” said the captain triumphantly. “There you are! What’s the good of that!”

“Where,” Tim asked, “did she leave the doll?”

“On the hatch. She put it there when she got her cable and evidently forgot to take it indoors. It was just above the spot where we found it, which was about three feet away from the place where Merryman threw down the hyacinth; everything was nice and handy.” He turned to Tim. “You and Miss Carmichael were the first to leave the general group. I think you walked over to the starboard side, didn’t you?”

Tim, pink in the face, nodded.

“Er — yes.”

“Do you mind telling me exactly where?”

“Er — no. No. Naturally not. It was — where was it? Well, it was sort of a bit further along than the doorway into the passengers’ quarters. There’s a seat.”

“And you were there, would you say — for how long?”

“Well — er—”

“Until after the group of passengers on deck had dispersed?”

“O, Lord, yes! Yes.”

“Did you notice whether any of them went in or, more importantly, came out again, by that doorway?”

“Er — no. No.”

“Gentlemen of your vintage,” Alleyn said mildly, “from the point of view of evidence are no damn good until you fall in love and then you’re no damn good.”

“Well, I must say!”

“Never mind. I think I know how they dispersed. Mr. Merryman, whose cabin is the first on the left of the passage on the starboard side and has windows looking aft and to that side, went in at the passengers’ doorway near you. He was followed by Mr. McAngus, who has the cabin opposite his across the passage. The others all moved away in the opposite direction and presumably went in by the equivalent passengers’ entrance on the port side, with the exception of Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Aubyn Dale, who used the glass doors into the lounge. Captain Bannerman and I had a short conversation and he returned to the bridge. Father Jourdain and I then walked to the after end or back or rear or whatever you call it of the deck, where there’s a verandah and where we could see nothing. It must have been at that moment somebody returned and garrotted Esmeralda.”

“How d’you remember all that?” Captain Bannerman demanded.

“God bless my soul, I’m on duty.” Alleyn turned to Father Jourdain. “The job must have been finished before we walked back along the starboard side.”

“Must it?”

“Don’t you remember? We heard someone singing ‘A Broken Doll.’ ”

Father Jourdain passed his hand across his eyes. “This is, it really is, quite beastly.”