“She seems,” Tim observed, “to confide in you a damn sight more freely than in me.”

“Advanced years carry their own compensation.”

“For me, this is it.”

“Certain?”

“Absolutely. I wish I was as certain about her.”

“Well — look after her.”

“I’ve every intention of doing so,” Tim said, and on that note they found Father Jourdain and went to visit Captain Bannerman.

It was not an easy interview.

Alleyn would have recognized Captain Bannerman for an obstinate man even if he had not been told as much by members of the Cape Line Company before he left. “He’s a pig-headed old b.,” one of these officials had remarked. “And if you get up against him he’ll make things very uncomfortable for you. He drinks pretty hard and is reported to be bloody-minded in his cups. Keep on the right side of him and he’ll be O.K.”

So far, Alleyn thought, he had managed to follow this suggestion, but when he described the episode of the moonlit figure seen by Brigid on Friday night, he knew he was in for trouble. He gave his own interpretation of this story and he suggested that steps should be taken to ensure that there was no repetition. He met with a flat refusal. He then went on to tell them of the man outside Brigid’s porthole. The captain said at once that he would detail the officer of the watch, who would take appropriate steps to ensure that this episode was not repeated. He added that it was of no particular significance and that very often people behaved oddly in the tropics — an observation that Alleyn was getting a little tired of hearing. He attempted to suggest a more serious interpretation and met with blank incredulity.

As for the Dillington-Blick episode, the captain said he would take no action either to investigate it or prevent a repetition. He treated them to a lecture on the diminishing powers of a ship’s master at sea and grew quite hot on the subject. There were limitations. There were unions. Even passengers nowadays had their rights, he added regretfully. What had occurred was in no way an infringement of any of the regulations, he didn’t propose to do anything about it and he must request Alleyn to follow suit. And that, he said finally, was flat.

He stood with his hands in his jacket pockets and glared through his porthole at the horizon. Even the back of his neck looked mulish. The other three men exchanged glances.

“The chap’s not aboard my ship,” the captain loudly announced without turning his head. “I know that as well as I know you are. I’ve been master under the Cape Company’s charter for twenty years and I know as soon as I look at him whether a chap’ll blow up for trouble at sea. I had a murderer shipped fireman aboard me, once. Soon as I clapped eyes on him I knew he was no good. Never failed yet. And I’ve been observing this lot. Observing them closely. There’s not a murdering look on one of their faces, not a sign of it.” He turned slowly and advanced upon Alleyn. His own face, lobster-red, wore an expression of childish complacency. “You’re on a wild goose chase,” he said blowing out gusts of whisky. Then with quite astonishing violence he drew his mottled hirsute fist from his pocket and crashed it down on his desk. “That sort of thing,” said Captain Bannerman, “doesn’t happen in my ship!”

“May I say just this?” Alleyn ventured. “I wouldn’t come to you with the suggestion unless I thought it most urgently necessary. You may, indeed, be perfectly right. Our man may not, after all, be aboard. But suppose, sir, that in the teeth of all you feel about it, he is in this ship.” Alleyn pointed to the captain’s desk calendar. “Sunday the tenth of February,” he said. “If he’s here we’ve got four days before his supposed deadline. Shouldn’t we take every possible step to prevent him going into action? I know very well that what I’ve suggested sounds farfetched, cockeyed, and altogether preposterous. It’s a precautionary measure against a threat that may not exist. But isn’t it better—” He looked at that unyielding front and very nearly threw up his hands. “Isn’t it better, in fact, to be sure than sorry?” said Alleyn in despair. Father Jourdain and Tim murmured agreement but the captain shouted them down.

“Ah! So it is and it’s a remark I often pass myself. But in this case it doesn’t apply. What you’ve suggested is dead against my principles as master and I won’t have it. I don’t believe it’s necessary and I won’t have it.”

Father Jourdain said, “If I might just say one word—”

“You may spare yourself the trouble, I’m set.”

Alleyn said, “Very good, sir, I hope you’re right. Of course we’ll respect your wishes.”

“I won’t have that lady put-about by any interference or — or criticism.”

“I wasn’t suggesting—”

“It’d look like criticism,” the captain mumbled cryptically and added, “A touch of high spirits never did anyone any harm.”

This comment, from Alleyn’s point of view, was such a masterpiece of meiosis that he could find no answer to it.

He said, “Thank you, sir,” in what he hoped was the regulation manner and made for the door. The others followed him.

“Here!” Captain Bannerman ejaculated and they stopped. “Have a drink,” said the captain.

“Not for me at the moment, thank you very much,” said Alleyn.

“Why not?”

“Oh, I generally hold off till the sun’s over the yardarm if that’s the right way of putting it.”

“You don’t take overmuch then, I’ve noticed.”

“Well,” Alleyn said apologetically, “I’m by the way of being on duty.”

“Ah! And nothing to show for it when it’s all washed up. Not that I don’t appreciate the general idea. You’re following orders, I daresay, like all the rest of us, never mind if it’s a waste of time and the public’s money.”

“That’s the general idea.”

“Well — what about you two gentlemen?”

“No thank you, sir,” said Tim.

“Nor I, thank you very much,” said Father Jourdain.

“No offense, is there?”

They hurriedly assured him there was none, waited for a moment and then went to the door. The last glimpse they had of the captain was of a square, slightly wooden figure making for the corner cupboard where he kept his liquor.

The rest of Sunday passed by quietly enough. It was the hottest day the passengers had experienced and they were all subdued. Mrs. Dillington-Blick wore white and so did Aubyn Dale. They lay on their chaise longues in the verandah and smiled languidly at passers-by. Sometimes they were observed to have their hands limply engaged; occasionally Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s rich laughter would be heard.

Tim and Brigid spent most of the day in or near a canvas bathing pool that had been built on the after well-deck. They were watched closely by the Cuddys, who had set themselves up in a place of vantage at the shady end of the promenade deck, just under the verandah. Late in the afternoon Mr. Cuddy himself took to the water clad in a rather grisly little pair of puce-coloured drawers. He developed a vein of aquatic playfulness that soon drove Brigid out of the pool and Tim into a state of extreme irritation.

Mr. Merryman sat in his usual place and devoted himself to Neil Cream, and when that category of horrors had reached its appointed end, to the revolting fate that met an assortment of ladies who graced the pages of The Thing He Loves. From time to time he commented unfavourably on the literary style of this work and also on the police methods it described. As Alleyn was the nearest target he found himself at the receiving end of these strictures. Inevitably, Mr. Merryman was moved to enlarge once again on the flower murders. Alleyn had the fun of hearing himself described as “some plodding Dogberry drest in a little brief authority. One Alleyn,” Mr. Merryman snorted, “whose photograph was reproduced in the evening newssheets — a countenance of abysmal foolishness, I thought.”