He nodded. “It sort of faded out. In the distance. So I knew he’d gone.”

“Did you form any idea,” Alleyn asked him, “who it was?”

They had all sat quietly enough until now. But at this moment, as if all their small unnoticeable movements had been disciplined under some imperative stricture, an excessive stillness fell upon them.

Mr. Cuddy said loudly, “Yes. I did.”

“Well?”

“Well, it was what he was singing. You know. The chune,” said Mr. Cuddy.

“What was it?”

He turned his head and looked at Aubyn Dale. Like automata the others repeated this movement. Dale got slowly to his feet.

“You couldn’t fail to pick it. It’s an old favourite. ‘Pack Up Your Troubles.’ After all,” Cuddy said, grinning mirthlessly at Aubyn Dale, “it is your theme song, Mr. Dale, isn’t it?”

There was no outcry from any of the onlookers, not even from Aubyn Dale himself. He merely stared at Cuddy as if at some unidentifiable monster. He then turned slowly, looked at Alleyn and wetted his lips.

“You can’t pay any attention to this,” he said with difficulty, running his words together. “It’s pure fantasy. I went to my cabin, didn’t go out on deck.” He passed his hand across his eyes. “I don’t know that I can prove it. I — can’t think of anything. But it’s true, all the same. Must be some way of proving it. Because it’s true.”

Alleyn said, “Shall we tackle that one a bit later? Mr. Cuddy hasn’t finished his statement. I should like to know, Mr. Cuddy, what you did next. At once, without evasions, if you please. What did you do?”

Cuddy gave his wife one of his sidelong glances, and then slid his gaze over to Alleyn. “I haven’t got anything to conceal,” he said. “I went up and I thought — I mean it seemed kind of quiet. I mean — you don’t want to get fanciful, Eth — I got the idea I’d see if she was O.K. So I — so I went into that place and she didn’t move. So I put out my hand in the dark. And she didn’t move and I touched her hand. She had gloves on. When I touched it, it sort of slid sideways like it wasn’t anything belonging to anybody and I heard it thump on the deck. And I thought, she’s fainted. So, in the dark, I felt around and I touched her face and — and — then I knew and — Gawd, Eth, it was ghastly!”

“Never mind, Fred.”

“I don’t know what I did. I got out of it. I suppose I ran round the side. I wasn’t myself. Next thing I knew I was in the doorway there and — well, I come over faint and I passed out. That’s all. I never did anything else, I swear I didn’t. Gawd’s my judge, I didn’t.”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him for a moment and said: “That, then, is an account of the discovery by the man who made it. So far, of course, there’s no way of checking, but in the meantime we shall use it as a working hypothesis. Now. Mr. McAngus.”

Mr. McAngus sat in a corner. The skirts of his dressing-gown, an unsuitably heavy one, were pulled tight over his legs and clenched between his knees. His arms were crossed over his chest and his hands buried in his armpits. He seemed to be trying to protect himself from anything anybody might feel inclined to say to him. He gazed dolorously at Alleyn as the likeliest source of assault.

“Mr. McAngus,” Alleyn began, “when did you leave this room?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You were still here when I left. That was after Mrs. Dillington-Blick had gone. Did you leave before or after Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy?” He added, “I would rather Mr. McAngus was not prompted.” Several of Mr. McAngus’s fellow passengers who had opened their mouths shut them again.

Mr. McAngus did not embark on his usual round of periphrases. He blinked twice at Alleyn and said, “I am too upset to remember. If I tried I should only muddle myself and you. A dreadful tragedy has happened; I cannot begin to think of anything else.”

Alleyn, his hands in his coat pockets, said dryly, “Perhaps, after all, a little help is called for. May we go back to a complaint you made to Captain Bannerman before you went to bed. You said, I think, that somebody had been taking the hyacinths that Mrs. Dillington-Blick gave you.”

“Oh, yes. Two. I noticed the second had gone this morning. I was very much distressed. And now, of course, even more so.”

“The hyacinths are growing, aren’t they, in a basket which I think is underneath your porthole?”

“I keep them there for the fresh air.”

“Have you any idea who was responsible?”

Mr. McAngus drew down his upper lip. “I am very much averse,” he said, “to making unwarranted accusations, but I confess I have wondered about the steward. He is always admiring them. Or, then again, he might have knocked one off by accident. But he denies it, you see. He denies it.”

“What colour was it?”

“White, a handsome spike. I believe the name is Virgin Queen.”

Alleyn withdrew his hand from his pocket, extended and opened it. His handkerchief was folded about an irregular object. He laid it on the table and opened it. A white hyacinth, scarcely wilted, was disclosed.

Mr. McAngus gave a stifled cry, Brigid felt Tim’s hand close on hers. She saw again in an instantaneous muddle the mangled doll, the paragraphs in the newspapers, and the basket of hyacinths that Dennis had brought in on their first morning at sea. She heard Miss Abbott say, “I beg you not to speak, Mrs. Cuddy,” and Mrs. Cuddy’s inevitable cry of “Hyacinths! Fred!” And then she saw Mr. McAngus rise, holding his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.

“Is that it?” Alleyn asked.

Mr. McAngus moved slowly to the table and stopped.

“Don’t touch it, if you please.”

“It — it looks like it.”

Mrs. Cuddy said shrilly, “Wherever did you find it?”

Mr. Cuddy said, “Never mind, Eth,” but Mrs. Cuddy’s deductive capacity was under a hard drive. She stared, entranced, at the hyacinth. Everyone knew what she was about to say, no one was able to forestall it.

“My Gawd!” said Mrs. Cuddy. “You never found it on the corpse! My Gawd, Fred, it’s the Flower Murderer’s done it. He’s on the ship, Fred, and we can’t get orf!”

Miss Abbott raised her large hands and brought them down heavily on her knees. “We’ve been asked to keep quiet,” she cried out. “Can’t you, for pity’s sake, hold your tongue!”

“Gently, my child,” Father Jourdain murmured.

“I’m not feeling gentle.”

Alleyn said, “It will be obvious to all of you before long that this crime has been committed by the so-called Flower Murderer. At the moment, however, that’s a matter which need not concern us. Now, Mr McAngus. You left this room immediately after Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy. Did you go straight to your cabin?”

After a great deal of painstaking elucidation it was at last collected from Mr. McAngus that he had strayed out through the double doors of the lounge to the deck, had walked round the passengers’ block to the port side, had gazed into the heavens for a few addled minutes, and had re-entered by the door into the interior passageway and thus arrived at his own quarters. “My thoughts,” he said, “were occupied by the film. I found it very moving. Not, perhaps, what one would have expected but nevertheless exceedingly disturbing.”

As he had not been seen by anybody else after he had left the lounge, his statement could only be set down for what it was worth and left to simmer.

Alleyn turned to Aubyn Dale.

Dale was slumped in his chair. He presented a sort of travesty of the splendid figure they had grown accustomed to. His white dinner-jacket was unbuttoned. His tie was crooked, his rope-soled shoes were unlatched, his hair was disordered and his eyes were imperfectly focussed. His face was deadly pale.

Alleyn said, “Now, Mr. Dale, are you capable of giving me an account of yourself?”

Dale crossed his legs and with some difficulty joined the tips of his fingers. It was a sketch of his customary position before the cameras.