“Captain Bannerman,” he said, “I think you realize I’m ver’ close friend of the general manager of y’r company. He’s going to hear juss how I’ve been treated in this ship and he’s not going to be pleased about it.”

Captain Bannerman said, “You won’t get anywhere that road, Mr. Dale. Not with me nor with anyone else.”

Dale threw up his hands in an unco-ordinated gesture. “All right. On y’own head!”

Alleyn crossed the room and stood over him. “You’re drunk,” he said, “and I’d very much rather you were sober. I’m going to ask you a question that may have a direct bearing on a charge of murder. This is not a threat, it is a statement of fact. In your own interest you’d better pull yourself together if you can and answer me. Can you do that?”

Dale said, “I know I’m plastered. It’s not fair. Doc, I’m plastered, aren’t I?”

Alleyn looked at Tim. “Can you do anything?”

“I can give him something, yes. It’ll take a little time.”

“I don’t want anything,” Dale said. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, held them there for some seconds and then shook his head sharply. “I’ll be O.K.,” he muttered and actually did seem to have taken some sort of hold over himself. “Go on,” he added with an air of heroic fortitude. “I can take it.”

“Very well. After you left this room tonight you went out on deck. You went to the verandah. You stood beside the chaise longue where the body was found. What were you doing there?”

Dale’s face softened as if it had been struck. He said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you deny that you were there?”

“Refuse to answer.”

Alleyn glanced at Tim, who went out.

“If you’re capable of thinking,” Alleyn said, “you must know where that attitude will take you. I’ll give you a minute.”

“Tell you, I refuse.”

Dale looked from one of his fellow passengers to the other — the Cuddy’s, Brigid, Miss Abbott, Father Jourdain, Mr. McAngus — and he found no comfort anywhere.

“You’ll be saying presently,” he said with a sort of laugh, “that I had something to do with it.”

“I’m saying now that I’ve found indisputable evidence that you stood beside the body. In your own interest don’t you think you’d be well advised to tell me why you didn’t at once report what you saw?”

“Suppose I deny it?”

“In your boots,” Alleyn said dryly, “I wouldn’t.” He pointed to Dale’s rope-soled shoes. “They’re still damp,” he said.

Dale drew his feet back as if he’d scorched them.

“Well, Mr. Dale?”

“I–I didn’t know — I didn’t know there was anything the matter. I didn’t know he — I mean she — was dead.”

“Really? Did you not say anything? Did you just stand there meekly and then run away?”

He didn’t answer.

“I suggest that you had come into the verandah from the starboard side — the side opposite to that used by Mr. Cuddy. I also suggest that you had been hiding by the end of the locker near the verandah corner.”

Unexpectedly Dale behaved in a manner that was incongruously, almost embarrassingly theatrical. He crossed his wrists, palms outward, before his face and then made a violent gesture of dismissal. “No!” he protested. “You don’t understand. You frighten me. No!”

The door opened and Tim Makepiece returned. He stood, keeping it open and looking at Alleyn.

Alleyn nodded and Tim, turning his head to the passage, also nodded.

A familiar scent drifted into the stifled room. There was a tap of high heels in the passage. Through the door, dressed in a wonderful negligée, came Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Mrs. Cuddy made a noise that was not loud but strangulated. Her husband and McAngus got to their feet, the latter looking as if he had seen a phantom and the former as if he was going to faint again. But if, in fact, they were about to say or do anything more they were forestalled. Brigid gave a shout of astonishment and relief and gratitude. She ran across the room and took Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s hands in hers and kissed her. She was half crying, half laughing. “It wasn’t you!” she stammered. “You’re all right. I’m so glad. I’m so terribly glad.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick gazed at her in amazement.

“You don’t even know what’s happened, do you?” Brigid went on. “Something quite dreadful but—”

She stopped short. Tim had come to her and put his arm round her. “Wait a moment, my darling,” he said and she turned to him. “Wait a moment,” he repeated and drew her away.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick looked in bewilderment at Aubyn Dale.

“What’s all the fuss?” she asked. “Have they found out?”

He floundered across the room and seized Mrs. Dillington-Blick by the arms, shaking and threatening her.

“Ruby, don’t speak!” he said. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell them. Don’t you dare!”

“Has everybody gone mad?” asked Mrs. Dillington-Blick. She wrenched herself out of Dale’s grip. “Don’t!” she said and pushed away the hand that he actually tried to lay across her mouth. “What’s happened? Have they found out?” And after a moment, with a change of voice: “Where’s Dennis?”

“Dennis,” Alleyn said, “has been murdered.”

It was, apparently, Mr. Cuddy who was most disturbed by the news of Dennis’s death but his was an inarticulate agitation. He merely stopped smiling, opened his mouth, developed a slight tremor of the hands and continued to gape incredulously at Mrs. Dillington-Blick. His wife, always predictable, put her hand over his and was heard to say that someone was trying to be funny. Mr. McAngus kept repeating, “Thank God. I thank God!” in an unnatural voice. Miss Abbott said loudly, “Why have we been misled! An abominable trick!” while Aubyn Dale crumpled back into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick herself, Alleyn thought, was bewildered and frightened. She looked once at Aubyn Dale and away again, quickly. She turned helplessly towards Captain Bannerman, who went to her and patted her shoulder.

“Never you fret,” he said and glared uneasily at Alleyn. “You ought to have had it broken to you decently, not sprung on you without a word of warning. Never mind. No need to upset yourself.”

She turned from him to Alleyn and held out her hands. “You make me nervous,” she said. “It’s not true, is it? Why are you behaving like this? You’re angry, aren’t you? Why have you brought me here?”

“If you’ll sit down,” he said, “I’ll tell you.” She tried to take his hands. “No, just sit down, please, and listen.”

Father Jourdain went to her. “Come along,” he said and led her to a chair.

“He’s a plain-clothes detective, Mrs. Blick,” Mrs. Cuddy announced with a kind of angry triumph. “We’ve all been spied upon and made mock of and put in danger of our lives and now there’s a murderer loose in the ship and he says it’s one of us. In my opinion—”

“Mrs. Cuddy,” Alleyn said, “I must ask you for the moment to be quiet.”

Mr. Cuddy, automatically and for the last time on the voyage, said, “Steady, Ethel.”

“Indeed,” Alleyn went on, “I must ask you all to be quiet and to listen carefully. You will understand that a state of emergency exists and that I have the authority to deal with it. The steward, Dennis, has been killed in the manner you have all discussed so often. He was clad in the Spanish dress Mrs. Dillington-Blick bought in Las Palmas and the inference is that he was killed in mistake for her. He was lying in the chair in the unlit verandah. The upper part of his face was veiled and it was much too dark to see the mole at the corner of his mouth. In the hearing of all of the men in this room Mrs. Dillington-Blick had said she was going to the verandah. She did go there. I met her there and went with her to the lower deck and from thence to her cabin door. She was wearing a black lace dress, not unlike the Spanish one. I returned here and almost immediately Mr. Cuddy arrived announcing that he had discovered her and that she was dead. Apparently he had been deceived by the dress. Dr. Makepiece examined the body and says death had occurred no more than a few minutes before he did so. For reasons which I shall give you when we have time for them, there can be no question of his having been murdered by some member of the ship’s complement. His death is the fourth in the series that you have so often discussed and one of the passengers is, in my opinion, undoubtedly responsible for all of them. For the moment you’ll have to accept that.”