Alleyn said “Tch!”

“Ah! With some it takes the form of religious activities. Others go all-out for dumb animals. Mrs. Nankivell herself, although a very level-headed lady, worked it off in cats, which have in the course of nature simmered down to two. Neuters, both. But with Miss Cost, not to put too fine a point on it, with Miss Cost it was a matter of her female urges.”

“Sex?”

“She spotted it everywhere,” Mr. Nankivell exclaimed. “Up hill and down dell, particularly the latter. Did I know what went on in the bay of an evening? Was I aware of the opportunities afforded by open dinghies? Didn’t we ought to install more lights along the front? And when it came to the hills round about the spring, she was a tiger. Alf Coombe got it. The Rector got it, the Doctor got it, and I came in for it, hot and strong, continuous. She was a masterpiece.”

Alleyn ventured a sympathetic laugh.

“You may say so, but beyond a joke nevertheless. And that’s not the whole story. The truth of the matter is, and I tell you this, sir, in the strictest confidence, the silly female was — dear me, how can I put it — she was chewed-up by the very fury she come down so hard upon. Now, that’s a fact, and well known to all and sundry. She was a manhunter, was poor Elspeth Cost. In her quiet, mousy sort of fashion she raged to and fro seeking whom she might devour. Which was not many.”

“Any success?”

The Mayor, to Alleyn’s infinite regret, pulled himself up. “Well, now,” he said. “That’d be talking. That’d be exceeding, sir.”

“I can assure you that if it has no bearing on the case, I shall forget it. I’m sure, Mr. Mayor, you would prefer me to discuss these quite possibly irrelevant matters with you, rather than make widespread inquiries through the village. We both know, don’t we, that local gossip can be disastrously unreliable?”

Mr. Nankivell thought this over. “True as fate,” he said at last. “Though I’m in no position, myself, to speak as to facts and don’t fancy giving an impression that may mislead you. I don’t fancy that, at all.”

This seemed to Alleyn to be an honest scruple and he said warmly: “I think I can promise you that I shan’t jump to conclusions.”

The Mayor looked at him. “Very good,” he said. He appeared to be struck with a sudden thought. “I can tell you this much,” he continued with a short laugh. “The Rector handled her with ease, being well-versed in middle-aged maidens. And she had no luck with me and the Doctor. Hot after him, she was, and drawing attention and scorn upon herself right and left. But we kept her at bay, poor wretch, and in the end she whipped round against us with as mighty a fury as she’d let loose on the pursuit. Very spiteful. Same with the Major.”

“What!” Alleyn ejaculated. “Major Barrimore!”

Mr. Nankivell looked extremely embarrassed. “That remark,” he said, “slipped out. All gossip, I daresay, and better forgotten, the whole lot of it. Put about by the Ladies’ Guild upon which Mrs. Nankivell sits, ex officio, and, as she herself remarked, not to be depended upon.”

“But what is it that the Ladies’ Guild alleges? That Miss Cost set her bonnet at Major Barrimore and he repelled her advances?”

“Not ezackly,” said the Mayor. His manner strangely suggested a proper reticence undermined by an urge to communicate something that would startle his hearer.

“Come on, Mr. Mayor,” Alleyn said. “Let’s have it, whatever it is. Otherwise you’ll get me jumping to a most improper conclusion.”

“Go on, then,” invited Mr. Nankivell, with hardihood. “Jump!”

“You’re not going to tell me that Miss Cost is supposed to have had an affair with Major Barrimore?”

“Aren’t I? I am, then. And a proper, high-powered, blazing set-to, at that. While it lasted,” said Mr. Nankivell.

Having taken his final hurdle, Mr. Nankivell galloped freely down the straight. The informant, it appeared, was Miss Cissy Pollock, yesterday’s Green Lady and Miss Cost’s assistant and confidante. To her, Miss Cost was supposed to have opened her heart. Miss Pollock, in her turn, had retailed the story, under a vow of strictest secrecy, to the girl friend of her bosom, whose mother, a close associate of Mrs. Nankivell, was an unbridled gossip. You may as well, the Mayor said, have handed the whole lot over to the Town Crier and have done with it. The affair was reputed to have been of short duration and to have taken place at the time of Miss Cost’s first visit to the Island. There was dark talk of an equivocal nature about visits paid by Major Barrimore to an unspecified rival in Dunlowman. He was, Mr. Nankivell remarked, a full-blooded man.

With the memory of Miss Cost’s face, as Alleyn had seen it that morning, made hideous by death, this unlovely story took on a grotesque and appalling character. Mr. Nankivell himself seemed to sense something of this reaction. He became uneasy, and Alleyn had to assure him, all over again, that it was most unlikely that the matter would turn out to be relevant and that, supposing it was, Mr. Nankivell’s name would not appear — everything he had said came under the heading of hearsay, and would be inadmissible as evidence. This comforted him and he took his leave with the air of a man who, however distasteful the task, has done his duty.

When he had gone, Alleyn got his notes out again and added a fairly lengthy paragraph. He then lit his pipe and walked over to the window.

It looked down on the causeway, the landing jetty and the roof of Miss Cost’s shop. Across the channel, in the village, trippers still dappled the foreshore. There were several boats out in the calm waters and among them, pulling towards the Island, he saw Patrick’s dinghy with Jenny Williams in the stern. She sat bolt upright and seemed to be looking anywhere but at her companion. He was rowing with exaggerated vigour, head down and shoulders hunched. Even at that distance, he looked as if he was in a temper. As they approached the jetty, Jenny turned towards him and evidently spoke. He lifted his head, seemed to stare at her and then back-paddled into a clear patch of water and half-shipped his oars. The tide was going out and carried them very slowly towards the point of Fisherman’s Bay. They were talking, now. Jenny made a quick repressed gesture and shook her head.

“Lovers’ quarrel,” Alleyn thought. “Damned awkward in a boat. He won’t get anywhere, I daresay.”

“You won’t get anywhere,” Jenny was saying in a grand voice, “by sulking.”

“I am not sulking.”

“Then you’re giving a superb imitation of it. As the day’s been such a failure why don’t we pull in and bring it to an inglorious conclusion?”

“All right,” he said but made no effort to do so.

“Patrick.”

“What?”

“Couldn’t you just mention what’s upset your applecart? It’d be better than huffing and puffing behind a thundercloud.”

“You’re not so marvellously forthcoming yourself.”

“Well, what am I meant to do? Crash down on my knees in the bilge-water and apologize for I don’t know what?”

“You do know what.”

“Oh, Lord!” Jenny pushed her fingers through her dazzling hair, looked at him and began to giggle. “Isn’t this silly?” she said.

The shadow of a grin lurked about Patrick’s mouth and was suppressed. “Extremely silly,” he said. “I apologize for being a figure of fun.”

“Look,” Jenny said. “Which is it? Me going off with Mr. Alleyn to see Wally? Me being late for our date? Or me going to Dunlowman with Miss Emily tomorrow? Or the lot? Come on.”

“You’re at perfect liberty to take stewed tea and filthy cream buns with anybody you like for as long as you like. It was evidently all very private and confidential and far be me from it — I mean it from me — to muscle in where I’m not wanted.”

“But I told you. He asked me not to talk about it.”