“Six minutes slow,” he said.

Trehern burst out angrily: “I don’t have no call for clocks! I’m a seafaring chap and read the time of day off of the face of nature. Sky and tides is good enough for me, and my mates in the bay’ll bear me out. Six minutes fast or six minutes slow by thikky clock’s no matter to me. I looked outer my winder and it wur dead water, and dead water come when I said it come, and if that there por female was sent to make the best of ’erself before ’er Maker when I looked outer my winder, she died at dead water and that’s an end of it.”

“Trehern,” Alleyn said, “what are you going to make of this? Mrs. Tretheway’s baby was born at 7:30, and Dr. Mayne left in his launch about ten minutes later. You’re a full half-hour out in your times.”

There was a long silence.

“Well?” Alleyn said. “Any comment?”

He broke into a stream of oaths and disjointed expostulations. Did they call him a liar? Nobody called Jim Trehern a liar and got away with it. If they weren’t going to believe him, why did they ask? There was talk against him in the bay. Jealousy seemed to be implied. His anger modulated through resentfulness and fear into his familiar occupational whine. Finally he said that a man could make mistakes, couldn’t he? When Alleyn asked if he meant that he’d mistaken the time, Trehern said he didn’t want his words taken out of his mouth and used against him.

He could scarcely have made a more dubious showing. He was observed briefly by his spouse, who emerged from the house, stood blinking in the back doorway, and was peremptorily ordered back by her husband. Inside the cottage, actors could be heard, galloping about on horses and shouting “C’m on, let’s go!” to each other. Wally, Alleyn supposed, was enjoying television.

Trehera suddenly bawled out: “You, boy! Wal! Come yurr! Come out of it when you’re bid!”

Wally shambled onto the back porch, saw Alleyn and smiled widely.

“Come on!” his father said. Wally began to whimper, but came on to the shed. His father took him by the arm.

“Now, then. Tell the truth and shame the devil. You been chucking rocks?”

“No. No, I bean’t.”

“No, and better not. Speak up and tell these yurr gents. Swear if you hope you won’t get half-skinned for a liar as you never chucked no rocks at nobody.”

“I never chucked no rocks, only stones,” Wally said, trembling. “Like you said to.”

“That’ll do!” his father said ferociously. “Get in.” Wally bolted.

Alleyn said: “You’d better watch your step with that boy. Do you thrash him?”

“Never raise a hand to him, mister. Just a manner of speaking. He don’t understand nothing different. Never had no mother-love, poor kid. I have to pour out sufficient for both and a heavy job it is.”

“You may find yourself describing it to the welfare officer, one of these days.”

“Them bastards!”

“Now, look here, Trehern, you heard what the boy said. ‘No rocks, only stones like you said to.’ Hadn’t you better make the best of that statement and admit he threw stones at Miss Pride and you knew it? Think it out.”

Trehern made a half-turn, knocked his boot against an old tin and kicked it savagely to the far end of the yard. This, apparently, made up his mind for him.

“If I say he done it in one of his foolish turns, meaning no harm and acting the goat — all right — I don’t deny it and I don’t excuse it. But I do deny, and will, and you won’t shift me an inch, he never heaved no rock at Elspeth Cost. I’ll take my Bible oath on it and may I be struck dead if I lie.”

“How can you be so sure? Miss Pride saw the boy in the lane at about twenty to eight. So did Dr. Mayne. You weren’t there. Or were you?”

“I was not. By God, I was not. And I’ll lay anyone cold that says different. And how can I be so sure?” He advanced upon Alleyn and thrust his face towards him. His unshaven jowls glittered with raindrops. “I’ll tell you flat how I can be so sure. That boy never told a lie in his life, mister. He’m too simple. Ax anybody. Ax his teacher. Ax Parson, Ax his mates. He’m a truth-speaking lad, por little sod, and for better or worse, the truth’s all you’ll ever get out of our Wal.”

Alleyn heard Jenny Williams’s voice: He’s an extraordinarily truthful little boy. He never tells lies — never.

He looked at Trehern and said: “All right. We’ll let it go at that, for the moment. Good evening to you.”

As they walked round the side of the house Trehern shouted after them: “What about the female of the speeches? Pride? Pride has to take a fall, don’t she?”

There was a wild scream of laughter from Mrs. Trehern and a door banged.

“That will do to go on with,” Alleyn said to Fox and aped Wally’s serial: “C’m on. Let’s go!”

VIII

The Shop

They found Bailey and Thompson outside, locked in their mackintoshes with an air of being used to it and with their gear stowed inside waterproof covers. Rain cascaded from their hat brims.

“We’ll go back to the pub,” Alleyn said.

The Tretheways’ cottage was across the lane from the Treherns’. Alleyn knocked at the back door and was invited in by the proud father: an enormous grinning fellow. The latest addition was screaming very lustily in the bedroom. The father apologized for this drawback to conversation.

“ ’Er be a lil’ maid, ’er be,” he said, “and letting fly with ’er vocal power according.”

They stood by the kitchen window, which looked across the lane toward the spring. Seeing this, Alleyn asked him if he’d happened to notice Wally in the lane at about the time the baby was born or soon after, and was given the reasonable answer that Mr. Tretheway’s attention was on other matters. The baby had indeed been born at 7:30, and Dr. Mayne had in fact left very soon afterwards.

Alleyn congratulated Tretheway, shook his hand, rejoined his colleagues and told them what he’d gleaned.

“So, why does Trehern say he saw the doctor leave about five past eight?” Fox asked. “There’s usually only one reason for that sort of lie, isn’t there? Trying to rig the time so that you look as if you couldn’t have been on the spot. That’s the normal caper.”

“So it is, then,” Alleyn agreed with a reasonable imitation of the local voice. “But there are loose ends here. Or are there?”

“Well, yes,” Fox said. “In a way.”

“Bailey — what did you get? Any fisherman’s boots superimposed on the general mess? Or boy’s boots? I couldn’t find any.”

“Nothing like that, Mr. Alleyn. But, as you said yourself, this flat slice of stone’s been used to cut out recent prints. We’ve picked up enough to settle that point,” Bailey said grudgingly. “Not much else. The only nice jobs are the ones left after this morning’s rain by a set of regulation tens, and another of brogues or gentleman’s country shoes, size nine and a half, ripple soles and in good repair.”

“I know. The Super, and the Doctor.”

“That’s right, sir, from what you’ve mentioned.”

“What about the stuff near the outcrop and behind it?”

“What you thought, Mr. Alleyn. They match. Handsewn, officer’s type. Ten and a half, but custom made. Worn but well kept.”

“In a sense you might be describing the owner. Did you tell Carey he could go off duty?”

“Yes sir. There seemed no call for him to stay. We’ve got all the casts and photographs we want. I used salt in the plaster, seeing how the weather was shaping. It was O.K. Nice results.”

“Good. It’s getting rougher. Look at that sea.”

In the channel between Island and village, the tide now rolled and broke in a confusion of foam and jetting spray. Out at sea there were whitecaps everywhere. The horizon was dark and broken. The causeway was lashed by breakers that struck, rose, fell across it and withdrew, leaving it momentarily exposed and blackly glinting in what remained of the daylight. The hotel launch bucketted and rolled at the jetty. A man in oilskins was mounting extra fenders. Above the general roar of sea and rain, the thud of the launch’s starboard side against the legs of the jetty could be clearly heard.