Plank, all smartness, was out of the driver’s seat and opening the doors in a flash.

“Is this Mrs. Plank?” Alleyn said and advanced upon her, bareheaded. She was flustered and apologized for her mucky hand. Fox was presented. He and Alleyn admired the garden.

“It’s beginning to look better,” Mrs. Plank said. “It was a terrible old mess when we first came four years ago.”

“Have you had many moves?” Alleyn asked them and they said this was the third.

“And that makes things difficult,” Alleyn said, knowing constant transfers to be a source of discontent.

He had them talking freely in no time: about the disastrous effect on the children’s education and the problems of settling into a new patch where you never knew what the locals would be like — friendly or suspicious, helpful or resentful. Of how, on the whole, the Cove people were not bad but you had to get used to being kept at a distance.

Alleyn edged the conversation around to the neighbors. Did Mrs. Plank know the Ferrants around the corner with whom his son lodged? Not well, she said shortly. Mrs. Ferrant kept herself to herself. She, Mrs. Plank, felt sorry for her. “Really?” Alleyn asked. “Why?”

Finding herself in the delicious situation where gossip could be regarded as a duty, Mrs. Plank said that what with Ferrant away in France half the time and where they got the money for it nobody knew and never taking her with him and when he was home the way he carried on so free for all that he gave her washing machines and fridges and the name he had in the Cove for his bold behavior and yet being secretive with it: well, the general feeling was that Mrs. Ferrant was to be pitied. Although, come to that, Mrs. Ferrant herself wasn’t all that—

“Now then, mother,” said Plank uneasily.

“Well, I know,” she said, “and so do you, Joe.” Alleyn had a picture of the village policeman’s wife, cut off from the cozy interchange of speculative gossip, always having to watch her tongue and always conscious of being on the outside.

“I’m sure Mrs. Plank’s the soul of discretion,” he said. “And we’re grateful for any tips about the local situation, aren’t we, Plank? About Mrs. Ferrant — you were saying?”

It emerged that Mrs. Plank had acquired one friend only with whom she was on cozy terms: her next-door neighbor in the lane, a widow who, in the past, had been a sewing maid up at L’Espérance at the time when Mrs. Ferrant was in service there. Ten years ago that would be, said Mrs. Plank and added with a quick glance at her husband that Mrs. Ferrant had left to get married. The boy was not yet eleven. Louis, they called him. “Mind you,” Mrs. Plank ended, “they’re French.”

“So are most of the islanders, mother,” said Plank. She tossed her head at him. “You know yourself, Joe,” she said, “there’s been trouble. With him.”

“What sort of trouble?” Alleyn asked.

“Maintenance,” said Plank. “Child. Up to Bon Accord.”

“Ah. Don’t tell me. He’s no good, that one,” cried Mrs. Plank in triumph.

Mr. Fox said, predictably, that they’d have to get her in the force and upon that playful note they parted.

Alleyn and Fox turned right from the lane on to the front. They crossed over to the far side and looked up at Ricky’s window, which was wide open. There he was with his tousled head of hair, so like his mother’s, bent over his work. Alleyn watched him for a moment or two, willing him to look up. Presently he did and a smile broke over his bruised face.

“Good morning, Cid, me dear,” said Ricky. “Good morning, Br’er Fox. Coming up? Or shall I come down?”

“We’ll come up.”

Ricky opened the front door to them. He wore a slightly shamefaced air and had a postcard in his hand.

“Mrs. F. is out marketing,” he said. “Look. On the mat, mixed up with my mail. Just arrived.” He shut the door.

The postcard displayed a hectically colored view of a market square and bore a legend: “La place-du-marché, La Tournière.” Ricky turned it over. It had a French stamp and was addressed in an awkward hand to “M. Ferrant” but carried no message.

“It’s his writing,” Ricky said. “He’s given me receipts. That’s how he writes his name. Look at the postmark, Cid.”

“I am. La Tournière. Posted yesterday. Air mail.”

“But he was in Saint Pierre yesterday. Even if it wasn’t Ferrant who shoved me off the jetty, it certainly was Ferrant who made me look silly in the café. Where is La Tournière?”

“North of Marseilles,” said his father.

“Marseilles! But that’s — what?”

“At a guess, between six and seven hundred kilometers by air from Saint Pierre. Come upstairs,” said Alleyn.

He dropped the card on the mat and was on the top landing before the other two were halfway up. They all moved into Ricky’s room as Mrs. Ferrant fitted her key in the front door.

“How did you know she was coming?” Ricky asked.

“What? Oh, she dumped her shopping bag against the door while she fished for her key. Didn’t you hear?”

“No,” said Ricky.

“We haven’t all got radioactive ears,” said Mr. Fox, looking benignly upon his godson.

Alleyn said abruptly: “Rick, why do you think it was Ferrant who shoved you overboard?”

“Why? I don’t know why. I just felt sure it was he. I can’t say more than that — I just — I dunno. I was certain. Come to think of it, it might have been Syd.”

“For the sake of argument we’ll suppose it was Ferrant. He may have felt he’d better remove to a distant spot, contrived to get himself flown to La Tournière, and posted this card at the airport. What time was it when you took the plunge?”

“According to my ruined wristwatch, eight minutes past three.”

Fox said: “When we came into Saint Pierre at four yesterday a plane for Marseilles was taking off. If it calls at—” Mr. Fox arranged his mouth in an elaborate pout “—La Tournière; it could be there by six-thirty, couldn’t it? Just?”

“Is there anything,” Ricky ventured, “against him having been staying at La Tournière, and deciding to fly up to Saint Pierre by an early plane yesterday morning?”

“What was it you used to say, Mr. Alleyn?” Mr. Fox asked demurely. “ ‘Stop laughing. The child’s quite right!’ ”

“My very words,” said Alleyn. “All right, Rick, that may be the answer. Either way, Fox, the peloton des narcotiques, as you would no doubt call the French drug squad, had better be consulted. Ferrant’s on their list as well as ours. He’s thought to consort with someone in the upper strata of the trade.”

“Where?” Ricky asked.

“In Marseilles.”

“I say! Could he have been under orders to get rid of me? Because Syd had reported I’d rumbled his game with the paints?”

Fox shot a quick look at Alleyn and made a rumbling noise in his throat.

Alleyn said, “Remember, we haven’t anything to show for the theory about Jones and his paints. It may be as baseless as one of those cherubim that so continually do cry. But we’ve got to follow it up. Next time, if there is a next time, that Master Syd sets out for London with his paint box they’ll take him and his flake white to pieces at Weymouth and they won’t find so much as a lone pep pill in the lot. Either he’s in the clear or he’ll have seen the light and shut up shop.”

“Couldn’t — you — couldn’t it be proved one way or the other?” Ricky asked.

“Such as?” said Fox who was inclined to treat his godson as a sort of grown-up infant prodigy.

“Well—” said Ricky with diminishing assurance, “such as searching his Pad.”

“Presumably he’s still in France,” said Alleyn.

“All the better.”

“Troy and I agreed,” Alleyn said to Fox, “that taking one consideration with another it was better to keep our child uninformed about the policeman’s lot. Clearly, we have succeeded brilliantly.”

“Come off it, Cid,” said Ricky, grinning.

“However, we haven’t come here to discuss police law but to ask you to recall something Harkness said about his orders to Syd Jones. Do you remember?”