“Do you mean when he said he’d ordered Syd to take the sorrel mare to the blacksmith and he was in an awful stink because Syd hadn’t done it? He said Syd was as good as a murderer.”

“What did Jones do with himself?”

“I suppose he cleared off quite early. After he’d collected some horse feed, I think.”

“We don’t know,” Fox said heavily, “who was on the premises from the time the riding party left until they returned. Apart from the two Harknesses. Or has Plank gone into that, would you say?”

“We’ll ask him. All right, Rick. I don’t think we’ll be hounding you any more.”

“I’d rather be hounded than kept out.”

Fox said: “I daresay you don’t care to talk about work in progress.” He looked with respect at the weighted heap of manuscript on Ricky’s table.

“It’s a struggle, Br’er Fox.”

“Would I be on the wrong wavelength if I said it might turn out to be all the better for that?”

“You couldn’t say anything nicer,” said Ricky. “And I only hope you’re right.”

“He often is,” said Alleyn.

“About people at Leathers during that afternoon,” Ricky said. “There is, of course, Louis Pharamond.” And he described Louis’s cramp and early return.

“Nobody tells us anything,” Alleyn cheerfully complained. “What time would he have got back?”

“If he pushed along, I suppose about threeish. When he left he was carrying his right boot and had his right foot out of its stirrup. He’s very good on a horse.”

“Has he said anything about the scene at Leathers when he got there?”

Ricky stared at his father. “Funny,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Didn’t he give evidence at the inquest, for pity’s sake?”

“No. No, he didn’t. I don’t think they realized he returned early.”

“But surely one of you must have said something about it?”

“I daresay the others did. I haven’t seen them since the inquest. I should think he probably unsaddled his horse, left it in the loose-box, and came away without seeing anybody. It was there when we got back. Of course if there’d been anything untoward, he’d have said so, wouldn’t he?”

After a considerable pause during which Fox cleared his throat Alleyn said he hoped so and added that as investigating officers they could hardly be blamed if they didn’t know at any given time whether they were looking into a possible homicide or a big deal in heroin. It would be tidier, he said, if some kind of link could be found.

Ricky said: “Hi.”

“Hi, what?” asked his father.

“Well — I’d forgotten. You might say there is a link.”

“ ‘Define, define, well-educated infant,’ ” Alleyn quoted patiently.

“I’m sure it’s of no moment, mind you, but the night I came home late from Syd’s Pad—” and he described the meeting on the jetty between Ferrant and Louis Pharamond.

“What time,” Alleyn said after a long pause, “was this?”

“About one-ish.”

“Funny time to meet, didn’t you rather think?”

“I thought Louis Pharamond might go fishing with Ferrant. I didn’t know whether they’d been together in the boat or what. It was jolly dark,” Ricky said resentfully.

“It was your impression, though, that they had just met?”

“Yes. Well — yes, it was.”

“And all you heard was Louis Pharamond saying: ‘All right?’ or ‘OK, careful,’ or ‘Watch it.’ Yes?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Cid,” said Ricky. “Subsequent events have kind of wiped it.”

Fox said: “Understandable.”

Alleyn said perhaps it was and added that he would have to wait upon the Pharamonds anyway. Upon this, Ricky, looking very uncomfortable, told him about Julia’s telephone call and her intention of asking them to dinner. “I said I knew you’d adore to but were horribly busy. Was that OK?”

“Half of it was, at least. Yes, old boy, you were the soul of tact. Sure you don’t fancy the diplomatic after all? How did she know I was here?”

“Louis caught sight of you in the hotel. Last night.”

“I see. I don’t, on the whole, think this is an occasion for dinner parties. Will they all be at home this morning, do you suppose?”

“Probably.”

“One other thing, Rick. I’m afraid we may have to cut short your sojourn at the Cove.”

Ricky stared at him. “Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “Why?”

Alleyn walked over to the door, opened it, and had an aerial view of Mrs. Ferrant on her knees, polishing the stairs. She raised her head and they looked into each other’s faces.

“Bonjour, madame!” Alleyn called out jovially, “Comment ça va?”

“Pas si mal, monsieur, ” she said.

“Toujours affairée, n’est-ce pas?”

She agreed. That was how it went. He said he was about to look for her. He had lost his ball-point pen and wondered if she had come across it in the petit salon last evening after he left. Alas, no. Definitely, it was not in the petit salon. He thanked her and with further compliments reentered the room and shut the door.

Ricky began in a highish voice. “Now, look here, Cid—”

Alleyn and Fox simultaneously raised their forefingers. Ricky, against his better judgment, giggled. “You look like mature Gentlemen of the Chorus,” he said, but he said it quietly. “Shall I shut the window? In case of prowlers on the pavement?”

“Yes,” said his father.

Ricky did so and changed his mind about introducing a further note of comedy. “Sorry,” he said. “But why?”

“Principally because it would be inappropriate, supposing Ferrant returns, for you to board in the house of your would-be murderer — if indeed he is that.”

“I want to stay. My work’s going better, I think. And — I’m sorry but I am mixed up in the ongoings. And anyway he hasn’t come back. Much more than all that, I want to see it out.”

They looked so gravely at him that he felt extremely uneasy.

From the street below there came seven syncopated toots from a car horn.

Ricky said in an artificial voice: “That’s Julia.”

Alleyn opened the window and leaned out. Ricky heard the familiar and disturbing voice.

“You?” Julia shouted. “What fun! We’ve been hunting you.”

“I’ll come down. Hold on.”

He nodded to Fox. “Meet you at Plank’s,” he said, and to Ricky. “See you later, old boy.”

As he went downstairs he thought: “Damn. He went white. He has got it badly.”

iii

Julia was in her dashing sports car and Bruno was doubled up in the token seat behind her. She was dressed in white, as Alleyn remembered seeing her in the ship, with a crimson scarf on her head and those elegant gloves. Enormous dark glasses emphasized her pallor and her remarkable mouth. She had a trick when she laughed of lifting her lip up and curving it in. This changed her into a gamine and was extremely appealing. “Poor old Rick,” Alleyn thought, “he hadn’t a chance. On the whole I daresay it’s been good for him.”

Ricky, standing back from his closed window, was able to see his father shake hands with Julia and at her suggestion get into the passenger’s seat. She looked at him as she sometimes looked at Ricky and had taken off her black glasses to smile at him. She talked — vividly, Ricky was sure — and he wondered at his father’s air of polite attention. When she talked like that to Ricky he felt himself develop a fatuous expression and indeed was sometimes obliged to pull his face together and shut his mouth.

His father did not look in the least fatuous.

Now Julia stopped talking and laughing. She leaned toward Alleyn and seemed to listen closely as he, still with that air of formal courtesy, spoke to her. So might her doctor or solicitor have behaved.

What could they be saying? he wondered. Something about Louis? Or could it be about him, by any chance? The thought perturbed him.

“Ricky,” Alleyn was saying, “was in a bit of a spot. I’d told him not to gossip.”

“And there have I been badgering him. Wretched Ricky!” cried Julia and broke into her splutter.