“He’ll recover. It must be pretty obvious to everybody in the Cove, in spite of all Sergeant Plank’s diplomacy, that there’s something in the wind.”

“About the accident, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“That it wasn’t an accident?”

“That it hasn’t been conclusively shown that it was. Is your cousin with you this morning?”

“Louis? Or Carlotta?”

“Louis.”

“You’re sitting on his coat. He’s gone to buy cigarettes.”

“I’m sorry.” He hitched the coat from under him and straightened it, pulling down the sleeves. “What a very smart hacking jacket,” he said.

“It goes too far in my opinion. He hooks it over his shoulders and looks like a mass-produced David Niven.”

“He’s lost a sleeve button. Have I sat it off? How awful, I’d better look.”

“You needn’t bother. I think my daughter wrenched it off. Why do you want to see Louis?”

“In case he noticed anything out-of-the-way when he returned to Leathers.”

Julia twisted around to look at her young-brother-in-law. “I don’t think he did, do you, Bruno?”

Bruno said in an uncomfortable voice. “I think he just said he didn’t see anybody or something like that.”

“And, by the way,” Alleyn said, “when you jumped that gap — a remarkable feat if I may say so — did you go down and inspect it beforehand?”

A pause. “No,” Bruno muttered at last.

“Really? So you wouldn’t have noticed anything particular about it — about the actual gap?”

Bruno shook his head.

“No rail, for instance, running through the thorn?”

“There wasn’t a rail.”

“Just the thorn? No wire?”

For a moment Alleyn thought Bruno was going to respond to this but he didn’t. He shook his head, looked at the floor of the car and said nothing.

Julia winked at Alleyn and bumped her knee against his.

Bruno said: “OK if I go to the shop?”

“Of course, darling. If you see Louis tell him who’s here, will you? He’s buying cigarettes, probably in the Cod-and-Bottle.”

Bruno slid out of the car and walked along the front, his shoulders hunched.

“You musn’t mind,” Julia said. “He’s got a thing about jumping the gap.”

“What sort of thing?”

“He thinks he may have been an incentive to the Harness.”

“Harness?”

“I’ve got a fixation about her name. The others think I do it to be funny but I don’t, poor thing.”

“I gather she was hell-bent on the jump anyway.”

“So she was but Bruno fancies he may have brought her up to boiling point and it makes him miserable. Only if it’s mentioned. He forgets in-between and goes cliff-climbing and bird-watching. How’s Cuth?” asked Julia, and when he didn’t reply at once, said: “Come on, you must know Cuth. The uncle.”

“In retirement.”

“Well, we all know that. The maids told Nanny he’s drinking himself to death out of remorse. I can’t imagine how they know. Well, one can guess. Postman. Customers wanting hacks. Ricky’s chum Syd before he bolted.”

“Has he bolted?”

“Cagey old Ricky just said he’s gone over to Saint Pierre-des-Roches, but the village thinks he bolted. According to Nanny. She has a wide circle of friends and all of them say Syd’s done a bunk.”

“Why do they think he’s done that?”

“Well it’s really — you mustn’t mind this, either,” said Julia opening her eyes very wide and beginning to gabble, “but you see, to begin with, Nanny says they all thought there must be funny business afloat when the inquest was adjourned and on top of that everyone knew she was going to have a baby. Well, I mean, Cuth seems to have bellowed away about it, far and wide. And as she was a constant caller at Syd’s place they put two and two together.” Julia stopped short. “Have you ever thought,” she said in a different voice, “how very appropriate that expression would be if it was ‘one and one together.’ ”

“It hadn’t occurred to me.”

“I make you a present of it. Where was I?”

“I think you were going to tell me something that you hoped I wouldn’t mind.”

“Ah! Thank you. It was just that your arrival on the scene led everyone to believe that you were hard on Syd’s trail because Syd was the — what does ‘putative’ mean? Not that Nanny used the expression.”

“ ‘Supposed’, or ‘presumed.’ ”

“That’s what I thought. The putative papa. Somehow I don’t favor the theory. The next part gets vague: Nanny hurries over it rather, but the general idea seems to be that Syd was afraid Cuth would horsewhip him into marrying Dulcie.”

“And what steps is Syd supposed to have taken?”

“They don’t say it in so many words.”

“What do they say? It doesn’t matter how many words.”

“They hint.”

“What do they hint?”

“That Syd egged her on. To jump. Hoping.”

“I see,” said Alleyn.

“And then, of course, your arriving on the scene—”

“I only arrived last night.”

“Nanny was at a whist-drive last night. The W.I. Some of the husbands picked their ladies up on the way home from the Cod-and-Bottle where they had been introduced to you by Sergeant Plank.”

“I see,” said Alleyn again.

“That’s what I hoped you wouldn’t mind: the whist-drive ladies all saying it looked pretty funny. It seems nobody really believes you merely came to give Sergeant Plank and the boys in blue a new look. They’re all very thrilled to have you, I may say.”

“Too kind.”

“So are we, of course. Here they come. I expect you’d like to have your word with Louis, wouldn’t you? I’ll pay Ricky a little visit.”

“He’s got a black eye and will be self-conscious but enchanted.”

Alleyn, a quick mover, was out of the car and had the door open for her. She gave him a steady look. “How very kind,” she said and left him.

The presence of Louis Pharamond on the front had the effect of turning it into some kind of resort — some little harbor only just “discovered,” perhaps, but shortly to be developed and ruined. His blue silk polo-necked jersey, his sharkskin trousers, his golden wristwatch, even the medallion he wore on a thin chain were none of them excessive but one felt it was only by a stroke of good luck that he hadn’t gone too far with, say, some definitely regrettable ring or even an earring.

Bruno, who trailed after Louis with his hands in his denim pockets, turned into the shop. Louis advanced alone and bridged the awkward gap between himself and Alleyn with smiles and expressions of pleasurable recognition.

“This is a nice surprise!” he cried with outstretched hand. “Who’d have thought we’d meet again so soon!”

There was the weather-worn bench close by, where Ricky had sat in the early hours of the morning. Village worthies sometimes gathered there as if inviting the intervention of some TV commentator. Alleyn, having negotiated Louis’s effusive greetings, suggested that they might move to this bench and they did so.

“I gather,” he said, “you’ve guessed that I’m here on a job.” Louis was all attention: appropriately grave, entirely correct.

“Well, yes, we have wondered, actually. The riding-school girl, isn’t it? Rotten bad show.” He added with an air of diffidence that one didn’t, of course, want to speak out of turn, but did this mean there was any suspicion that it wasn’t an accident?

Alleyn wondered how many more times he was to say that they were obliged to make sure.

“Anything else,” said Louis, “is unbelievable. It’s — well, I mean what could it be but an accident?” And he rehearsed the situation as it had presented itself to the Pharamonds. “I mean,” he said, “she was hell-bent on doing it. And with her weight up — she was a great hefty wench, you know. Not to put too fine a point on it. I’d say she must have ridden every ounce of eleven stone. Well, it was a foregone conclusion.”

Alleyn said it looked like that, certainly.

“We’re trying to find out,” he said, “as closely as may be, when it happened. The medical report very tentatively puts it at between four and five hours of when she was found. But even that is uncertain. She may have survived the injuries for some considerable time or she may have died immediately.”