He stared at them, stuck his hands in his pockets, and crossed the road, whistling and strutting a little.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You’re Louis Ferrant, aren’t you?”

He nodded. He walked over to the low wall and lounged against it as Louis Pharamond had lounged that morning: self-consciously, deliberately. Alleyn experienced the curious reaction that is induced by unexpected cross-cutting in a film, as if the figure by the wall blinked by split seconds from child to man to child again.

“Where are you off to?” he asked. “Do you ever go fishing?”

The boy shook his head and then said: “Sometimes,” in an indifferent voice.

“With your father, perhaps?”

“He’s not here,” Louis said very quickly.

“You don’t go out by yourself? In the dinghy?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Or perhaps you can’t row,” Alleyn casually suggested.

“Yes. I can. I can so row. My papa won’t let anybody but me row the dinghy. Not anybody. I can row by myself even when it’s gros temps. Round the musoir, I can, and out to the cap. Easy.”

“I bet you wouldn’t go out on your own at night.”

“Huh! Easy! Often! I—”

He stopped short, looked uncomfortably at the house and turned sulky. “I can so row,” he muttered and began to walk away.

“I’ll get you to take me out one of these nights,” Alleyn said.

But Louis let out a small boy’s whoop and ran suddenly, down the road and around the corner.

“Let me tell you a fairy tale, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn.

“Any time,” said Fox.

“It’s about a little boy who stayed up late because his mother told him to. When it was very dark and very late indeed and the tide was high, she sent him down to the strand where his papa’s dinghy was anchored and just afloat and he hauled up the anchor and rowed the dinghy out to his papa’s motorboat which was called ‘Fifi’ and he tied her up to ‘Fifi’ and waited for his papa who was not really his papa at all. Or perhaps, as it was a calm night, he rowed right out to the heads — the cap—and waited there. And presently his papa arrived in a boat from France that went back to France. So the little boy and his papa rowed all the way back to the pier and came home. And they left the dinghy tied up to the pier.”

“And what did the papa do then?” Fox asked in falsetto.

“That,” Alleyn said, “is the catch. He can hardly have bedded down with his lawful wedded wife and be lying doggo in the bedroom. Or can he?”

“Possible.”

“Yes. Or,” Alleyn said, “he may be bedded down somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“Like Syd’s Pad, for example.”

“And why’s he come back? Because things are getting too hot over there?” Fox hazarded.

“Or, while we’re in the inventive vein, because they might be potentially even hotter over here and he wants to clean up damning evidence.”

“Where? Don’t tell me. At Syd’s Pad. Or,” Fox said, “could it be, don’t laugh, to clean up Syd?”

“Because, wait for it, Syd it was who made the attempt on Rick and bungled it and has become unreliable and expendable. Your turn.”

“A digression. Reverting to the deceased. While on friendly terms with Syd at his Pad, suppose she stumbled on something,” said Fox.

“What did she stumble on? Oh, I’m with you. On a doctored tube of emerald-oxide-of-chromium or on the basic supply of dope.”

“And fell out with Jones on account of it being his baby and he not being prepared to take responsibility and so she threatened to grass on him,” said Fox, warming to his work. “Or alternatively, yes, by gum, for Syd read Ferrant. It was his baby and he did her in. Shall I go on?”

“Be my guest.”

“Anyway one, or both of them, fixes up the death trap and polishes her off,” said Fox. “There you are! Bob’s your uncle.” He chuckled.

Alleyn did not reply. He got up and looked at Ricky’s window. It was still shut. The village was very quiet at this time in the afternoon.

“I wonder where he went for his walk,” he said. “I suppose he could have come back while we were on the pier.”

“He couldn’t have failed to see us.”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t butt in. He’s not at his table. When he’s there you can see him very clearly from the street. Good God, I’m behaving like a clucky old hen.”

Fox looked concerned but said nothing.

Alleyn said: “We’re not exactly active at the moment, are we? What the hell have we got in terms of visible, tangible, put-on-table evidence? Damnall.”

“A button.”

“True.”

“It wasn’t anywhere near the fence,” said Fox. “Might he just have forgotten?”

“He might, but I don’t think so. Fox, I’m going to get a search warrant for Syd’s Pad.”

“You are?”

“Yes. We can’t leave it any longer. Even if we’ve done no better than concoct a fairy tale, Jones does stand not only as an extremely dubious character but as a kind of link between the two crackpot cases we’re supposed to be handling. I’ve been hoping Dupont at his end might turn up something definite and in consequence haven’t taken any action with the sprats that might scare off the mackerel. But there’s a limit to masterly inactivity and we’ve reached it.”

“So we search,” Fox said. He fixed his gaze upon the distant coast of France. “What d’you reckon, Mr. Alleyn?” he asked. “Has he got back? Have they both got back? Jones and Ferrant?”

“Not according to the airport people.”

“By boat, then, like we fancied. In the night?”

“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we? Here comes a copper in the Super’s car. It’s ho for the nearest beak and a search warrant.”

“It’ll be a pity,” Fox remarked, “if nobody’s there after all. Bang goes the fairy tale. Back to square one.” He considered this possibility for a moment. “All the same,” he said, “although I don’t usually place any reliance on hunches I’ve got a funny kind of feeling there’s somebody in Syd’s Pad.”

iii

The really extraordinary feature of Ricky’s situation was his inability to believe in it. He had to keep reminding himself that Ferrant had a real gun of sorts and was pointing it into the small of his back. Ferrant had shown it to him and said it was real and that he would use it if Ricky did not do as he was told. Even then Ricky’s incredulity nearly got the better of him and he actually had to pull himself together and stop himself calling the bluff and suddenly bolting down the hill.

The situation was embarrassing rather than alarming. When Syd Jones slouched out of the Pad and met them and fastened his arms behind his back with a strap, Ricky thought that all three of them looked silly and not able to carry the scene off with style. This reaction was the more singular in that, at the same time, he knew they meant business and that he ought to be deeply alarmed.

And now, here he was, back in Syd’s Pad and in the broken-down chair he had occupied on his former visit, very uncomfortable because of his pinioned arms. The room smelled and looked as it had before and was in the same state of squalor. He saw that blankets had been rigged up over the windows. A solitary shaded lamp on the worktable gave all the light there was. His arms hurt him and broken springs dug into his bottom.

There was one new feature, apart from the blankets. Where there had been sketches drawing-pinned to the wall there now hung a roughly framed canvas. He recognized Leda and the Swan.

Ferrant lounged against the table with unconvincing insolence. Syd lay on his bed and looked seldom and furtively at Ricky. Nothing was said and, grotesquely, this silence had the character of a social hiatus. Ricky had some difficulty in breaking it.

“What is all this?” he asked, his voice sounding like somebody else’s. “Am I kidnapped or what?”

“That’s right, Mr. Alleyn,” Ferrant said. “That’s correct. You are our hostage, Mr. Alleyn.”