“It appears that he always sings when he’s finished.”

Tim said suddenly. “We heard it. Brigid and I. It wasn’t far off. On the other side. We thought it was a sailor but actually it sounded rather like a choirboy.”

“Oh, please!” Father Jourdain ejaculated and at once added, “Sorry. Silly remark.”

“Here!” the captain interposed, jabbing a square finger at the newspaper-covered form on the table. “Can’t you do any of this funny business with fingerprints? What about them?”

Alleyn said he’d try, of course, but he didn’t expect there’d be any that mattered as their man was believed to wear gloves. He very gingerly removed the newspaper and there, shockingly large, smirking, with her detached head looking over her shoulder, was Esmeralda. In any case, Alleyn pointed out, the mantilla had been wound so tightly round the neck that any fingerprints would be obliterated. “It’s a right-handed job, I think,” he said. “But as we’ve no left-hand passengers that doesn’t cast a blinding light on anything.” He eased away the back lace, exposing part of the pink plastic neck. “He tried the necklace first but he never has any luck with beads. They break. You can see the dents in the paint.”

He dropped the newspaper over the doll and looked at Tim Makepiece.

“This sort of thing’s up your street, isn’t it?”

Tim said, “If it wasn’t for the immediacy of the problem it’d be damned interesting. It still is. It looks like a classic. The repetition, the time factor — by the way, the doll’s out of step in that respect, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Dead out. It’s six days too soon. Would you say that made the time theory look pretty sick?”

“On the face of it — no, I don’t think I would; although one shouldn’t make those sorts of pronouncements. But I’d think the doll being inanimate might be — well, a kind of extra.”

“A Jeu d’esprit?”

“Yes. Like a Malcolm Campbell amusing himself with a toy speedboat. It wouldn’t interfere with the normal programme. That’d be my guess. But if one could only get him to talk.”

“You can try and get all of ’em to talk,” said Captain Bannerman sardonically. “No harm in trying.”

“It’s a question, isn’t it,” Alleyn said, “of what we are going to do about it. It seems to me there are three courses open to us. (A) We can make the whole situation known to everybody in the ship and hold a routine enquiry, but I’m afraid that won’t get us much further. I could ask if there were alibis for the other occasions, of course, but our man would certainly produce one and there would be no immediate means of checking it. We know, by the way, that Cuddy hasn’t got one for the other occasion.”

“Do we?” said the captain woodenly.

“Yes. He went for a walk after leaving his silver-wedding bouquet at a hospital.”

“My God!” Tim said softly.

“On the other hand an enquiry would mean that my man is fully warned and at the cost of whatever anguish to himself goes to earth until the end of the voyage. So I don’t make an arrest and at the other side of the world more girls are killed by strangulation. (B) We can warn the women privately and I give you two guesses as to what sort of privacy we might hope to preserve after warning Mrs. Cuddy. (C) We can take such of your senior officers as you think fit into our confidence, form ourselves into a sort of vigilance committee, and try by observation and undercover enquiry to get more information before taking action.”

“Which is the only course I’m prepared to sanction,” said Captain Bannerman. “And that’s flat.”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him. “Then it’s just as well,” he said, “that at the moment it appears to be the only one that’s at all practicable.”

“That makes four suspects to watch,” Tim said after a pause.

“Four?” Alleyn said. “Everybody says four. You may all be right, of course. I’m almost inclined to reduce the field, tentatively, you know, very tentatively. It seems to me that at least one of your four is in the clear.”

They stared at him. “Are we to know which?” Father Jourdain asked.

Alleyn told him.

“Dear me!” he said. “How excessively stupid of me. But of course.”

“And then, for two of the others,” Alleyn said apologetically, “there are certain indications; nothing like certainties, you might object, and yet I’m inclined to accept them as working hypotheses.”

“But look here!” Tim said. “That would mean—”

He was interrupted by Captain Bannennan. “Do you mean to sit there,” he roared out, “and tell us you think you know who done — damnation! Who did it?”

“I’m not sure. Not nearly sure enough, but I fancy so.”

After a long pause Father Jourdain said, “Well — again, are we to know which? And why?”

Alleyn waited for a moment. He glanced at the captain’s face, scarlet with incredulity, and then at the other two; dubious, perhaps a little resentful.

“I think perhaps better not,” he said.

When at last he went to bed, Alleyn was unable to sleep. He listened to the comfortable pulse of the ship’s progress and seemed to hear beyond it a thin whistle of a voice lamenting a broken doll. If he closed his eyes it was to find Captain Bannerman’s face, blown with obstinacy, stupid and intractable, and Esmeralda, smirking over her shoulder. And even as he told himself that this must be the beginning of a dream, he was awake again. He searched for some exercise to discipline his thoughts and remembered Miss Abbott’s plainsong chant. Suppose Mr. Merryman had ordered him to put it into English verse?

“No! No! NO!” Mr. Merryman shouted, coming very close and handing him an embarkation notice. “You have completely misinterpreted the poem. My compliments to the captain and request him to lay on six of the best.”

Mr. Merryman then opened his mouth very wide, turned into Mr. Cuddy and jumped overboard. Alleyn began to climb a rope ladder with Mrs. Dillington-Blick on his back and thus burdened, at last fell heavily to sleep.

The passengers always met for coffee in the lounge at eleven o’clock. On the morning after Las Palmas this ceremony marked the first appearance of Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Aubyn Dale, neither of whom had come down for breakfast. It was a day with an enervating faint wind and the coffee was iced.

Alleyn had chosen this moment to present Mrs. Dillington-Blick with the disjecta membra of Esmeralda. She had already sent Dennis to find the doll and was as fretful as a good-natured woman can be when he came back empty-handed. Alleyn told her that at a late hour he and Father Jourdain had discovered Esmeralda lying on the deck. He then indicated the newspaper parcel that he had laid out on the end of the table.

He did this at the moment when the men of the party and Miss Abbott were gathered round the coffee. Mrs. Cuddy, Mrs. Dillington-Blick, and Brigid always allowed themselves the little ceremony of being waited upon by the gentlemen. Miss Abbott consistently lined herself up in the queue and none of the men had the temerity to question this procedure.

With the connivance of Father Jourdain and Tim Makepiece, Alleyn unveiled Esmeralda at the moment when Aubyn Dale, Mr. Merryman, Mr. Cuddy and Mr. McAngus were hard by the table.

“Here she is,” he said, “and I’m afraid she presents rather a sorry sight.”

He flicked the newspaper away in one jerk. Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried out sharply.

Esmeralda was lying on her back with her head twisted over her shoulder and the beads and dead hyacinth in position.