“Oh, no!” Troy ejaculated. “Surely not.”

“Well now, frankly it seems a bit far-fetched to me but there it is. Ted Fox cut you short, in a manner of speaking, when you rang him from the Waterways office down there and he did so on the general principle that you can’t be too careful on the public phone. He’s a careful sort of character himself, as you probably know, and, by gum, he’s thorough.”

“He is, indeed.”

“Yes. That’s so. Yes. Now Ted’s just been called out of London, following a line on the Andropulos business. It may take him across the Channel. In the meantime he’s asked me to keep an eye on your little affair. So what we’d like to do is take a wee look at the passenger list. In the meantime I just wonder about these two incidents you’ve mentioned. Now, what are they? First of all you get the impression that someone, you’re not sure who, got a fright or a shock or a peculiar reaction when you said there were Constables all over the place. And second: you see this bit about Andropulos in the paper, you drop the paper on the seat and go to your cabin. You get the idea it might be pleasanter for all concerned not to spread the information that an intended passenger has been murdered. You go back for the purpose of confiscating the paper and find it’s disappeared. Right? Yes. Now, for the first of these incidents, I just wonder if it wouldn’t be natural for any little gathering of passengers waiting in a quiet lock in peaceful surroundings to get a bit of a jolt when somebody suddenly says there are police personnel all over the place. Swarming, I think you said was the expression you used. And clutch. Swarming with a clutch of Constables. You meaning the artist. They assuming the police.”

“Well—yes. But they didn’t all exclaim at once. They didn’t all say: ‘Where, where, what do you mean, policemen?’ or—things like that. Miss Rickerby-Carrick did and I think Miss Hewson did a bit and I rather fancy Mr Caley Bard said something like: ‘What can you mean?’ But I felt terribly strongly that someone had had a shock. I—Oh,” Troy said impatiently, “how silly that sounds! Pay no attention to it. Really.”

“Shall we take a wee look at the second item, then? The disappearance of the newspaper? Isn’t it possible, Mrs Alleyn, that one of them saw you were put out and when you went to your cabin picked up the paper to see what could have upset you? And found the paragraph? And had the same reaction as you did: don’t put it about in case it upsets people? Or maybe, didn’t notice your reaction but read the paragraph and thought it’d be nice if you didn’t know you’d got a cabin that was to have been given to a murder victim? Or they might all have come to that conclusion? Or, the simplest of all, the staff might just have tidied the paper away?”

“I feel remarkably foolish,” Troy said. “How right you are. I wish I’d shut up about it and not bothered poor Br’er Fox.”

“Oh no,” Tillottson said quickly. “Not at all. No. We’re very glad to have this bit about the booking of Cabin 7. Very glad indeed. We’d very much like to know why Andropulos fancied a waterways cruise. Of course we’d have learnt about it before long but it can’t be too soon for us and we’re much obliged to you.”

“Mr Tillottson, you don’t think, do you, that any of them could have had anything to do with that man? Andropulos? Why should they have?”

Tillottson looked fixedly at the top of his desk. “No,” he said after a pause. “No reason at all. You stay at Toll’ark tonight, don’t you? Yes. Crossdyke tomorrow? And the following day and night at Longminster? Right? And I’ve got the passenger list from you and just to please Mr Fox we’ll let him have it and also do a wee bit of inquiring at our end. The clerical gentleman’s been staying with the Bishop at Norminster, you say? And he’s an Australian? Fine. And the lady with the double name comes from Birmingham? Mr S. H. Caley Bard lives in London, S.W.3 and collects butterflies. And—er—this Mr Pollock’s a Londoner but he came up from Birmingham where he stayed, you said—? Yes, ta. The Osborn. And the Americans were at The Tabard at Stratford. Just a tick, if you don’t mind.”

He went to the door and said: “Sarge. Rickerby-Carrick. Hazel: Miss. Birmingham. Natouche: Doctor. G. F. Liverpool. S. H. Caley Bard, S.W.3. London. Pollock, Saturday and Sunday, Osborn Hotel, Birmingham. Hewson. Americans. Two. Tabard. Stratford. Yes. Check, will you?”

“I mustn’t keep you,” Troy said and stood up.

“If you don’t mind waiting, Mrs Alleyn. Just another tick.”

He consulted a directory and dialled a number. “Bishopscourt?” he said. “Yes. Toll’ark Police Station here. Sorry to trouble you, but we’ve had an Australian passport handed in at our office. Name of Bollinger. I understand an Australian gentleman—oh. Oh, yes? Lazenby? All last week? I see. Not his, then. Very sorry to trouble you. Thank you.”

He hung up, beamed at Troy and asked if she could give him any help as to the place of origin of the remaining passengers. She had heard the Hewsons speak of Apollo, Kansas and of a Hotel Balmoral in the Cromwell Road, and she rather fancied Caley Bard did tutorial cramming work. Mr Stanley P. K. Pollock was a Cockney and owned property in London: where, she had no idea. The Superintendent made notes and the Sergeant came in to say he’d checked his items and they were all O.K. Dr Natouche had been in his present practice in Liverpool for about seven years. He had appeared for the police in a road fatality case last week and had been called in at the site of another one last Sunday. Miss Rickerby-Carrick was a well-known member of a voluntary social workers’ organisation. The other passengers had all been where they had said they had been. The Superintendent said there you were, you see, for what it was worth. As Troy shook hands with him he said there was a police station in the village of Crossdyke, a mile from Crossdyke Lock, and if, before tomorrow night, anything at all out of the way occurred he’d be very glad if she’d drop in at the station and give him a call or, if he was free, he might pop over himself in case she did look in.

“Don’t,” said Mr Tillottson apparently as an afterthought, “if I may make a suggestion, begin thinking everybody’s behaving suspiciously, Mrs Alleyn. It’d be rather easy to do that and it’d spoil your holiday. Going to take a look round Toll’ark? I’m afraid I’ve used up some of your time. Good night, then, and much obliged, I do assure you.”

Troy went out into the street. The church bells had stopped ringing and the town was quiet. So quiet that she quite jumped when some distance away a motor-cycle engine started up explosively. It belched and puttered with a now familiar diminuendo into the distance and into silence.

“But I suppose,” Troy thought, “all these infernal machines sound exactly alike.”

-3-

Evening was now advanced in Tollardwark. The Market Square had filled with shadow and only the top of St Crispin’s tower caught a fugitive glint of day. Footsteps sounded loud and hollow in the darkling streets and the voices of the few people who were abroad underlined rather than diminished the sense of emptiness. Some of the shop-windows had all-night lamps in them but most were unlit and their contents hard to distinguish.

Troy loved to be in a strange town at nightfall. She would have chosen always to arrive, anywhere, at dusk. None of the other passengers was in sight and she supposed they had gone back to the Zodiac. Except Caley Bard, perhaps, who might still be taking out his sight-seeing in The Northumberland Arms, which glowed with classic geniality behind its red-curtained windows. The church windows also glowed: with kaleidoscopic richness.

She crossed the square, went through the lychgate up a short path and entered the west porch. There were the usual notices about parish meetings and restoration funds and the usual collection boxes. When she passed into the church itself she saw that it was beautiful: a soaring place with a feeling of certainty and aliveness not always to be found in churches.