Mr Tillottson’s pen hovered anxiously. “Pardon?” he repeated. “Oh. Wait a wee, till I get it down. One time commercial artist. No present known occupation but owns property, is in the money and living well. Nothing in Records? O.K? And the other two? Natouche and Bard? Nothing. What’s that? Yes, we’ve got that stuff about his practice in Liverpool. What? Laurenson and Busby, London? Tutorial Service? Spends his vacations chasing butterflies. Known to who? British Lepi — Oh. Given his name to what? Spell it out. L.A.P.A.Z.B.A.R.D.I.I. What’s that when it’s at home? A butterfly? Ta. Yes. Yes. Mr Alleyn’s come in. I’ll tell him, then. Thanks.”

Alleyn said: “Don’t hang up. Let me have a word.” He took the receiver. “Alleyn here,” he said. “Look, I heard all that but I’d like men to call immediately at all the addresses. Yes. Liverpool, too. Yes, I know. Yes, but nevertheless—right. And ring us back, will you? Yes.”

He hung up. “Well, Bert,” he said, “what have you got in your back parlour? Let’s take a look, shall we?”

“Better see this first, hadn’t you?”

Tillottson unlocked a wall safe and from it took an object like a miniature pudding tied up in chamois leather and attached to a cord. “I haven’t opened it, ” he said.

Alleyn opened it, cautiously. “Good God!” he said.

There it lay, on a police officer’s desk in an English market town: an exotic if ever there was one: a turquoise enamel ovoid, starred with diamonds and girt with twelve minuscule figures decked out in emeralds and rubies and pearls, all dancing in order round their jewelled firmament. Aries, Taurus, Gemini—. “The old gang,” Alleyn said. “It’s an Easter egg by Fabergé, Fox, and the gift of an Emperor. And now—what a descent!—we’ve got to try it for dabs.” He looked at Thompson and Bailey. “Job for you,” he said.

“Do you mean to say she charged about the place with this thing hung round her neck!” Fox exclaimed. “It must be worth a fortune. And it’s uncommonly pretty,” he added. “Uncommonly so.”

“That, unless we’re on the wrong track altogether, is what the Jampot thought. Go ahead, you two. Dabs and pictures.”

They were about to leave the room when the telephone rang. Tillottson answered it. “You’d better report to Mr Alleyn,” he said. “Hold on.” He held out the receiver. “p.m. result,” he said.

Alleyn listened. “Thank you,” he said. “What we expected.” He hung up. “She didn’t drown, Fox. Pressure on the carotids and vagus nerve. The mixture as before and straight from the Jampot. All right, Bert. Show us your captives.”

They were in the little charge-room, lounging back on a couple of office chairs and chewing gum. They were as Natouche had described them and their behaviour was completely predictable: the quarter sneer, the drooped eyelid, the hunched shoulder and the perpetual complacent chew. The girl, Alleyn thought, looking at her hands, was frightened: the man hid his hands in his pockets and betrayed nothing but his own insolence.

“They’ve been charged,” Tillottson said, “with theft. They won’t make a statement.”

Alleyn said to the young man: “I’m going to put questions to you. You’ve been taken into custody and found to be in possession of a jewel belonging to a lady into whose death we are inquiring. Driving licence?” He looked at Tillottson who slightly nodded. The young man, sketching boredom and impertinence in equal parts, raised his eyebrows, dipped his fingers into a pocket and threw a licence on the table. He opened his mouth, accelerated his chewing and resumed his former pose.

The licence was made out in the name of Albert Bernard Smith and seemed to be in order. It gave an address in Soho. “This will be checked. The night before last,” Alleyn said, “you were on the tow-path at Crossdyke alongside the Zodiac wearing those boots. You had parked your bicycle under a hedge on the left-hand side of the road above the lock. Later that night you were here at Ramsdyke. You arrived here, with a passenger. Not:” he looked at the girl, “this lady. You carried your passenger—a dead weight—” For two seconds the slightly prognathic jaw noticed by Dr Natouche, stopped champing. The girl suddenly re-crossed her legs.

“—a dead weight,” Alleyn repeated, “down to the weir. Her pyjamas caught on a briar. You did what you’d been instructed to do and then picked up your present companion and made off for Carlisle where you arrived yesterday in time to send a telegram to the Skipper of the Zodiac. It was signed Hay Rickerby-Carrick which is not much like Albert Bernard Smith. Having executed this commission you turned south and were picked up by the police at Pontefract.”

The young man yawned widely, displaying the wad of gum on his tongue. He stretched his arms. The girl gave a scarey giggle and clapped her hand over her mouth.

“You’ve been so busy,” Alleyn said, “on your northern jaunt that you can’t have heard the news. The body has been found and the woman was murdered. I shall now repeat the usual warning which you’ve already had from Superintendent Tillottson. At the moment you are being held for theft.”

The young man, now very white about the side whiskers, heard the usual warning with a sneer that seemed to have come unstuck. The girl watched him.

“Any statement?”

For the first time the young man spoke. His voice was strongly Cockney. “You can contact Mr C. D. E. Struthers,” he said. “I’m not talking.”

Mr C. D. E. Struthers was an extremely adroit London solicitor whose practice was confined, profitably, to top-level experts in mayhem.

“Really?” Alleyn said. “And who’s going to pay for that?”

“Mention my name.”

“If I knew it, I would be delighted to do so. Good evening to you.”

When the couple had swaggered unconvincingly to the cells Tillottson said: “ ‘Smith’ they may be, but not for my money.”

“Ah,” Fox agreed. “They’d have done the virtuous indignation stuff if they were.”

“Well, Smith or Montmorency,” Alleyn said, “we’d better let them talk to Mr C. D. E. Struthers. He may wish them on to one of his legal brethren in the North or he may come up here himself. It’s a matter of prestige.”

“How d’you mean? Prestige?” asked Tillottson.

“The other name for it is Foljambe. Get your Sergeant here to trace the licence will you, Bert? And a description to Records. And Dabs.”

“Yes, O.K. I’ll see to it.”

But before he could do so the Sergeant himself appeared looking perturbed.

“Call for you, sir,” he said to Alleyn. “PC Cape on duty at Ramsdyke Lock. Very urgent.”

“What the hell’s this,” Alleyn said. But when he heard the voice, he guessed.

“I’m reporting at once, sir,” gabbled PC Cape. “I’m very sorry, sir, but there’s been a slip-up, sir. In the fog, sir.”

“Who?”

“The lady, sir. The American lady.”

“What do you mean — slip-up?”

“She’s gone, sir.”

-2-

Six minutes with their siren wailing brought them back to Ramsdyke. Tillottson kept up an uninterrupted flow of anathemas against his PC Cape. Alleyn and Fox said little, knowing that nothing they could offer would solace him. There was still no fog to speak of on the main road but when they turned off into the lane above Ramsdyke Lock they looked down on a vague uniform pallor of the sort that fills the valleys in a Japanese landscape. Their fog-lamps isolated them in a moving confinement that closed as they descended.

“A likely night for it,” Tillottson kept repeating. “My Gawd, a likely night.”

He was driving his own car with Alleyn and Fox as passengers. The London CID car followed with a driver, a local constable and Sergeants Thompson and Bailey who had been pressed in as an emergency measure.

Sirens could be heard without definition as to place or distance. Road blocks and search parties from Longminster, Norminster and Crossdyke were being established about the landscape.