“That’s it.” They worked for some time in silence.

“I don’t know,” Fox said presently. “I don’t somehow feel too certain she’s here.”

“Don’t you?” Alleyn said with a change of voice.

Fox let out an oath and drew back his hand.

From under a counterpane of soil that might have been withdrawn by a sleeping hand, a foot stuck up, rigid in its well-made American walking shoe.

The two constables came up the hill, swinging a lantern and carrying shovels. Bailey and Thompson returned with their gear. In a very little while they had uncovered Miss Hewson. Her print dress was up round her neck and contained her arms: Her body and legs clad in their sensible undergarments were shockingly displayed and so was her face: open eyes and open mouth filled with sandy soil and the cheekbones cut about with gravel.

“But not congested,” Fox said and added loudly: “That’s not a suffocated face. Is it?”

“Oh, no,” Alleyn said. “No. Did you expect it would be, Br’er Fox? It’s hopeless but we’ll try artificial respiration.”

One of the local men took off his helmet and knelt down.

“The old carotid job?” Fox mused.

“That’s what I expect. We’ll see what the doctor says.”

Fox made a movement of his head towards the hidden Zodiac.

“Not, of course—him?”

“No. No. And yet—After all, why not? Why not, indeed.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps better not,” he said and turned to Bailey and Thompson. “The lot,” he said. “Get going.”

He and Fox moved to where the roof had originally overhung the excavation. Here they looked down on the whole subsidence. Tiny runnels of friable soil trickled and started at their foot-fall. They found no footprints or traces of obliteration.

Alleyn said: “I think you’d better take over here, Br’er Fox, if you will. Meet the doctor when he comes and when he’s finished bring him down to the lock.”

As he went down the hill Thompson’s flash-lamp blinked and blinked again.

The River was still misted but when Alleyn looked into the lock, there was the roof of the Zodiac’s wheel-house, her deck and the tarpaulin cover, the top of a helmet, shoulders, a stomach and a pair of regulation boots.

Light from the saloon shone on the wet walls of the lock. He could hear voices.

“Hallo,” he said. The constable looked up and saluted. He was the man who had been on duty by the pub.

“There’s a ladder at the lockhouse, sir,” he said.

“I’ll drop, thank you.”

He managed this feat and for what turned out to be the last time, met the Zodiac passengers in the Zodiac saloon.

-4-

They were in what Fox liked to call déshabillé and looking none the better for it with the exception of Dr Natouche who wore a dressing-gown of sombre grandeur, scarlet kid slippers and a scarf that bore witness as did none of his other garments, to an exotic taste for colour. He was, indeed, himself an exotic, sitting apart at a corner table, upright, black and without expression. Troy would have liked to paint him, Alleyn thought, as he was now. What a pity she couldn’t.

The Skipper also sat apart, looking watchful. Mr Tillottson was back at his former table and the passengers were in the semi-circular seat under the windows. Hewson at once began a heated protest. His sister! Where was his sister! What was the meaning of all this! Did Alleyn realise that he and his sister were American citizens and as such were entitled to protest to their Ambassador in London? Did he appreciate—

Alleyn let it run for a minute and then clamped down.

“I think,” he said, “that we do have a rough idea of the situation, Mr Hewson. We’re in touch with the Federal Bureau in New York. They’ve been very helpful.”

Hewson changed colour, opened his mouth and shut it again.

Alleyn said: “Do you really not know where your sister has gone?”

“I know,” he said, “she’s been real scared by you guys acting like you thought—” he stopped, got to his feet and looked from Tillottson to Alleyn. “Say, what is all this?” he said. “What’s with you guys? What’s happened to Sis?” He fumbled with his hearing aid and thrust his deaf ear towards Alleyn. “C’mon,” he said. “C’mon. Give, can’t you?”

Alleyn said clearly, “Something very bad, I’m afraid.”

“Like what? Hell, can’t you talk like it makes sense? What’s happened?” And then, it seemed with flat incredulity, he said: “Are you telling me she’s dead? Sis? Dead? Are you telling me that?”

Lazenby walked over to Hewson and put his arm across his shoulders: “Hold hard, old man,” he fluted. “Stick it out, boy. Steady. Steady.”

Hewson looked at him. “You make me sick,” he said. “Christ Almighty, you make me sick to my stomach.” He turned on Alleyn. “Where?” he said. “What was it? What happened?”

Alleyn told him where she had been found. He listened with his head slanted and his face screwed up as if he still had difficulty in hearing.

“Smothered,” he said. “Smothered, huh?”

Alleyn said nothing. There was an immense stillness in the saloon as if everybody waited for a climax.

“Why don’t you all say something?” Hewson suddenly demanded. “Sitting round like you were dumbbells. God damn you. Say something.”

“What can we say?” Caley Bard murmured. “There’s nothing we can say.”

“You,” Hewson said. And as if he had to find some object upon which to focus an undefined misery and resentment he leant forward and shook his finger at Caley Bard. “You sit around!” he stammered. “You act like nothing mattered! For Pete’s sake, what sort of a monster do you figure you are?”

“I’m sorry,” Caley said.

“Pardon me?” Hewson shouted angrily with his hand cupped round his ear. “What’s that? Pardon?”

“I’m sorry,” Caley shouted in return.

“Sorry? Sorry, hell! He says he’s sorry!”

Pollock intervened. “There you are,” he said. “That’s what happens. That’s the way our wonderful police get to work. Scare the daylights out of some poor woman so she scarpers and gets herself smothered in a gravel-pit. All in the day’s work.”

“In our opinion,” Alleyn said, “Miss Hewson was not smothered in the gravel-pit. She was buried there.”

“My dear Superintendent—” Lazenby ,exclaimed, “what do you mean by that? That’s a shocking statement.”

“We think that she was murdered in the same way as Miss Rickerby-Carrick was murdered on Tuesday night and a man called Andropulos was murdered last Saturday. And we think it highly probable that one of you is responsible.”

“Do you know,” Caley said, “I had a strong premonition you were going to say that. But why? Why should you suppose one of us—? I mean we’re a cross-section of middle-class people from four different countries of origin who have never met before. We none of us knew that unfortunate eccentric before she, to speak frankly, bored the pants off us in the Zodiac. With the exception of her brother we’d none of us ever set eyes on Miss Hewson. Earlier tonight, Alleyn, you seemed to be suggesting there was some kind of conspiracy at work among us. All this carry-on about people being overheard muttering together in a side street in Tollardwark. And then you started a line about Miss Rickerby-Carrick having been robbed of a Fabergé bibelot. And what’s the strength of the bit about Pollock and his doodles? I must, apologise,” Caley said with a change of tone. “I didn’t mean to address the meeting at such length, but really, Alleyn, when you coolly announce that one of us is a murderer it’s bloody frightening and I for one want to know what it’s all about.”

Alleyn waited for a little and then said: “Yes. Of course. I’m sure you do. Under ordinary conditions it wouldn’t be proper for me to tell you but in several ways this is an extra-ordinary case and I propose to be a damn’ sight more candid than I dare say I ought to be.”