Drawers were wrenched open, one after another.

“By gum!” Fox presently exclaimed. “You’re right, Mr. Alleyn. Two keys. Here we are.”

“Where?”

“Wrapped up in her com’s.”

“In the absence of a chastity belt, no doubt.”

“What’s that, Mr. Alleyn?”

“No matter. Either of them fit?”

“Hold on. The thing’s down by the skirting board. Yes. Yes, I do believe… Here we are.”

A lock clicked.

“Well?”

“Two cash boxes, so far,” Fox said, his voice strangely muffled.

Alleyn walked into the bedroom and was confronted by his colleague’s stern, up-ended beneath an illuminated legend which read:

This was supported by a bookshelf on which the works of Algernon Blackwood and Dennis Wheatley predominated.

Fox was on his knees with his head to the floor and his arm in a cupboard. He extracted two japanned boxes and put them on the unmade bed, across which lay a rumpled nightgown embroidered with lazy-daisies.

“The small key’s the job for both,” he said. “There you are, sir.”

The first box contained rolled bundles of banknotes and a well-filled cashbag; the second, a number of papers. Alleyn began to examine them.

The top sheet was a carbon copy with a perforated edge. It showed, in type, a list of dates and times covering the past twelve months.

There were twenty entries. Two, placed apart from the others, and dated the preceding year, were heavily underlined.

“From a duplicating book in her desk,” Alleyn said. “A page has been cut out. It’ll be the top copy of this one.”

“Typewritten,” Fox commented. “There’s a decrepit machine in the parlour. We’ll check, but I think this’ll be it.”

“Do the dates mean anything to you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“The underlined item does. Year before last. July 22nd—5 p.m. That’s the date and time of the Wally’s warts affair. Yesterday was the second anniversary.”

“Would the others be notes of later cures? Was any record kept?”

“Not to begin with. There is, now. The book’s on view at Wally’s cottage. We can check, but I don’t think that’s the answer. The dates are too closely bunched. They give — let’s see; they give three entries for August of last year, one for September, and then nothing until April 27th of this year. Then a regular sequence over the last three months up to — yes, by George! — up to a fortnight ago. What do you make of it, Br’er Fox? Any ideas?”

“Only that they’re all within licensing hours. Very nice bitter they serve up at the Boy-and-Lobster. It wouldn’t go down too badly. Warm in here, isn’t it?”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him. “You’re perfectly right,” he said. He went into the shop. “Pender,” he called out, “who’s the bartender in the evenings at the Boy-and-Lobster?”

“In the old days, sir, it were always the Major hisself. Since these yurr princely extensions, however, there be a barmaid in the main premises and the Major serves in a little wee fancy kind of place, behind the lounge.”

“Always?”

“When he’m capable,” said Pender drily, “which is pretty well always. He’m a masterpiece for holding his liquor.”

Pender returned to the shop. “There’s one other thing,” Alleyn said to Fox. “The actual times she’s got here between April and July grow later as the days grow longer.”

“So they do,” Fox said. “That’s right. So they do.”

“Well: let it simmer. What’s next? Exhibit Two.”

It was an envelope containing an exposed piece of film and a single print. Alleyn was about to lay the print on Miss Cost’s pillow. This bore the impress of her head and a single gray hair. He looked at it briefly, turned aside, and dropped the print on her dressing-table. Fox joined him.

It was a dull, indifferent snapshot: a tangle of bracken, a downward slope of broken ground and the top of a large boulder. In the foreground, out of focus, was the image of wire netting.

“Above the spring,” Alleyn said. “Taken from the hillside. Look here, Fox.”

Fox adjusted his spectacles. “Feet,” he said. “Two pairs. Courting couple!”

“Very much so. Miss Cost’s anathema. I’m afraid Miss Cost begins to emerge as a progressively unattractive character.”

“Shutter-peeping,” said Fox. “You don’t get it so often among women.”

Alleyn turned it over. Neatly written across the back was the current year, and “June 17th—7:30 p.m.”

“Last month,” Alleyn said. “Bailey!” he called out. “Here a minute, would you?” Bailey came in. “Take a look at this. Use a lens. I want you to tell me if you think the man’s shoes in this shot might tally with anything you saw at the spring. It’s a tall order, I know.”

Bailey put the snapshot under a lamp and bent over it. Presently he said: “Can I have a word with Thompson, sir?” Sergeant Thompson was summoned from outer darkness. “How would this blow up?” Bailey asked him. “Here’s the neg.”

“It’s a shocking neg,” Thompson said. He added grudgingly: “She’s got an enlarger.”

Alleyn said: “On the face of it, do you think there’s any hope of a correspondence, Bailey?”

Bailey, still using his lens, said: “Can’t really say, sir. The casts are in my room at the pub.”

“What about you, Thompson? Got your shots of the prints?”

“They’re in the dish, now.”

“Well, take this out and see what you make of it. Have you found her camera?”

“Yes. Lovely job,” Thompson said. “You wouldn’t have expected it. Very fast.” He named the make with reverence.

“Pender,” Alleyn said, re-entering the shop, “do you know anything about Miss Cost’s camera?”

Pender shook his head and then did what actors call a “double-take.” “Yes, I do, though,” he said. “It was give her in gratitude by a foreign lady that was cured of a terrible bad rash. She was a patient up to hospital, and Miss Cost talked her into the spring.”

“I see. Thompson, would it get results around about 7:30 on a summer evening?”

“Certainly would. Better than this affair, if properly handled.”

“All right. See what you can do.”

Bailey and Thompson went away and Alleyn rejoined Fox in the bedroom.

“Fox,” Alleyn said distastefully, “I don’t know whose feet the male pair may prove to be, but I’m damn sure I’ve recognized the female’s.”

“Really, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Yes. Very good buckskin shoes with very good buckles. She wore them to the Festival. I’m afraid it’s Mrs. Barrimore.”

“Fancy!” said Fox, after a pause, and he added with his air of simplicity: “Well, then, it’s to be hoped the others turn out to be the Major’s.”

There were no other papers and no diary in either of the boxes.

“Did you reach to the end of the cupboard?” Alleyn asked Fox.

“No, I didn’t. It’s uncommonly deep. Extends through the wall and under the counter in the shop,” Fox grumbled.

“Let me try.”

Alleyn lay on the bedroom floor and reached his long arm into the cupboard. His fingers touched something — a book? “She must have used her brolly to fish it out,” he grunted. “Hold on. There are two of them — no, three. Here they come. I think… Yes. Yes, Br’er Fox. This is it.”

They were large commercial diaries and were held together with a rubber band. He took them into the parlour and laid them out on Miss Cost’s desk. When he opened the first he found page after page covered in Miss Cost’s small skeleton handwriting. He read an entry at random.