“Has it gone out yet?” Patrick asked sharply.

Alleyn said coolly: “Oh, yes. Being Sunday, you know.”

“It must be stopped.”

“We don’t, normally, intercept Her Majesty’s mail.”

Barrimore said thickly: “You can bloody well intercept this one.”

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Mayne crisply.

“By God, sir, I won’t take that from you. By God!” Barrimore began, trying to get to his feet.

“Sit down,” Alleyn said. “Do you want to be taken in charge for assault? Pull yourself together.”

Barrimore sank back. He looked at his handkerchief, now drenched with blood. His face was bedabbled and his nose still ran with it. “Gimme ’nother,” he muttered.

“A towel, perhaps,” Miss Emily suggested. Jenny fetched one from the bathroom.

“He’d better lie down,” Dr. Mayne said impatiently.

“I’ll be damned if I do,” said the Major.

“To continue,” Alleyn said: “The facts that emerge from the diary and from the investigation are these. We now know the identity of the Green Lady. Miss Cost found it out September thirtieth year before last. She saw the impersonator repeating her initial performance for a concealed audience of one. She afterwards discovered who this other was…You will stay where you are, if you please, Major Barrimore…Miss Cost was unwilling to believe this evidence. She began, however, to spy upon the two persons involved. On June seventeenth of this year she took a photograph at the spring.”

Dr. Mayne said: “I can’t allow this!” and Patrick said: “No, for God’s sake!”

“I would avoid it if I could,” Alleyn said. “Mrs. Barrimore, would you rather wait in the next room? Miss Williams will go with you, I’m sure.”

“Yes, darling,” Jenny said quickly. “Do.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Not now. Not now.”

“It would be better,” Patrick said.

“It would be better, Margaret,” Dr. Mayne repeated.

“No.”

There was a brief silence. An emphatic gust of wind battered at the window. The lights flickered, dimmed and came up again. Alleyn’s hearers were momentarily united in a new uneasiness. When he spoke again, they shifted their attention back to him with an air of confusion.

“Miss Cost,” he was saying, “kept her secret to herself. It became, I think, an obsession. It’s clear from other passages in her diary that, sometime before this discovery, she had conceived an antagonism for Major Barrimore. The phrases she uses suggest that it arose from the reaction commonly attributed to a woman scorned.”

Margaret Barrimore turned her head and, for the first time, looked at her husband. Her expression, one of profound astonishment, was reflected in her son’s face and Dr. Mayne’s.

“There is no doubt, I think,” Alleyn said, “that during her first visit to the Island their relationship, however brief, had been of the sort to give rise to the later reaction.”

“Is this true?” Dr. Mayne demanded of Barrimore. He had the towel clapped to his face. Over the top of it his eyes, prominent and dazed, narrowed as if he were smiling. He said nothing.

“Miss Cost, as I said just now, kept her knowledge to herself. Later, it appears, she transferred her attention to Dr. Mayne and was unsuccessful. It’s a painful and distressing story and I shan’t dwell on it except to say that up to yesterday’s tragedy we have the picture of a neurotic who has discovered that the man upon whom her fantasy is now concentrated is deeply attached to the wife of the man with whom she herself had a brief affair that ended in humiliation. She also knows that this wife impersonated the Green Lady in the original episode. These elements are so bound up together that if she makes mischief, as her demon urges her to do, she will be obliged to expose the truth about the Green Lady — and that would be disastrous. Add to this the proposal to end all publicity and official recognition of the spring, and you get some idea, perhaps, of the emotional turmoil that she suffered and that declares itself in this unhappy diary.”

“You do, indeed,” said Miss Emily abruptly and added: “One has much to answer for, I perceive. I have much to answer for. Go on.”

“In opposing the new plans for the spring, Miss Cost may have let off a head of emotional steam. She sent anonymous messages to Miss Pride. She was drawn into the companionship of the general front made against Miss Pride’s intentions. I think there is little doubt that she conspired with Trehern, and egged on ill-feeling in the village. She had received attention. She had her Festival in hand. She was somebody. It was, I daresay, all rather exciting and gratifying. Wouldn’t you think so?” he asked Dr. Mayne.

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” he said. “But, yes. You may be right.”

“Now, this was the picture,” Alleyn went on, “up to the time of the Festival. But when she came to write the final entry in her diary, which was last night, something had happened: something that had revived all her sense of injury and spite, something that led her to write: ‘Both — all of them — shall suffer. I’ll drag their names through the papers. Now. Tonight. I am determined. It is the end.’ ”

Another formidable onslaught roared down upon the Boy-and-Lobster and again the lights wavered and recovered.

“She doesn’t say, and we can’t tell, positively, what inflamed her. I am inclined to think that it might be put down to aesthetic humiliation.”

“What!” Patrick ejaculated.

“Yes. One has to remember that all the first-night agonies that beset a professional director are also visited upon the most ludicrously inefficient amateur. Miss Cost had produced a show and exposed it to an audience. However bad the show, she still had to undergo the classic ordeal. The reaction among some of the onlookers didn’t escape her notice.”

“Oh dear!” Jenny said. “Oh dear!”

“But this is all speculation, and a policeman is not allowed to speculate,” Alleyn said. “Let us get back to hard facts, if we can. Here are some of them: Miss Cost attended early service this morning and afterwards walked to the spring to collect a necklace. It was in her hand when we found her. We know, positively, that she encountered and spoke to three people: Mrs. Carstairs and Dr. Mayne before church; Major Barrimore afterwards.”

“Suppose I deny that?” Barrimore said thickly.

“I can’t, of course, make any threats or offer any persuasion. You might, on consideration, think it wiser, after all, to agree that you met and tell me what passed between you. Major Barrimore,” Alleyn explained generally, “has already admitted that he was spying upon Miss Pride, who had gone to the enclosure to put up a notice which he afterwards removed.”

Miss Emily gave a sharp exclamation.

“It was later replaced.” Alleyn turned to Barrimore and stood over him. “Shall I tell you what I think happened? I think hard words passed between you and Miss Cost, and that she was stung into telling you her secret. I think you parted from her in a rage, and that when you came back to the hotel this morning you bullied your wife. You had better understand, at once, that your wife has not told me this. Finally, I believe that Miss Cost may even have threatened to reveal your former relationship with herself. She suggests in her diary that she has some such intention. Now. Have you anything to say to all this?”

Patrick said: “You had better say nothing.” He walked over to his mother and put his arm about her shoulders.

“I didn’t do it,” Barrimore said. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. I shall move on,” Alleyn said and spoke generally. “Among her papers, we have found a typewritten list of dates. It is a carbon copy. The top copy is missing. Miss Cost had fallen into the habit of sending anonymous letters. As we know, only too well, this habit grows by indulgence. It is possible, having regard for the dates in question, that this document has been brought to the notice of the person most likely to be disturbed by it. Possibly, with a print of a photograph. Now, this individual has, in one crucial respect, given a false statement as to time and circumstance, and because of that—”