Hours drifted by and tiredness slackened his muscles. Every so often, his eyes would close for a couple of minutes and he’d have to shake himself awake. Having lost all track of time, Keedy stood up, walked around the room and took off the blankets so that he could feel the piercing cold. It served to galvanise him just in time. From outside the house, there was a loud yell then he heard something thud onto the pavement. Charging across to the window, he pulled back the curtain. A ladder was standing against the wall of the Ablatt house. Beside it was an upturned tin of paint. In the middle of the road, two figures were grappling wildly. Keedy jumped into action. He ran to the front door, let himself out and raced across to the two men. In the course of a fierce struggle, one of them threw the other to the ground and dived on top of him. Keedy grabbed him from behind and pulled him off.

‘That’s enough!’ he shouted.

The man on the ground leapt to his feet, punched Keedy in the face and pushed him against the other man. He then fled off down the street and vanished around the corner. Before the second man could run after him, he was overpowered by Keedy and held in a vice-like grip.

‘You silly bastard!’ howled Mansel Price. ‘You let him get away.’

Knowing that he wanted to make an early start, Ellen Marmion was up before her husband in order to make sure that he went off to work with a cooked breakfast inside him. When he came down from the bathroom, it was waiting for him on the kitchen table. He gave her a smile of gratitude and sat down.

‘How much did you eat yesterday?’ she asked.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Not enough, if I know you.’

‘I grabbed something on the hoof,’ he said, picking up his knife and fork and attacking a sausage. ‘Regular meals are a luxury in my job.’

‘You must have food, Harvey.’

‘I survive somehow.’

Ellen sat opposite him and clicked her tongue when he began to wolf it down. She poured two cups of tea and added milk and sugar to both before stirring them. Marmion laughed.

‘I can spare the time to stir my own tea, love.’

‘I was only trying to be helpful.’

‘Then you can eat my breakfast for me as well.’

‘Harvey!’

‘There’s no need for you to be up this early,’ he said. ‘It’s not six yet.’

‘I can’t lie in bed when you have to be fed. It’s my contribution to this case. I know that it’s on your mind. You were talking about it in your sleep.’

He was jolted. ‘Was I? What did I say?’

‘I couldn’t really tell. You just came out with odd words like “gravedigger” and “librarian” and there were some initials — NFC, I think.’

‘It must have been the NCF — that’s the No-Conscription Fellowship. It’s an organisation for people who — for one reason or another — find themselves unable to take part in the war. They come in all shapes and sizes.’

‘Are they too afraid?’

‘Some of them are, Ellen, but the majority do have a genuine conscientious objection. Look at the murder victim, for instance. Cyril Ablatt was a deeply religious young man with an aversion to taking a human life.’

‘I must say that the idea of it worries me as well,’ she said. ‘I know that Paul had to join the army but it troubles me that our son will have to shoot someone.’

‘It’s only in self-defence, love. It’s a case of kill or be killed.’

She grimaced. ‘What a horrible expression!’

‘It’s an accurate one,’ he said, reasonably, ‘and you just have to accept it. War turns every soldier into a licensed killer.’

‘What happens to them afterwards?’

‘When the war is over, you mean?’

‘Yes,’ she said, frowning. ‘What will it have done to them? Will Paul still be the same person when he comes home or will the war leave its mark on him?’

‘The experience is bound to have changed him, love.’

‘That’s my fear.’

‘I’ll just be glad if he comes back in one piece.’

‘Mrs Hooper’s son didn’t. He lost a leg at Ypres. According to her, he keeps boasting about a German he shot dead. He goes on and on about it. Mrs Hooper is worried stiff about him.’ She bit her lip. ‘I do hope that Paul doesn’t do anything like that.’

‘He’ll have seen terrible sights,’ said Marmion, reaching for his tea. ‘It won’t be easy to get them out of his mind.’

There was an uncomfortable silence as they ate their breakfast. When she eventually broke it, Ellen found another source of anxiety.

‘I’m praying that Alice doesn’t go over there as well,’ she said.

‘There’s no danger of that, surely.’

‘There might be, Harvey. She mentioned it yesterday. A couple of her friends in the WEC went off to France as dispatch riders. That could be dangerous.’

‘They’ll be kept well behind the lines, love.’

‘I don’t want our daughter following Paul over there. Talk to her.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing!’

‘Alice won’t listen to me.’

‘Did you listen to your mother at that age?’

She smiled. ‘If I had, then I probably wouldn’t have married you.’

Marmion grinned then forked the last piece of fried egg into his mouth. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, he suddenly accelerated, swallowing his food, draining his cup in a series of gulps and getting to his feet. He went out into the hall and reached for his hat and coat off the peg. As he put them on, he gave a sigh.

‘The war has been a disaster for us,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost a sizeable number of men to the army and all of our best horses are serving in cavalry regiments. This murder would have been so much easier to solve if I could call on more detectives.’

‘They didn’t all volunteer. Some of them like Joe Keedy have stayed.’

‘Oh, I think he was tempted to enlist, Ellen, but he felt that there was important work to do on the home front. Also, of course, endless months in the trenches would play havoc with his social life. Joe is a ladies’ man and there aren’t many available young ladies in the war zone.’

‘You know quite well that that wasn’t the main reason he didn’t join up.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Marmion, winking at her. ‘He couldn’t resist the privilege of working with me. That’s why he stayed. Mind you,’ he went on, chortling, ‘after being forced to spend the whole of last night keeping a brick wall under surveillance, he might be wishing that he was in the army, after all.’

Keedy was annoyed with himself. He’d not only been distracted when the midnight artist had first appeared, he’d accidentally contrived to rescue the man from a beating and to assist his escape. Once he realised what had happened, he and Mansel Price had scoured the streets but there was no sign of the fugitive. It was wrong to blame the Welshman. He deserved credit. While Keedy had had shelter and a degree of comfort in someone’s front room, Price had spent hours crouched in a doorway. It enabled him to attack the man before he had time to paint anything else on the wall. The situation was not irretrievable. Keedy had the abandoned ladder and the tin of white paint. On the lid of the tin was a sticker with the name of the shop where it was bought. By first light, he’d sought help from the nearby police station. Two uniformed constables were put at his disposal and a third was waiting to take the paint back to the shop to see if anyone could remember to whom it was sold.

The long trudge began. It reminded Keedy of his days in uniform when he sometimes spent an entire day knocking on doors. Having seen the direction in which the man had run off, he had a measure of guidance. While Keedy carried the ladder, the policemen went down either side of the street at the same time in search of its owner. In the first twenty minutes, they got a negative response on every doorstep. Then they saw a postman coming towards them. Keedy caught his attention and beckoned him over. When he identified himself as a detective, he got instant cooperation.