He stood and looked at the door which Troy had only just not slammed. Then he turned to his job. There was a bow-fronted chest of drawers full of the sorts of garments that Alleyn often before had had to turn over. His thin fastidious hands touched them delicately, laid them in neat heaps on the bed and returned them carefully to their appointed places. There was a little drawer, rather untidy, where Troy kept her oddments. One or two letters. One that began ‘Troy darling’ and was signed ‘Your foolishly devoted, John’. ‘John,’ thought Alleyn, ‘John Bellasca?’ He glanced through the letters quickly, was about to return them to the drawer, but on second thoughts laid them in a row on the top of the chest. ‘An odious trade,’ he muttered to himself. ‘A filthy degrading job.’ Then there were the dresses in the wardrobe, the slim jackets, Troy’s smart evening dresses, and her shabby old slacks. All the pockets. Such odd things she kept in her pockets —bits of charcoal, india-rubbers, a handkerchief that had been disgracefully used as a paint-rag, and a sketchbook crammed into a pocket that was too small for it. There was a Harris tweed coat—blue. Suddenly he was back on the wharf at Quebec. The lights of Troy’s ship were reflected in the black mirror of the river. Silver-tongued bells rang out from all the grey churches. The tug, with its five globes of yellow light, moved outwards into the night tide of the St Lawrence, and there on the deck was Troy, her hand raised in farewell, wearing blue Harris tweed. ‘Goodbye. Thank you for my nice party. Goodbye.’ He slipped his hand into a pocket of the blue coat and pulled out Katti Bostock’s letter. He would have to read this.

…You are a gump to collect these bloodsuckers…he’s a nasty little animal…that little devil Sonia Gluck…behaving abominably …funny this ‘It’ stuff…you’re different. They’d fall for you if you’d let them, only you’re so unprovocative…[Alleyn shook his head at Katti Bostock]. Your allusions to a detective are quite incomprehensible, but if he interrupted you in your work you had every right to bite his head off. What had you been up to anyway? Well, so long until the 3rd. Katti

The envelope was addressed to Troy at the Chateau Frontenac.

‘Evidently,’ thought Alleyn, ‘I had begun to make a nuisance of myself on board. Interrupting her work. Oh Lord!’