The masses of foliage, painted with all the acute observation of Constable’s school, were of a different relationship, one to another. Would this merely go to show that, when the picture was painted the trees were a great deal smaller? No, he thought not. These were smaller but the major branches sprang from their trunks at different intervals. But might not this be a deliberate alteration made by the artist for reasons of composition? He remembered Troy saying that the painter has as much right to prune or transplant a tree as the clot who had planted it in the wrong place.

All the same…

Voices and footfalls on the upper deck announced the return of the passengers. Alleyn restored the painting to its suitcase and the suitcase to its position against the wall. He opened the cabin door, shut his working-kit, took out his pocket-lens, squatted at the head of the bunk and waited.

Not for long. The passengers came below: Mr Lazenby first. He paused, looked in and fluted: ‘Busy, Superintendent?’

‘Routine, sir.’

‘Ah! Routine!’ Lazenby playfully echoed. That’s what you folk always say, isn’t it, Superintendent? Routine!’

‘I sometimes think it’s all we ever do, Mr Lazenby.’

‘Really? Well, I suppose I mustn’t ask what it’s all about. Poor girl. Poor girl. She was not a happy girl, Mr Alleyn.’

‘No?’

‘Emotionally unstable. A type that we parsons are all too familiar with, you know. Starved of true, worthwhile relationships, I suspect, and at a difficult, a trying time of life. Poor girl.’

‘Do I take it, you believe this to be a case of suicide, Mr Lazenby?’

‘I have grave misgivings that it may be so.’

‘And the messages received after her death?’

‘I don’t profess to have any profound knowledge of these matters, Superintendent, but as a parson, they do come my way. These poor souls can behave very strangely, you know. She might even have arranged the messages, hoping to create a storm of interest in herself.’

‘That’s a very interesting suggestion, sir.’

‘I throw it out,’ Mr Lazenby said with a modest gesture, ‘for what it’s worth. I mustn’t be curious,’ he added, ‘but—you hope to find some—er help—in here? Out of, as it were, Routine?’

‘We’d be glad to know whether or not she returned to her cabin during the night,’ Alleyn said. ‘But, to tell you the truth, there’s nothing to show, either way.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Lazenby, ‘good on you, anyhow. I’ll leave you to it.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Alleyn said, and when Mr Lazenby had gone, whistled, almost inaudibly, the tune of ‘Yes, we have no bananas’, which for some reason seemed to express his mood.

He was disturbed, almost immediately, by the arrival of the Hewsons and Mr Pollock.