The young man yawned widely, displaying the wad of gum on his tongue. He stretched his arms. The girl gave a scary giggle and clapped her hand over her mouth.

‘You’ve been so busy,’ Alleyn said, ‘on your northern jaunt that you can’t have heard the news. The body has been found and the woman was murdered. I shall now repeat the usual warning which you’ve already had from Superintendent Tillottson. At the moment you are being held for theft.’

The young man, now very white about the side whiskers, heard the usual warning with a sneer that seemed to have come unstuck. The girl watched him.

‘Any statement?’

For the first time the young man spoke. His voice was strongly Cockney.

‘You can contact Mr C.D.E. Struthers,’ he said. ‘I’m not talking.’

Mr C.D.E. Struthers was an extremely adroit London solicitor whose practice was confined, profitably, to top-level experts in mayhem.

‘Really?’ Alleyn said. ‘And who’s going to pay for that?’

‘Mention my name.’

‘If I knew it, I would be delighted to do so. Good evening to you.’

When the couple had swaggered unconvincingly to the cells Tillottson said: ‘ “Smith” they may be, but not for my money.’

‘Ah,’ Fox agreed. ‘They’d have done the virtuous indignation stuff if they were.’

‘Well, Smith or Montmorency,’ Alleyn said, ‘we’d better let them talk to Mr C.D.E. Struthers. He may wish them on to one of his legal brethren in the North or he may come up here himself. It’s a matter of prestige.’

‘How d’you mean? Prestige?’ asked Tillottson.

‘The other name for it is Foljambe. Get your Sergeant here to trace the licence will you, Bert? And a description to Records. And Dabs.’

‘Yes, OK. I’ll see to it.’

But before he could do so the Sergeant himself appeared looking perturbed.

‘Call for you, sir,’ he said to Alleyn. ‘PC Cape on duty at Ramsdyke Lock. Very urgent.’

‘What the hell’s this,’ Alleyn said. But when he heard the voice, he guessed.

‘I’m reporting at once, sir,’ gabbled PC Cape. ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but there’s been a slip-up, sir. In the fog, sir.’

‘Who?’

‘The lady, sir. The American lady.’

‘What do you mean—slip-up?’

‘She’s gone, sir.’

II

Six minutes with their siren wailing brought them back to Ramsdyke. Tillottson kept up an uninterrupted flow of anathemas against his PC Cape. Alleyn and Fox said little, knowing that nothing they could offer would solace him. There was still no fog to speak of on the main road but when they turned off into the lane above Ramsdyke Lock they looked down on a vague uniform pallor of the sort that fills the valleys in a Japanese landscape. Their fog lamps isolated them in a moving confinement that closed as they descended.

‘A likely night for it,’ Tillottson kept repeating. ‘My Gawd, a likely night.’