‘She was blowing up for trouble when we had that last interview. She may have threatened to grass on them. Perhaps, the Jampot saw how she shaped up, and offered to get her away. Or—,’ Alleyn panted as he shifted a largish boulder, ‘or she may simply have bolted. Whichever way it was, she raised a rumpus—screeching and on-going. When that ass Cape flung himself aboard, off she lit in the fog, pursued I don’t mind betting by the Jampot. In a matter of minutes they were over the embankment and into the pit. And that was it.’

‘I like that one best.’

‘It has a Foljambe smack about it, you think?’

‘Suppose,’ Fox said, ‘she’s not here. Suppose she and who-ever-it-was came up here this afternoon and she poked into this excavation and came out again and it collapsed later?’

‘No prints to suggest a return. And why did whoever-it-was try to obliterate his own prints?’

‘There’s that, of course. And you make out that while the commotion in the Zodiac still continued he went straight back and was all present and correct when that silly chump Cape and the Skipper started counting heads in the saloon?’

‘That’s it.’

They worked for some time in silence.

‘I don’t know,’ Fox said presently. ‘I don’t somehow feel too certain she’s here.’

‘Don’t you?’ Alleyn said with a change of voice.

Fox let out an oath and drew back his hand.

From under a counterpane of soil that might have been withdrawn by a sleeping hand, a foot stuck up, rigid in its well-made American walking shoe.

The two constables came up the hill, swinging a lantern and carrying shovels. Bailey and Thompson returned with their gear. In a very little while they had uncovered Miss Hewson. Her print dress was up round her neck and contained her arms. Her body and legs clad in their sensible undergarments were shockingly displayed and so was her face: open eyes and open mouth filled with sandy soil and the cheekbones cut about with gravel.

‘But not congested,’ Fox said and added loudly: ‘That’s not a suffocated face. Is it?’

‘Oh, no,’ Alleyn said. ‘No. Did you expect it would be, Br’er Fox? It’s hopeless but we’ll try artificial respiration.’

One of the local men took off his helmet and knelt down.

‘The old carotid job?’ Fox mused.

‘That’s what I expect. We’ll see what the doctor says.’

Fox made a movement of his head towards the hidden Zodiac.

‘Not, of course—him?’

‘No. No. And yet—After all, why not? Why not, indeed.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps better not,’ he said and turned to Bailey and Thompson. ‘The lot,’ he said. ‘Get going.’