Alleyn said clearly, ‘Something very bad, I’m afraid.’

‘Like what? Hell, can’t you talk like it makes sense? What’s happened?’ And then, it seemed with flat incredulity, he said: ‘Are you telling me she’s dead? Sis? Dead? Are you telling me that?’

Lazenby walked over to Hewson and put his arm across his shoulders: ‘Hold hard, old man,’ he fluted. ‘Stick it out, boy. Steady. Steady.’

Hewson looked at him. ‘You make me sick,’ he said. ‘Christ Almighty, you make me sick to my stomach.’ He turned on Alleyn. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘What was it? What happened?’

Alleyn told him where she had been found. He listened with his head slanted and his face screwed up as if he still had difficulty in hearing.

‘Smothered,’ he said. ‘Smothered, huh?’

Alleyn said nothing. There was an immense stillness in the saloon as if everybody waited for a climax.

‘Why don’t you all say something?’ Hewson suddenly demanded. ‘Sitting round like you were dumb-bells. God damn you. Say something.’

‘What can we say?’ Caley Bard murmured. ‘There’s nothing we can say.’

‘You,’ Hewson said. And as if he had to find some object upon which to focus an undefined misery and resentment he leant forward and shook his finger at Caley Bard. ‘You sit around!’ he stammered. ‘You act like nothing mattered! For Pete’s sake, what sort of a monster do you figure you are?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Caley said.

‘Pardon me?’ Hewson shouted angrily with his hand cupped round his ear. ‘What’s that? Pardon?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Caley shouted in return.

‘Sorry? Sorry, hell! He says he’s sorry!’

Pollock intervened. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘That’s what happens. That’s the way our wonderful police get to work. Scare the daylights out of some poor woman so she scarpers and gets herself smothered in a gravel-pit. All in the day’s work.’

‘In our opinion,’ Alleyn said, ‘Miss Hewson was not smothered in the gravel pit. She was buried there.’

‘My dear Superintendent—’ Lazenby exclaimed, ‘what do you mean by that? That’s a shocking statement.’

‘We think that she was murdered in the same way as Miss Rickerby-Carrick was murdered on Tuesday night and a man called Andropulos was murdered last Saturday. And we think it highly probable that one of you is responsible.’