‘I don’t like this,’ Lazenby said, turning his dark glasses on the doctor. ‘I don’t like this, at all. It’s not honest. It’s not a fair go. You’ve been asked a straight question, Doctor, and you refuse to give a straight answer.’

‘On the contrary.’

‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘let’s take another look at the situation. Before she left the Zodiac, Miss Hewson was in distress. She was heard by the constable on duty at the lock to scream, to break into a hysterical demonstration and to cry out repeatedly: “Let me go. Let me go!” Is that agreed?’

Hewson said: ‘Sure! Sure, she was hysterical. Sure, she wanted to escape. What sort of deal had she had for Christ’s sake! Police standing her up like she was involved in this phoney art racket. A corpse fished outa The River and everyone talking about homicide. Sure, she was scared. She was real scared. She was desperate. I didn’t want to leave her up here but she acted like crazy and said why couldn’t I let her alone. So I did. I left her right here in the saloon and I went to bed.’

‘You were the last then, to go down?’

‘Well—the Padre and Stan and I—we went together.’

‘And Dr Natouche? Did he go down?’

‘No, sir. He went up on deck. He went up soon as Sis began to act nervous. Pretty queer it seemed to me: go out into that doggone fog but that’s what he did and that’s where he went.’

‘I would like to get a clear picture, if “clear” is the word, of where you all were and what happened after she was left here in the saloon.’

They all began to speak at once and incontinently stopped. Alleyn looked at Caley Bard.

‘Let’s have your version,’ he said.

‘I wish you luck of it,’ Caley rejoined. ‘For what it’s worth I’ll—well, I’ll have a stab. I’d gone to bed: at least I’d gone to my cabin and undressed and was having a look at some butterflies I caught on the cruise. I heard—’ he looked at Lazenby, Hewson and Pollock ‘—these three come down and go to the loo and their cabins and so on. They all have to go past my door, I being in Cabin I. They were talking in the passage, I remember. I didn’t notice what they said: I was spreading a specimen I picked up at Crossdyke. Subconsciously though, I suppose I must have recognized their voices.’

‘Yes?’

‘All of a sudden a hell of a rumpus broke loose, up topside. Sorry, Hewson, I might have put that better. I heard, in fact, Miss Hewson scream “Let me go”. Two or three times, I think. I heard a kind of thudding in the saloon here, above my head. And then, naturally, a general reaction.’