‘Sir. I would like to ask, sir, if the missing pages from the diary ever came to hand?’

‘No. We searched, of course, but it was a hopeless job. Lazenby probably reduced them to pulp and put them down the lavatory.’

‘Sir. Having read them when he sat on the bank, sir, and torn them out as a consequence?’

‘That’s it. Before the trial he ratted in the hope of reducing his sentence and will live in terror of the Jampot for the rest of his days. He told us the missing pages contained an account of the conversation Miss Rickerby-Carrick overheard in Tollardwark. Between—’

Carmichael’s boots became agitated.

‘—between,’ Alleyn loudly went on, ‘Foljambe, Lazenby and Pollock. About—all right, Carmichael, all right. You tell us.’

‘About your leddy-wife maybe,’ Carmichael said, ‘sir. And maybe they touched on the matter of the planted picture, sir. And their liaison with cyclists, and so on and so forth.’

‘Perhaps. But according to the wretched Lazenby it was mostly about Andropulos. When Miss Rickerby-Carrick tried to confide in my wife, she was very agitated. She kept saying “And—And—” and “Oh God. Wait”. I think—we shall never know, of course—she was trying to remember his name. Lazenby intervened as the Jampot did when Pollock became altogether too interested in my wife’s drawing and altogether too ready to assist. The Jampot let it appear that he resented Pollock’s over-familiarity. So he did, but not for reasons of gallantry.’

Carmichael resumed his seat.

‘Any more? Yes?’ It was the same man in the back row.

‘I was wondering, sir, exactly what did happen on the night in question. At Crossdyke, sir?’

‘The autopsy showed Miss Rickerby-Carrick had taken a pretty massive barbiturate. One of Miss Hewson’s pills no doubt. She slept on deck at the after-end behind a heap of chairs covered by a tarpaulin. Foljambe’s cabin, No. I, was next to the companion-way. When all was quiet he went up through the saloon to the deck and, because she knew too much, killed her, took the Fabergé jewel and handed it and the body over to the cyclist—his name by the way is Smith—who had been ordered to wait ashore for it and was given his instructions. My wife remembered that, at sometime in the night, she had heard the motorbike engine. Yes?’

A man in the third row said, ‘Sir: Did they all know, sir? About the murder, sir. Except the doctor?’

‘According to Lazenby (I’ll still call him that) not beforehand. When Lazenby told Foljambe about the diary Foljambe merely said he would deal with the situation and ordered Lazenby to keep his mouth shut, which he did. No doubt in the sequel they all knew or guessed. But he was not a confiding type, even with his closest associates.’

‘And—the way they carried on, sir. Bickering and all that among themselves. Was that a put-up show, then, sir?’