He hung up, beamed at Troy and asked if she could give him any help as to the place of origin of the remaining passengers. She had heard the Hewsons speak of Apollo, Kansas and of a Hotel Balmoral in the Cromwell Road, and she rather fancied Caley Bard did tutorial cramming work. Mr Stanley P.K. Pollock was a Cockney and owned property in London: where, she had no idea. The Superintendent made notes and the Sergeant came in to say he’d checked his items and they were all OK. Dr Natouche had been in his present practice in Liverpool for about seven years. He had appeared for the police in a road fatality case last week and had been called in at the site of another one last Sunday. Miss Rickerby-Carrick was a well-known member of a voluntary social workers’ organization. The other passengers had all been where they had said they had been. The Superintendent said there you were, you see, for what it was worth. As Troy shook hands with him he said there was a police station in the village of Crossdyke, a mile from Crossdyke Lock, and if, before tomorrow night, anything at all out of the way occurred he’d be very glad if she’d drop in at the station and give him a call or, if he was free, he might pop over himself in case she did look in.

‘Don’t,’ said Mr Tillottson apparently as an afterthought, ‘if I may make a suggestion, begin thinking everybody’s behaving suspiciously, Mrs Alleyn. It’d be rather easy to do that and it’d spoil your holiday. Going to take a look round Toll’ark? I’m afraid I’ve used up some of your time. Goodnight, then, and much obliged, I do assure you.’

Troy went out into the street. The church bells had stopped ringing and the town was quiet. So quiet that she quite jumped when some distance away a motorcycle engine started up explosively. It belched and puttered with a now familiar diminuendo into the distance and into silence.

‘But I suppose,’ Troy thought, ‘all these infernal machines sound exactly alike.’

III

Evening was now advanced in Tollardwark. The Market Square had filled with shadow and only the top of St Crispin’s tower caught a fugitive glint of day. Footsteps sounded loud and hollow in the darkling streets and the voices of the few people who were abroad underlined rather than diminished the sense of emptiness. Some of the shop windows had all-night lamps in them but most were unlit and their contents hard to distinguish.