This time, however, there was something in her face that none of them had seen before: a look, not of anxiety or excitement but, for a second or two Troy could have sworn, of sheer panic. The dun skin had bleached under its freckles and round the jawline. The busy mouth was flaccid. She stared at her open diary. Her hands trembled. She shut the drenched book and steadied them by clutching it.

Miss Hewson said: ‘Miss Rickerby-Carrick, are you OK?’

She nodded once or twice, scrambled to her feet and incontinently bolted across the deck and down the companion-way to the cabins.

‘And now,’ Troy said to herself. ‘What about that one? Am I still imagining?’

Again she had sensed a kind of stillness, of immense constraint and again she was unable to tell from whom it emanated.

‘Like it or lump it,’ Troy thought, ‘Superintendent Tillottson’s going to hear about that lot and we’ll see what he makes of it. In the meantime—’

In the meantime, she went to her cabin and wrote another letter to her husband.

Half an hour later the Zodiac tied up for the afternoon and night at Crossdyke.

CHAPTER 4
Crossdyke

‘As I told you,’ Alleyn said. ‘I rang up the Yard from San Francisco. Inspector Fox, who was handling the Andropulos Case, was away, but after inquiries I got through to Superintendent Tillottson at Tollardwark. He gave me details of his talks with my wife. One detail worried me a good deal more than it did him.’

Alleyn caught the inevitable glint of appreciation from the man in the second row.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘As a result I talked to the Yard again and was told there was no doubt that Foljambe had got himself to England and that he was lying doggo. Information received suggested that Andropulos had tried a spot of blackmail and had been fool enough to imply that he’d grass on the Jampot if the latter didn’t come across with something handsome. Andropulos had in fact talked to one of our chaps in the way they do when they can’t make up their minds to tell us something really useful. It was pretty obvious he was hinting at the Jampot.

‘So he was murdered for his pains.

‘The method used had been that of sudden and violent pressure on the carotids from behind and that method carries the Jampot’s signature. It is sometimes preceded by a karate chop which would probably do the trick anyway, but it’s his little fancy to make assurance double-sure.’

The Scot in the second row gave a smirk to indicate his recognition of the quotation. ‘If I’m not careful,’ Alleyn thought, ‘I’ll be playing up to that chap.’