‘Thank you,’ Troy said and tried to convey her sense of obligation without alerting Miss Rickerby-Carrick whose mouth was stretched in an anxious grin. She parted with them and went into the police station where at once time slipped a cog and she was back in last evening for there was Superintendent Tillottson blandly remarking that he had just popped over from Toll’ark in case there had been any developments. She told him (speaking against the beat of her headache and with the sick dazzle in her vision making nonsense of his face) about Mr Lazenby and the page from the diary and about the odd behaviour of Mr Pollock and Miss Rickerby-Carrick. And again, on describing them, these items shrank into insignificance.

Mr Tillottson with his hands in his pockets, sitting easily on the corner of the local Sergeant’s desk said with great geniality that there didn’t seem to be much in any of that lot did there, and she agreed, longing to be rid of the whole thing and in bed.

‘Yerse,’ Mr Tillottson said. ‘So that’s the story.’ And he added with the air of making conversation: ‘And this chap Lazenby had his hair all over his right eye like a hippy? Funny idea in a clergyman. But it was wet, of course.’

‘Over his left eye,’ Troy corrected as a sharp stab of pain shot through her own.

‘His left eye, was it?’ said Mr Tillottson casually. ‘Yes. Fancy. And you never got a look at it. The eye I mean?’

‘Well, no. He turned his back when he put on his dark spectacles.’

‘P’raps he’s got some kind of disfigurement,’ Mr Tillottson airily speculated. ‘You never know, do you? Jim Tretheway’s a very pleasant kind of chap, isn’t he? And his wife’s smashing, don’t you think, Mrs Alleyn? Very nice couple the Tretheways.’

‘Very,’ Troy agreed and stood up to a lurching spasm of migraine.

They shook hands again and Mr Tillottson produced, apparently as an afterthought, the suggestion that she should drop in at ‘their place in Longminster’ where she would find Superintendent Bonney a most sympathetic person: ‘a lovely chap’ was how Mr Tillottson described him.

‘I honestly don’t think I need trouble him,’ Troy said. She was beginning to feel sick.

‘Just to keep in touch, Mrs Alleyn,’ he said and made a little sketch plan of Longminster, marking the police station with a cross. ‘Go to the point marked X,’ he said facetiously. ‘We may have a bit of news for you,’ he playfully added. ‘There’s been a slight change in your good man’s itinerary. We’ll be pleased to let you know.’

‘Rory!’ Troy exclaimed. ‘Is he coming back earlier?’

‘I understand it’s not quite settled yet, Mrs Alleyn.’

‘Because if he is—’