The evening was very warm. She lay down on her bunk. There was little light in the cabin and she left it so, fearing that Miss Rickerby-Carrick would call to inquire. She even locked her door, and, obscurely, felt rather mean for doing so. The need for sleep that always followed her migraines must now be satisfied and Troy began to dream of voices and of a mouselike scratching at somebody’s door. It persisted, it established itself over her dream and nagged her back into wakefulness. She struggled with herself, suffered an angry spasm of conscience and finally in a sort of bemused fury, got out of bed and opened the door.

On nobody.

The passage was empty. She thought afterwards that as she opened her own door another one had quietly closed.

She waited but there was no stirring or sound anywhere and, wondering if after all she had dreamt the scratching at her door, she went back to bed and at once fell fathoms deep into oblivion that at some unidentifiable level was disturbed by the sound of an engine.

III

She half-awoke to broad daylight and the consciousness of a subdued fuss: knocking and voices, footsteps in the passage and movements next door in Cabin 8. While she lay, half-detached and half-resentful of these disturbances, there was a tap on her own door and a rattle of the handle.

Troy, now fully awake, called out, ‘Sorry. Just a moment,’ and unlocked her door.

Mrs Tretheway came in with tea.

‘Is anything wrong?’ Troy asked.

Mrs Tretheway’s smile broke out in glory all over her face. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘not to say wrong. It’s how you look at it, I suppose, Mrs Alleyn. The fact is Miss Rickerby-Carrick seems to have left us.’

‘Left us? Gone?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you mean—?’

‘It must have been very early. Before any of us were about and our Tom was up at six.’

‘But—’

‘She’s packed her suitcase and gone.’

‘No message?’

‘Well now—yes—scribbled on a bit of newspaper. “Called away. So sorry. Urgent. Will write”.’

‘How very extraordinary.’

‘My husband reckons somebody must have come in the night. Some friend with a car or else she might have rung Toll’ark or Longminster for a taxi. The telephone booth at the lockhouse is open all night.’

‘Well,’ Troy muttered, ‘she is a rum one and no mistake.’

Mrs Tretheway beamed. ‘It may be all for the best,’ she remarked. ‘It’s a lovely day, anyhow,’ and took her departure.

When Troy arrived in the saloon she found her fellow-passengers less intrigued than might have been expected and she supposed that they had already exhausted the topic of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s flight.

Her own entrance evidently revived it a little and there was a short barrage of rather flaccid questions: had Miss Rickerby-Carrick ‘said anything’ to Troy? She hadn’t ‘said anything’ to anyone else.