‘I entirely agree. And that, under the circumstances is something I cannot be expected to do. Look here, Fox. Here’s Troy, one of a group of people who, if this woman was murdered, and I’ll bet she was, come into the field of police investigation: right?’

‘The AC says it’ll be nicer for you to be here with her.’

‘That be damned! What? Me? Needle my wife? Give her the old one-two treatment if she doesn’t provide all the answers? Nicer?’

‘It won’t,’ Fox said, ‘be as bad as that now, will it?’

‘I can’t tell you how much I dislike having her mixed up in any of our shows. I came here to get her out of it. Not to take on a bloody homicide job.’

‘I know that. It’s a natural reaction,’ Mr Fox said. ‘Both of you being what you are.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

‘Suppose you didn’t take the case, Mr Alleyn. What’s the drill on that one? Somebody else comes up from the Yard and you hand him the file. And is his face red! He goes ahead and you clear out leaving Mrs Alleyn here to get through the routine as best she can.’

‘You know damn’ well that’s grotesque.’

‘Well, Mr Alleyn, the alternative’s not to your fancy either, is it?’

‘If you put it like that the only thing that remains for me to do is to retire in a hurry and to hell with the pension.’

‘Oh, now! Come, come!’

‘All right. All right. I’m unreasonable under this heading and we both know it.’

Fox mildly contemplated his superior officer. ‘I can see it’s awkward,’ he said. ‘It’s not what we’d choose. You’re thinking about her position and how it’ll appear to others and what say the Press get on to it, I daresay. But if you ask me it won’t be so bad. It’s only until the inquest.’

‘And in the meantime what’s the form? We’ve issued orders that they’re all to stay in that damned boat tonight, one of them almost certainly being the Rickerby-Carrick’s murderer and just possibly the toughest proposition in homicide on either side of the Atlantic. I can’t withdraw my wife and insist on keeping the others there. Well, can I? Can I?’

‘It might be awkward,’ said Fox. ‘But you could.’

They fell silent and as people do when they come to a blank wall in a conversation, stared vaguely about them. A lark sang, a faint breeze lifted the long grass and in the excavation below the wapentake, sand and gravel fell with a whisper of sound from the grassy overhang.