Cover Page

Dedication

for Alister and Doris McIntosh with love

Cast of Characters

Wally Trehern—Of Fisherman’s Bay, Portcarrow Island

Jenny Williams—School-mistress

Mrs Trehern—Wally’s mother

James Trehern—Her husband

Dr Maine—Of the Portcarrow Convalescent Home

The Rev. Mr Adrian Carstairs—Rector of Portcarrow

Mrs Carstairs—His wife

Major Keith Barrimore—Landlord of The Boy-and-Lobster

Mrs Barrimore—His wife

Patrick Ferrier—Her son

Miss Elspeth Cost—A shopkeeper

Kenneth Joyce—A journalist

Mrs Thorpe—A patient

Miss Emily Pride—Suzerain of the Island

Mr Ives Nankivell—Mayor of Portcarrow

Superintendent Coombe—Portcarrow Constabulary

Sergeant Pender—Portcarrow Constabulary

PC Carey—Portcarrow Constabulary

PC Pomeroy—Portcarrow Constabulary

Superintendent Roderick Alleyn—CID Scotland Yard

Troy Alleyn—His wife

Detective-Inspector Fox—Scotland Yard

Detective-Sergeant Bailey—Scotland Yard

Detective-Sergeant Thompson—Scotland Yard

Sir James Curtis—Home Office Pathologist

Cissy Pollock—Telephonist

Trethaway—A father

CHAPTER 1
Prelude

A boy stumbled up the hillside, half-blinded by tears. He fell and, for a time, choked and sobbed as he lay in the sun but presently blundered on. A lark sang overhead. Farther up the hill he could hear the multiple chatter of running water. The children down by the jetty still chanted after him:

Warty-hog, warty-hog

Put your puddies in the bog

Warty Walter, Warty Walter

Wash your warties in the water.

The spring was near the top. It began as a bubbling pool, cascaded into a miniature waterfall, dived under pebbles, earth and bracken and at last, loquacious and preoccupied, swirled mysteriously underground and was lost. Above the pool stood a boulder, flanked by briars and fern, and above that the brow of the hill and the sun in a clear sky.

He squatted near the waterfall. His legs ached and a spasm jolted his chest. He gasped for breath, beat his hands on the ground and looked at them. Warty-hog. Warts clustered all over his fingers like those black things that covered the legs of the jetty. Two of them bled where he’d cut them. The other kids were told not to touch him.

He thrust his hands under the cold pressure of the cascade. It beat and stung and numbed them, but he screwed up his blubbered eyes and forced them to stay there. Water spurted icily up his arms and into his face.

‘Don’t cry.’

He opened his eyes directly into the sun or would have done so if she hadn’t stood between: tall and greenish, above the big stone and rimmed about with light like something on the telly so that he couldn’t see her properly.

‘Why are you crying?’

He ducked his head, and stared like an animal that couldn’t make up its mind to bolt. He gave a loud, detached sob and left his hands under the water.

‘What’s the matter? Are you hurt? Tell me.’

‘Me ‘ands.’

‘Show me.’

He shook his head and stared.

‘Show me your hands.’

‘They’m mucky.’

‘The water will clean them.’