Thompson set up his camera. Alleyn unlocked the cage. He gave each of the others a disc and, in turn, they let themselves in. The shelf and the area above it, round the boulder, had been covered with tarpaulins. ‘Laid on by Coombe’s chaps,’ Alleyn said. ‘He’s done a good job, never mind his great boots.’ He stood there for a moment and watched the movement of the welling pool, the sliding lip of water, its glassy fall and perpetual disappearance. Its voices, consulting together, filled the air with their colloquy.

‘Well,’ Alleyn said. ‘Here you are, Bailey. We’ll leave you to it. I’d better have a word with the local PCs. Here are my notes, Fox. Have a look at them for what they’re worth.’

Mr Fox drew out his spectacle case and seated himself in the lee of the hillside. Bailey, a man of few words, at once began work and in a minute or two, Thompson joined him. Alleyn returned to the gates and let himself out. He stood with his back to the enclosure where Miss Emily had hung her notice. He looked down Wally’s Way to the spot where Wally himself had waved and shouted at her and, beyond that, to the back of the Treherns’ cottage and the jetty in Fisherman’s Bay. He was very still for a moment. Then he called to Fox who joined him.

‘Do you see what I see?’ he asked.

Fox placidly related what he saw.

‘Thank you,’ Alleyn said. ‘Bear it in mind, Br’er Fox, when you digest those notes. I’m going along to that blasted outcrop.’ He did so and was met by the constable on duty. The wind was now very strong and much colder. Clouds, inky dark and blown ragged at their edges, drove swiftly in from the sea which had turned steely and was whipped into broken corrugations. The pleasure boats, all heading inshore, danced and bucketed as they came. Portcarrow front was deserted and a procession of cars crawled up the road to the downlands. The hotel launch was discharging a load of people for whom a bus waited by the village jetty. ‘There goes the Major’s drinkcheque,’ thought Alleyn.

‘ ‘Evening,’ he said to the constable. ‘This doesn’t look too promising, does it? What are we in for?’

‘A dirty spell, sir, by all tokens. When she bears in sudden and hard like this from the nor’west there’s only one way of it. Rain, high seas and a gale.’

‘Keep the trippers off, at least. Have you had much trouble?’

‘A lot of foolish inquiries, sir, and swarms of they nippers from down along.’

‘Where’s your mate? Round the point there?’

‘Yes, sir. Nobody’s come past the point, though there was plenty that tried. Sick ones and all.’

‘Anyone you knew?’