‘That’s a pleasing young lady,’ said Coombe. ‘What did you make of the lad?’

‘We’re not much further on, are we?’

‘Aren’t we, though? He as good as said he threw the stones that evening and what’s more he has good as let on his dad had told him to keep his mouth shut.’

‘Yes. Yes, it looked like that, didn’t it?’

‘Well, then?’

‘He wouldn’t say anything about the rock. He says he saw Miss Pride leave and return. The figure that returned may have been Miss Cost.’

‘Ah!’ said Coombe with satisfaction.

‘Dr Maine, you remember, noticed Wally dodging about the road up to the Spring soon after half past seven. Miss Pride saw him at much the same time. Miss Pride got back to the pub at five to eight. She didn’t encounter Miss Cost. Say the seven o’clock service ended about ten to eight – we’ll have to find out about that – it would mean that Miss Cost would get to the causeway – when?’

‘About eight.’

‘Just after Miss Pride had gone indoors. And to the Spring?’

‘Say a quarter past.’

‘And I found her body at ten past nine.’

Coombe said: ‘The kid would have had time between seven-thirty and eight-fifteen, to let himself into the enclosure and take cover behind that boulder. Before she came.’

‘Why should he do that? He thought Miss Pride had gone. He saw her go. Why should he anticipate her return?’

‘Just one of his silly notions.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘One of his silly notions. Put that boy in the witness-box and we’d look as silly as he does. If he’s at the end of this case, Coombe, we’ll only get a conviction on factual evidence, not on anything the poor little devil says. Unmistakable prints of his boots behind the boulder, for instance.’

‘You saw the ground. A mess.’ Coombe reddened. ‘I suppose I slipped up there. We were on the place before I thought.’

‘It’s so easy,’ Alleyn said, saving his face for him. ‘Happens to the best of us.’

‘It was all churned up, wasn’t it? Almost as if – ?’

‘Yes?’

‘Now I come to think of it, almost as if, before the doctor and I went up, someone had kind of scuffled it.’

‘Yes. Behind the boulder and the trace of the rock. There was a flat bit of stone, did you notice, lying near the bank. Muddy edge. It might have been used to obliterate prints.’

‘I suppose,’ Coombe said, ‘in a quiet type of division like this, you get a bit rusty. I could kick myself. At my time of life!’

‘It may not amount to much. After all, we can isolate your prints and Dr Maine’s from the rest.’

‘Well, yes. Yes, you can do that, all right. But still!’