‘Good morning, sir,’ said Fox in a whisper. ‘Pleasant morning. He’s just stirring, I fancy.’

‘Good morning to you, Br’er Fox,’ rejoined Alleyn. ‘A very pleasant morning. I’ll meet you on the stairs.’

He stole to the door of his room and listened. Presently the now familiar footsteps sounded in the passage. Alleyn waited for a few seconds and then slipped through the door. Fox performed a similar movement at the same time.

‘Simultaneous comedians,’ whispered Alleyn. ‘Come on.’

Keeping observation is one of the most tedious of a detective officer’s duties. Laymen talk of shadowing. It is a poetic term for a specialized drudgery. In his early days at Scotland Yard, Alleyn had hated keeping observation and had excelled at it, a circumstance which casts some light on his progress as a detective. There are two kinds of observation in the police sense. You may tail a man in such a manner that you are within his range of vision but unrecognized or unremarked by him. You may also be obliged to tail a man in circumstances that forbid his seeing you at all. In a deserted hamlet, at half-past five on a summer’s morning, Mr Legge could scarcely fail to recognize his tormentors of the previous evening. Alleyn and Fox wished to follow him without being seen.

They reached the entrance lobby of the pub as Mr Legge stepped into the street. Alleyn moved into the private tap and Fox into a sort of office on the other side of the front entrance. Alleyn watched Mr Legge go past the window of the private tap and signalled to Fox. They hurried down the side passage in time to see Mr Legge pass the garage and make for the South Steps. Alleyn nodded to Fox who strolled across the yard, and placed himself in a position where he could see the South Steps, reflected handily in a cottage window. When the figure of Mr Legge descended the steps and turned to the left, Fox made decent haste to follow his example.

Alleyn opened the garage and backed the police Ford into the yard. He then removed his coat and hat, let a good deal of air out of his spare tyre and began, in a leisurely manner to pump it up again. He had inflated and replaced the spare tyre and was peering into the engine, when Miss Darragh came out of the pub.

Alleyn had not questioned the superintendent at all closely about Miss Darragh, nor was her appearance dwelt upon in the files of the case. He was therefore rather surprised to see how fat she was. She was like a pouter-pigeon in lavender print. She wore an enormous straw hat, and carried a haversack and easel. Her round face was quite inscrutable but Alleyn thought she looked pretty hard at him. He dived farther inside the bonnet of the car and Miss Darragh passed down the South Steps.