For half-way along the jetty the water was about two feet deep. Alleyn, cursing inwardly, rolled up his trousers and took to it, keeping under the jetty. The water was cold and the jetty smelt. Abruptly the bottom shelved down. Alleyn could now hear the faintest murmur of voices and knew that he was not so very far from his objective. The dinghy was hidden by posts but he could hear the glug-glug of its movement and the hollow thud it made when it knocked against the post to which it was made fast. Just beyond it was a flight of steps leading up to the jetty. Alleyn mounted a crossbeam. It was slimy and barnacled but he found handholds to the end. If he could reach the dinghy! His progress was hazardous, painful, and maddeningly slow, but at last he grasped the post. He embraced it with both arms, straddled the crossbeams and wriggled round until he reached the far side.

Underneath him was the dinghy and lying full-length in the dinghy was Inspector Fox. His notebook lay open on his chest.

Fox winked at his superior and obligingly moved over. Alleyn pulled the dinghy closer, and not without difficulty lowered himself into the bows.

‘Two minds with but a single thought,’ he whispered. ‘Simultaneous comedy again.’

He took out his notebook and cocked his ears.

From the jetty above, the voices of Miss Darragh and Mr Legge sounded disembodied and remote. For a second or two Alleyn could hear nothing distinctly, but, as his concentration sharpened, words and phrases began to take form. Miss Darragh was speaking. She spoke in little bursts of eloquence broken by pauses that fell oddly until he realized that while she talked she painted.

‘—and haven’t I gone sufficiently far, coming down here, to meet you? I go no farther at all. I’m sorry for the nasty pickle you’re in…terribly cruel the way…haunts you…compromised myself…can’t expect…’ Her voice died into a mysterious murmur. Alleyn raised his eyebrows and Fox shook his head. Miss Darragh droned on. Suddenly she said very distinctly, ‘It’s no good at all asking, for I’ll not do ut.’

Legge began to mumble quite inaudibly. She interrupted him with a staccato, ‘Yes, yes, I realize all that.’ And a moment later, ‘Don’t think I’m not sorry. I am.’ And then, incisively, ‘Of course, I know you’re innocent of ut, but I can’t—’

For the first time Mr Legge became intelligible.

‘My blood be on your head,’ said Mr Legge loudly.

‘Ah, don’t say that. Will you be quiet, now? You’ve nothing to fear.’

Legge’s voice dropped again but Alleyn’s hearing was now attuned to it. He heard isolated phrases. ‘Hounded to death…just when I was…expiated my fault…God knows…never free from it.’