‘Camp-stool,’ he muttered. ‘And here’s an empty tube. Watercolour. The Darragh spoor, I imagine. An eventful stretch of country, this. I wonder if she was here on that Friday. You can’t see the other place from here, Fox. You might hear voices, though.’

‘If they were raised a bit.’

‘Yes. Angry voices. Well, on we go.’

As they drew nearer Cubitt continued to paint, but Parish kept turning his head to look at them. When they came within earshot, Cubitt shouted at them over his shoulder.

‘I hope to God you haven’t come here to ask questions. I’m busy.’

‘All right,’ said Alleyn. ‘We’ll wait.’

He walked beyond them, out of sight of the picture. Fox followed him. Alleyn lay on the lip of the headland. Beneath them, the sea boomed and thudded against a rosy cliff. Wreaths of seaweed endlessly wove suave patterns about Coombe Rock. A flight of gulls mewed and circled in and out of the sunlight.

‘What a hullabaloo and a pother,’ said Alleyn. ‘How many thousands of times before they come adrift, do these strands of seaweed slither out and swirl and loop and return? Their gestures are so beautiful that it is difficult to realize they are meaningless. They only show us the significance of the water’s movements but for themselves they are helpless. And the sea is helpless too, and the winds it obeys, and the wider laws that rule the winds, themselves ruled by passive rulers. Dear me, Fox, what a collection of ordered inanities. Rather like police investigations. I can’t look over any more, I’ve no head for heights.’

‘Here comes Mr Cubitt, sir,’ said Fox.

Alleyn rolled over and saw Cubitt, a vast figure against the sky.

‘We’re resting now,’ said Cubitt. ‘Sorry to choke you off, but I was on a tricky bit.’

‘We are extremely sorry to bother you,’ said Alleyn. ‘I know it is beyond a painter’s endurance to be interrupted at a critical moment.’

Cubitt dropped down on the grass beside him.

‘I’m trying to keep a wet skin of paint all over the canvas,’ he said. ‘You have to work at concert pitch for that!’

‘Good Lord!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean you paint right through that surface in three hours?’

‘It keeps wet for two days. I’ve got a new brand of slow-drying colours. Even so, it’s a bit of an effort.’

‘I should think so, on a thing that size.’

Parish appeared on the brow of the hill.

‘Aren’t you coming to see my portrait?’ he cried.

Cubitt glanced at Alleyn and said, ‘Do, if you’d like to.’

‘I should, enormously.’

They walked back to the easel.