She stood up abruptly, her palm against her forehead as though her head ached.

‘Oh, for some time.’

‘He confided in you? When?’

‘When he got the job,’ said Decima flatly.

Alleyn did not believe this, but he said politely, ‘That was very straightforward, wasn’t it?’ And as she did not answer he added, ‘Do you know why he went to prison?’

‘No. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. He’s wiped it out, God knows, poor thing. Don’t tell me.’

Alleyn reflected, with a certain amount of amusement, that it was as well she didn’t want to know what Legge’s offence had been. Some image of this thought may have appeared in his face. He saw Decima look sharply at him and he said hurriedly: ‘All this is by the way. What I really want to ask you is whether, on the morning you encountered Mr Watchman by the furze bush, you were alone with him all the time.’

He saw that now she was frightened for herself. Her eyes widened, and she turned extremely pale.

‘Yes. At least—I—no. Not at the end. I rather think Norman Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came up.’

‘You rather think?’

‘They did come up. I remember now. They did.’

‘And yet,’ said Alleyn, ‘when I asked them if they saw Watchman that morning, they said definitely that they did not.’

‘They must have forgotten.’

‘Please! You can’t think I’ll believe that. They must have been over every word that was spoken by Watchman during the last hours of his life. They have told me as much. Why, they must have walked back to the inn with him. How could they forget?’

Decima said, ‘They didn’t forget.’

‘No?’

‘It was for me. They are being little gents.’

Alleyn waited.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I won’t have it. I won’t have their chivalry. If you must know, they surprised their friend in a spirited attempt upon my modesty. I wasn’t pleased and I was telling him precisely what I thought of him. I suppose they were afraid you would transfer your attentions from Bob Legge to me.’

‘Possibly,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘They seem to think I am a sort of investigating chameleon.’

‘I imagine,’ said Decima in a high voice, ‘that because I didn’t relish Mr Watchman’s embraces and told him so, it doesn’t follow that I set to work and murdered him.’

‘It’s not a strikingly good working hypothesis. I’m sorry to labour this point but we’ve no sense of decency in the force. Had he shown signs of these tricks before?’