Arthur Rubrick arrived at this juncture, walking slowly and very short of breath. ‘And,’ said Mr Wilson, ‘the boss picked things was not too pleasant and asked Tommy Johns what was wrong. Tommy started moaning about nobody being any good on the place. They were standing near the sorting-table and I heard what was said.’

‘Can you remember it?’ Alleyn asked.

‘I can remember all right, but there was nothing in it.’

‘May I hear about it? I’m enormously grateful for all this, Mr Wilson.’

‘It didn’t amount to anything. Tommy’s a funny joker. He goes crook sometimes. He said the men were a lot of lazy bastards.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Young Cliff was in trouble about a bottle of booze. Mrs Rubrick had told him off a couple of nights before. Tommy didn’t like it. He was complaining about it.’

‘What did Mr Rubrick say?’

‘He wasn’t too good that morning. He was bad, you could see that. His face was a terrible colour. He was very quiet, and kept saying it was unfortunate. He seemed to think it was very very hot in the shed, and kept moving as if he’d like to clear out. His hands were shaky, too. He was bad, all right.’

‘How did it end?’

‘Young Doug came up—the Captain,’ Mr Wilson explained with a hint of irony. ‘He was in a bit of a mess. Bloody. It seemed to upset the boss and he said quite violent, “What the devil have you been doing?” and Doug didn’t like it and turned his back on him and walked out.’

‘Now, that’s an incident that we haven’t got in the files,’ Alleyn said.

‘I never mentioned it. This Sub-Inspector Jackson comes into my shed and throws his weight about, treating us from the word go as if we’re holding back on him. Very inconsiderate, he was. “I don’t want to know what you think. I want you to answer my questions.” All right. We answered his questions.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Alleyn pacifically.

‘We don’t want to hold back on it,’ Mr Wilson continued with warmth. ‘We were as much put out as any one else when we heard. It’s not very nice to think about. When they told Jack Merrywether—he’s the presser—what he must of done that morning, he vomited. All over my shearing-board before any one could take any steps about it. It was nearly a month afterwards but that made no difference to Jack.’

‘Quite,’ said Alleyn. ‘How did this visit of Mr Rubrick’s end?’