‘Yes,’ said Fabian, ‘that’s Jack. He who was so acutely inconvenienced by the absence of a vomitorium in the wool-shed.’

‘Is he apt to be sick again, do you imagine, if I put a few simple questions to him?’

‘Who can tell? What do you want to ask him?’

‘Whether he used one of those hooks when he shifted the crucial bale.’

‘Ticklish!’ Fabian said. ‘It makes even me a little queasy to think of it. Hi, Jack!’

Merrywether’s reaction to his summons was disquieting. No sooner had Fabian spoken his introductory phrases than the presser turned pale and stared at Alleyn with an expression of panic.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t of come back on this job if it hadn’t of been for the war. That’s how it affected me. I’d have turned it up only for the war and there being a shortage. “Look,” I said to Mr Johns and Ben Wilson, I said: “not if it’s the same outfit,” I said. “You don’t get me coming at the Mount Moon job if it’s the same press again,” I said. Then they told me it was a new press and I give in. I come to oblige. Not willing, though. I didn’t fancy it and I don’t yet. Call me soft if you like, but that’s how I am. If anybody starts asking me about you know what, it catches me smack in the belly. I feel shocking. I don’t reckon I’ll ever shake it off. Now!’

Alleyn murmured sympathetically.

‘Look at it whatever way you like,’ Merrywether continued argumentatively, ‘and it’s still a fair cow. You think you’re mastering the sensation and then somebody comes along and starts asking you a lot of silly questions and you feel terrible again.’

‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Alleyn said hurriedly, ‘there’s only one detail I’d like to check.’ He glanced at the bale hook which Merrywether still grasped in his pink freckled hand. Merrywether followed his glance. His fingers opened and the hook crashed on the floor. With clairvoyant accuracy he roared out: ‘I know what you mean and I never! It wasn’t there. I never touched it with the hook. Now!’ And before Alleyn could reply, he added: ‘You ask me why. All right. They’d dumped the hook on me. There you are! Deliberate, I reckon.’

‘Dumped it on you? The hook? Hid it?’