‘Regret it?’ she repeated, examining the word. ‘Seeing what’s happened, and the cruel way it’s changed him—’ She pressed her lips together and her hands jerked stiffly in her lap. ‘I wish she’d never seen my boy,’ she said with extraordinary vehemence and then caught her breath and looked frightened. ‘It’s none of his doing or of hers, poor lady. They were devoted to each other. When it happened there was nobody felt it more than Cliff. Don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s wicked, the way an innocent boy’s been made to suffer. Wicked.’

Her eyes were still fixed on the wall, beyond Alleyn and above his head. They were wet, but so wooden was her face that her tears seemed to be accidental and quite inexpressive of sorrow. She ended each of her speeches with such an air of finality that he felt surprised when she embarked on a new one.

‘Mrs Johns,’ he said, ‘what do you make of this story about the whisky?’

‘Anybody who says my boy’s a thief is a liar,’ she said. ‘That’s what I make of it. Lies! He never touched a drop in his life.’

‘Then what do you think he was doing?’

At last she looked full at him. ‘You ask the station cook what he was doing. Ask Albert Black. Cliff won’t tell you anything, and he won’t tell me. It’s my idea and he’d never forgive me if he knew I’d spoken of it.’ She got up and walked to the door, staring out into the sunshine. ‘Ask them,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Thank you,’ said Alleyn, looking thoughtfully at her. ‘I believe I shall.’

Alleyn’s first view of the station cook was dramatic and incredible. It took place that evening, the second of his stay at Mount Moon. After their early dinner, a silent meal at which the members of the household seemed to be suffering from a carryover from last night’s confidences, Fabian suggested that he and Alleyn should walk up to the men’s quarters. They did so but, before they left, Alleyn asked Ursula to lend him the diamond clip that Florence Rubrick had lost on the night she was murdered. He and Fabian walked down the lavender path as the evening light faded and the mountains began their nightly pageant of violet and gold. The lavender stalks were grey sticks, now, and the zinnias behind them isolated mummies crowned with friable heads. ‘Were they much the same then,’ Alleyn asked, ‘as far as visibility goes?’

‘The lavender was green and bushy,’ Fabian replied, ‘but the thing was under one of the zinnias and had no better cover than there would be now. They don’t flourish up here and were spindly-looking apologies even when they did their stuff.’