Terence was some time coming. Alleyn built up the fire and thawed himself out. He was caught on a wave of nostalgia; for Troy, his wife, for London, for Inspector Fox with whom he was accustomed to work, for his own country and his own people. If this had been a routine case from the Yard, he and Fox would, at its present stage, have gone into one of their huddles, staring at each other meditatively over their pipes. He could see old Fox now; his large unspeaking face, his grave attentiveness, his huge passive fists. And when it was over, there would be Troy, hugging her knees on the hearthrug and bringing him a sense of peace and communion. ‘She is nice,’ he thought. ‘I do like my wife,’ and he felt a kind of panic that he was so far away from her. With a sigh, he dismissed his mood and returned to the house on the slopes of Mount Moon, and felt again the silence of the plateau beyond the windows and the austerity of the night.

A door banged and someone crossed the hall. It was Terence Lynne.

She made a sedate entrance, holding herself very erect, looking straight before her. He noticed that she had powdered her face and done her lips. Evidently she had visited her room. He wondered if the book was still tucked down between the sheets.

‘All right now?’ he asked, and pushed a chair up to the fire.

‘Quite, thank you.’

‘Sit down, won’t you? We’ll get it over quickly.’

She did as he suggested, at once, stiffly, as if she obeyed an order.

‘Miss Lynne,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to let me read that diary.’

He felt her hatred, as if it was something physical that she secreted and used against him. ‘I wasn’t mistaken after all,’ she said. ‘I was right to think you would go back to my room. That’s what you’re like. That’s the sort of thing you do.’

‘Yes, that’s the sort of thing I do. I could have taken it away with me, you know.’

‘I can’t imagine why you didn’t.’

‘Will you please wait here, now, while I get it?’

‘I refuse to let you see it.’

‘In that case, I must lock your room and report to the police in the morning. They will come up with a search warrant and take the whole thing over themselves.’

Her hands trembled. She looked at them irritably and pressed them together in the fold of her gown. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘There’s something I must say to you. Wait.’

‘Of course,’ he said and turned away.