As she entered the hall a car drew up outside. Barker, who seemed to have been expecting it, was already in the outer porch. He admitted three pale men, dressed in London clothes of a particularly black character. They wore wide black ties. Two of them carried black cases. The third, glancing at Troy, spoke in a muted and inaudible voice.

‘This way, if you please,’ said Barker, ushering them into a small waiting-room across the hall. ‘I will inform Sir Cedric.’

After the newcomers had been shut away and Barker had gone on his errand, Troy stood digesting the official recognition of Cedric’s ascendancy. Her glance strayed to a table where, as she had observed, the senior of the three men, with a practised modesty, suggestive almost of sleight of hand, had dropped or slid a card. He had, indeed, given it a little push with his forefinger, so that it lay, partly concealed, under a book which Troy herself had brought from the library to solace her afternoon. The card was engraved in a type slightly heavier and more black than that of a normal visiting card:

MORTIMER, SON & LOAME

Undertakers—

Troy lifted her book, exposing the hidden corner of the card, ‘—and Embalmers,’ she read.

CHAPTER NINE

Alleyn

BY AN ALTERATION IN THE rhythm of the ship’s progress, suggestive almost of a physiological change, her passengers became aware of the end of their long voyage. Her pulse died. It was replaced by sounds of blind waves washing along her sides; of gulls, of voices, of chains, and, beyond these, of movement along the wharves and in the city beyond them.

At early dawn the Port of London looked as wan and expectant as an invalid already preparing for a return to vigour. Thin mist still hung about sheds and warehouses. Muffled lights were strung like a dim necklace along the waterfront. Frost glinted on roofs and bollards and ropes. Alleyn had gripped the rail for so long that its cold had bitten through his gloves into the palms of his hands. Groups of people stood about the wharves, outward signs of a life from which the passengers were, for a rapidly diminishing period, still remote. These groups, befogged by their own breath, were composed for the main part of men.

There were three women, and one wore a scarlet cap. Inspector Fox had come out in the pilot’s boat. Alleyn had not hoped for this, and had been touched and delighted to meet him; but now it was impossible to talk to Fox.

‘Mrs Alleyn,’ said Fox, behind him, ‘is wearing a red cap. If you’ll excuse me, Mr Alleyn, I ought to have a word with a chap—The car’s just behind the Customs shed. I’ll meet you there.’

When Alleyn turned to thank him, he was already walking away, squarely overcoated, tidy, looking just like his job.