Martyn thought back and it seemed she had journeyed half a lifetime in three days. There was the room. There was J.G. going out and leaving her with Bennington and there was Bennington staring at her and talking about the cigarette-case. There was also something else, buried away behind her thoughts of which the memory now returned. She was made miserable by it.

‘He said, I think, something about the cigarette-case. That he himself hadn’t given it to Miss Hamilton.’

‘Did he say who gave it to her?’

‘No,’ Martyn said. ‘I don’t think he said that. Just that he didn’t.’

‘And was his manner of saying this strange?’

‘I thought his manner throughout was—uncomfortable and odd. He seemed to me to be a very unhappy man.’

‘Yet you used the word triumphant?’

‘There can be unhappy victories.’

‘True for you. There can, indeed. Tell me one thing more. Do you connect the two conversations? I mean do you think what he said about the cigarette-case had anything to do with what he said about the letter?’

‘I should say nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ Alleyn said resignedly and called out: ‘Have you got all that, Mike?’

‘Coming up the straight, sir.’

‘Put it into longhand, now, will you, and we’ll ask Miss Tarne to have a look at it and see if she’s been misrepresented. Do you mind waiting a minute or two, Miss Tarne? It’ll save you coming back.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Martyn whose ideas of police investigation were undergoing a private revolution. Alleyn offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. The consultation, she felt, was over and the famous surgeon was putting his patient at her ease.

‘I gather from Lamprey’s far-reaching conversation that you are a New Zealander,’ he said. ‘If I may say so, you seem to have dropped out of a clear sky into your own success story. Have you been long at the Vulcan, Miss Tarne?’

‘A night and three days.’

‘Good Lord! And in that time you’ve migrated from dresser to what sounds like minor stardom. Success story, indeed!’

‘Yes, but—’ Martyn hesitated. For the first time since she walked into the Vulcan she felt able to talk about herself. It didn’t occur to her that it was odd for her confidant to be a police officer.

‘It’s all been very eccentric,’ she said. ‘I only reached England a little over a fortnight ago and my money was stolen in the ship so I had to get some sort of job rather quickly.’

‘Did you report the theft to the police?’

‘No. The purser said he didn’t think it would do any good.’

‘So much,’ said Alleyn with a wry look, ‘for the police!’