‘Now listen,’ Sergeant Oliphant said, quite abandoning his official position. ‘There’s a dirty great fish in this Chyne here would turn your guts over for you. Pounds if he’s an ounce, he is. Old in cunning, he is; wary and sullen and that lordly in his lurkings and slinkings he’d break your heart. Sometimes he’ll rise like a monster,’ said Sergeant Oliphant, urging his car up Watt’s Hill, ‘and snap, he’s took it, though that’s only three times. Once being the deceased’s doing a matter of a fortnight ago, which he left his cast in his jaws he being a mighty fighter. And once the late squire, Sir Harold Lacklander, he lost him through being, as the man himself frankly admitted, overzealous in the playing of him. Now,’ the sergeant shouted, ‘NOW, for the last and final cast, hooked, played and landed by the poor Colonel, sir, and lying there by his dead body, or I can’t tell a five-pound trout from a stickleback. Well, if he had to die, he couldn’t have had a more glorious end. The Colonel, I mean, Mr Alleyn, not the Old ’Un,’ said Sergeant Oliphant.

They had followed Watt’s Lane down into the valley and up the slope through blinding rain to the village. Oliphant pulled up at a spot opposite the Boy and Donkey. A figure in a mackintosh and tweed hat stood in the lighted doorway.

‘The Chief Constable, sir,’ said Oliphant. ‘Sir James Punston. He said he’d drive over and meet you.’

‘I’ll have a word with him, before we go in. Wait a moment.’

Alleyn crossed the road and introduced himself. The Chief Constable was a weather-beaten tough-looking man who had been a chief commissioner of police in India.

‘Thought I’d better come over,’ Sir James said, ‘and take a look at this show. Damn’ bad show it is. Damn’ nice fellow, Cartarette. Can’t imagine who’d want to set about him, but no doubt you’ll be able to tell us. I’ll come down with you. Filthy night, isn’t it?’

The Yard car had drawn up behind Oliphant’s. Bailey, Thompson and the driver got out and unloaded their gear with the economic movements of long usage and a stubborn disregard of the rain. The two parties joined up and led by the Chief Constable climbed a stile and followed a rough path down a drenched hillside. Their torches flashed on rods of rain and dripping furze bushes.

‘They call this River Path,’ the Chief Constable said. ‘It’s a right-of-way through the Nunspardon estate and comes out at Bottom Bridge which we have to cross. I hear the Dowager rang you up.’

‘She did indeed,’ Alleyn said.

‘Lucky they decided it was your pigeon, anyway. She’d have raised hell if they hadn’t.’

‘I don’t see where she fits in.’