‘Had Colonel Cartarette got the fish in his hands, then?’

‘Not he. I told you, he refused to touch it. He left it there, on the bridge. I saw it when I went home. For all I know it’s still lying there on the bridge.’

‘It’s lying by Colonel Cartarette,’ Alleyn said, ‘and the question seems to be, doesn’t it, who put it there?’

II

This time the silence was long and completely blank.

‘He must have come back and taken it, after all,’ Mark said dubiously.

‘No,’ Rose said strongly. They all turned to her. Rose’s face was dimmed with tears and her voice uncertain. Since Alleyn’s arrival she had scarcely spoken and he wondered if she was so much

shocked that she did not even try to listen to them.

‘No?’ he said gently.

‘He wouldn’t have done that,’ she said. ‘It’s not at all the sort of thing he’d do.’

‘That’s right,’ Kitty agreed. ‘He wasn’t like that.’ And she caught her breath in a sob.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mark said at once. ‘Stupid of me. Of course, you’re right. The Colonel wasn’t like that.’

Rose gave him a look that told Alleyn as much as he wanted to know about their relationship. ‘So they’re in love,’ he thought. ‘And unless I’m growing purblind, his father’s got more than half an eye on her stepmother. What a very compact little party, to be sure.’

He said to Lady Lacklander: ‘Did you stay there long after he left you?’

‘No. We talked for about ten minutes and then Maurice recrossed the bridge, as I told you, and disappeared behind the willows on the right bank.’

‘Which way did you go home?’

‘Up through the Home Spinney to Nunspardon.’

‘Could you see into the willow grove at all?’

‘Certainly. When I was half-way up I stopped to pant and I looked down and there he was, casting into the willow grove reach.’

‘That would be about eight.’

‘About eight, yes.’

‘I think you said you left your painting gear to be collected, didn’t you?’

‘I did.’

‘Who collected it, please?’

‘One of the servants. William, the footman probably.’

‘No,’ Mark said. ‘No, Gar. I did.’

‘You?’ his grandmother said. ‘What were you doing …’ And stopped short.