‘Have we any reason to think it might be about these memoirs, though?’

‘No. I’m doing what I always say you shouldn’t do: I’m speculating. But it was clear, wasn’t it, that young Lacklander didn’t like the memoirs being mentioned. He shut up like a trap over them. They crop up, Brer Fox. They occur. They link the Cartarettes with the Lacklanders and they may well link Mr Phinn with both. They provide, so far, the only connecting theme in this group of apparently very conventional people.’

‘I wouldn’t call her ladyship conventional,’ Fox observed.

‘She’s unconventional along orthodox lines, believe me. There’s a car pulling up. It’ll be Dr Curtis. Let’s return to the Bottom Field and to the question of opportunity and evidence.’

But before he led the way out he stood rubbing his nose and staring at his colleague.

‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘that old Lacklander died with what sounds like an uneasy conscience and the word ‘“Vic”’ on his lips.’

‘Ah. Vic.’

‘Yes. And Mark Lacklander referred to young Phinn as Viccy! Makes you fink, don’t it? Come on.’

V

By midsummer morning light, Colonel Cartarette looked incongruous in the willow grove. His coverings had been taken away and there, close to the river’s brink he was; curled up, empty of thought and motion, wearing the badge of violence upon his temple … a much photographed corpse. Bailey and Thompson had repeated the work of the previous night but without, Alleyn thought, a great deal of success. Water had flooded under duck boards, seeped up through earthy places and washed over gravel. In spite of the groundsheet it had soaked into Colonel Cartarette’s Harris tweeds and had collected in a pool in the palm of his right hand.

Dr Curtis completed a superficial examination and stood up.

‘That’s all I want here, Alleyn,’ he said. ‘I’ve given Oliphant the contents of the pockets. A bundle of keys, tobacco, pipe, lighter. Fly case. Handkerchief. Pocket-book with a few notes and a photograph of his daughter. That’s all. As for general appearances; rigor is well established and is, I think, about to go off. I understand you’ve found out that he was alive up to eight-fifteen and that he was found dead at nine. I won’t get any closer in time than that.’

‘The injuries?’

‘I’d say tentatively, two weapons or possibly one weapon used in two ways. There’s a clean puncture with deep penetration, there’s circular indentation with the puncture as its centre and there’s been a heavy blow over the same area that has apparently caused extensive fracturing and a lot of extravasation. It might have been made by one of those stone-breaker’s hammers or even by a flat oval-shaped stone itself. I think it was the first injury he got. It would almost certainly have knocked him right out. Might have killed him; in any case, it would have left him wide open to the second attack.’

Alleyn had moved round the body to the edge of the stream.