“I don’t know.” He allowed himself to play the part of vague, absentminded academic for all it was worth. “ There was so much noise and confusion, you see.”

“Yes,” she said, “ so I’ve been told. You didn’t see anything unusual when you went to look for Greg?”

“No,” he said, hesitating, “ not at first. When he wasn’t on deck, I supposed he was in his bunk. He had looked terribly ill. Then, when I went below, there was no sign of him. Nothing. Even his sleeping bag had disappeared.”

“How long was it before you went back to the others to tell them he was missing?”

There was a hesitation, and though the inspector seemed not to notice, Duncan was aware of the sergeant’s perceptive and compassionate gaze.

“I suppose it must have seemed rather a long time,” Duncan said, “before I went back on deck. I looked in the places where he might have been. I thought he might have been sick in the lavatory or lying down in the saloon. It seemed inconceivable, of course, that he could have just have disappeared. When I did go back to the others, they didn’t believe me.”

“No,” the inspector said.

He was still waiting for the awkward questions that he had been dreading and did not realise that the interview was over until the inspector asked if he would send Mr. Matthews in as he went out. His relief gave him courage, and at the door he hesitated.

“I’d like to get home as soon as possible,” he said. “ Would it be all right to go back tomorrow?”

The inspector looked up at him and smiled.

“I can’t stop you, of course,” she said. “But I’d rather you stayed here for a couple of days. You had planned to be here on holiday anyway, hadn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “ Very well. I understand.”

Only when he was outside the door, away from the steady stare of the sergeant, did he begin to shake uncontrollably.

Gerald Matthews repeatedly took off his spectacles and rubbed them with the hem of his jersey in what they thought was a gesture of nervousness and was in fact the result of a contained excitement. All day he had been even more aware than usual of Rose. He watched her from a distance, knowing that if he made a wrong move, the fragile understanding which he felt had spontaneously developed between them in Matilda’s bedroom would be lost. He saw her for the first time as vulnerable, unhappy, obtainable. It never occurred to him that by offering her marriage now he would be exploiting her shock and sadness. He wanted her. The gentleness and tact he showed now in his discretion, in keeping his distance, was a tactic in obtaining her. Concern and consideration for her feelings had nothing to do with it.