He was lowered another inch before the rope took up. He scrabbled with his feet against the pressure of the stream. The backs of his legs hit against something hard and firm. He explored with his feet, lifted them clear of the water and found in a moment with a kind of astonishment that he was standing on bars that pressed into his feet.

The grille.

A broken grille, the monks had said.

The surface of the stream must be almost level with the bottom of the well and about an inch below the grille which projected from its wall. Supporting himself in the angle of the walls, Alleyn contrived to turn himself about so that he now faced outwards. His head-lamp showed the two opposite walls. He leant back into the angle, braced himself and shouted, ‘Slack off a little.’

‘Slack off, it is,’ said the disembodied voice.

He leant forward precariously as the rope gave, shouted ‘Hold it!’ and lowered his head so that his lamp illuminated the swift-flowing black waters, the fragment of grille that he stood upon and his drenched feet, planted apart and close to its broken fangs.

And between his feet? A third foot ensnared upside down in the broken fangs: a foot in a black leather shoe.

II

His return to the surface was a bit of a nightmare. Superintendents of the CID, while they like to keep well above average in physical fitness and have behind them a gruelling and comprehensive training to this end, are not in the habit of half-scrambling and half-dangling on the end of a rope in a well. Alleyn’s palms burnt, his joints were banged against rock walls, and once he got a knock on the back of his head that lit up stars and made him dizzy. Sometimes he walked horizontally up the wall while the monks hauled in. They do these things better, he reflected, in crime films.

When he had finally been landed, the three of them sat on the floor and breathed hard: as odd a little group, it occurred to Alleyn, as might be imagined.

‘You were superb,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Ah, sure, it was nothing at all,’ Father Denys panted. ‘Aren’t we used to this type of thing in the excavating? It’s yourself should have the praise.’

They shared that peculiar sense of fellowship and gratification which is the reward of such exercises.

‘Well,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to ring the Questura, Father. Our man’s down there and he’s dead.’

‘The man Mailer?’ Father Denys said when they had crossed themselves. ‘God have mercy on his soul.’

‘Amen,’ said Brother Dominic.

‘What’s the way of it, Mr Alleyn?’