Wally Scowled at him.
“Wally,” Jenny said, taking his hand, “did you see Miss Cost? In the rain? This morning? Was Miss Cost at the spring?”
“At the Fustyvell.”
“Yes, at the Festival. Was she at the spring this morning too? In the rain?”
“This is getting positively fugal,” Alleyn muttered.
“This morning?” Jenny repeated.
“Not this morning. At the Fustyvell,” said Wally. “I want another one.”
“In a minute,” Alleyn said. “Soon. Did you see a man this morning in a motorboat?” And, by a sort of compulsion, he added: “In the rain?”
“My dad’s got the biggest launch.”
“Not your dad’s launch. Another man in another launch. Dr. Mayne. Do you know Dr. Mayne?”
“Doctor,” said Wally vacantly.
“Yes. Did you see him?”
“I dunno.”
Alleyn said to Jenny: “Mayne noticed him at about half past seven.” He waited for a moment and then pressed on: “Wally: where were you when you saw the lady at the spring? Where were you?”
Wally pushed his forefinger round and round the table, leaving a greasy trail on the plastic surface. He did this with exaggerated violence and apparently no interest.
“You couldn’t get in, could you?” Alleyn suggested. “You couldn’t get through the gate.”
With his left hand, Wally groped under his smock. He produced a number of entrance disks, let them fall on the table and shoved them about with violent jabs from his forefinger. They clattered to the floor.
“Did you go into the spring this morning?”
He began to make a high whimpering sound.
“It’s no good,” Jenny said. “When he starts that, it’s no good. He’ll get violent. He may have an attack. Really, you mustn’t. Really. I promise, you mustn’t.”
“Very well,” Alleyn said. “I’ll get him his ice cream.”
“Never mind, Wally, it’s all right,” Jenny said. “It’s all right, now. Isn’t it?”
He looked at her doubtfully and then, with that too familiar gesture, reached his hand out towards her.
“Oh, don’t!” Jenny whispered. “Oh Wally, don’t show me your hands.”
When Wally had absorbed his second ice cream they all left the tearoom by a door that, as it turned out, led into the back garden.
Coombe said: “We’ve come the wrong way,” but Alleyn was looking at a display of grayish undergarments hung out to dry. A woman of unkempt appearance was in the yard. She stared at them with bleared disfavour.
“Private,” she said and pointed to a dividing fence. “You’m trespassing.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Trehern,” Jenny said. “We made a mistake.”
Trehern had come out through a back door. “Get in, woman,” he said. “Get in.” He took his wife by her arm and shoved her back into the house. “There’s the gate,” he said to Alleyn. “Over yon.”
Alleyn had wandered to the clothesline. A surplus length of line dangled from the pole. It had been recently cut.
“I wonder,” he said, “if you could spare me a yard of this. The bumper bar on my car’s loose.”
“Bean’t none to spare. Us needs it. Rotten anyways and no good to you. There’s the gate.”
“Thank you,” Alleyn said as they went out, Wally trailing behind.
“Was it the same as the trip wire?” Alleyn asked Coombe.
“Certainly was. But I reckon they all use it.”
“It’s old but it’s been newly cut. Have you kept the trip wire?”
“Yes.”
“How was it fastened?”
“With iron pegs. They use them when they dry out their nets.”
“Well, let’s move on, shall we?”
Patrick was sitting in a dinghy alongside the fisherman’s jetty, looking aloof and disinterested. Wally made up to a new pair of sightseers.
“That was very nice of you,” Alleyn said to Jenny. “And I’m more than obliged.”
“I hated it. Mr. Alleyn, he really isn’t responsible. You can see what he’s like.”
“Do you think he threw the stones at Miss Emily the other night?”
She said very unhappily, “Yes.”
“So do I.”
“But nothing else. I’m sure: nothing more than that.”
“You may be right. I’d be very grateful, by the way, if you’d keep the whole affair under your hat. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “All right. Yes, of course, if you say so.”
“Thank you very much. One other thing. Have you any idea who the Green Lady could have been?”
Jenny looked startled. “No, I haven’t. Somehow or another, I’ve sort of forgotten to wonder. She may not have been real at all.”
“What did he say about her?”
“Only that she was very pretty and her hair shone in the sun. And that she said his warts would be all gone.”
“Nothing else?”
“No — nothing.”
“Has he got that sort of imagination — to invent her?”
Jenny said slowly, “I don’t think he has.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“Not only that,” Jenny said. “He’s an extraordinarily truthful little boy. He never tells lies — never.”
“That’s an extremely valuable piece of information,” Alleyn said. “Now, go and placate your young man.”
“I’ll be blowed if I do. He can jolly well come off it,” she rejoined, but Alleyn thought she was not altogether displeased with Patrick. He watched her climb down into the dinghy. It ducked and bobbed towards the far point of the bay. She looked up and waved to him. Her tawny hair shone in the bright sunshine.
“That’s a pleasing young lady,” said Coombe. “What did you make of the lad?”
“We’re not much further on, are we?”
“Aren’t we, though? He as good as said he threw the stones that evening, and what’s more he as good as let on his dad had told him to keep his mouth shut.”
“Yes. Yes, it looked like that, didn’t it?”
“Well, then?”
“He wouldn’t say anything about the rock. He says he saw Miss Pride leave and return. The figure that returned may have been Miss Cost.”
“Ah!” said Coombe with satisfaction.
“Dr. Mayne, you remember, noticed Wally dodging about the road up to the spring soon after half past seven. Miss Pride saw him at much the same time. Miss Pride got back to the pub at eight o’clock. She didn’t encounter Miss Cost. Say the seven o’clock service ended about ten to eight — we’ll have to find out about that — it would mean that Miss Cost would get to the causeway — when?”
“About eight.”
“Just after Miss Pride had gone indoors. And to the spring?”
“Say ten or a quarter past.”
“And I found her body at ten past nine.”
Coombe said: “The kid would have had time, between 7:30 and 8:15, to let himself into the enclosure and take cover behind that boulder. Before she came.”
“Why should he do that? He thought Miss Pride had gone. He saw her go. Why should he anticipate her return?”
“Just one of his silly notions.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “One of his silly notions. Put that boy in the witness-box, and we’d look as silly as he does. If he’s at the end of this case, Coombe, we’ll only get a conviction on factual evidence, not on anything the poor little devil says. Unmistakable prints of his boots behind the boulder for instance.”
“You saw the ground. A mess.” Coombe reddened. “I suppose I slipped up there. We were on the place before I thought.”
“It’s so easy,” Alleyn said, saving his face for him. “Happens to the best of us.”
“It was all churned up, wasn’t it? Almost as if…?”
“Yes?”