“Adrian, you are awful,” said Mrs. Carstairs automatically. It was clear that he was in love with her.
Alleyn said: “So there would be a gap of about an hour and a quarter between the first and second services?”
“This morning, yes,” said the Rector. “Because of the rain, you see, and the small attendance at seven.”
“How do you manage?” Alleyn asked Mrs. Carstairs. “Breakfast must be quite a problem.”
“Oh, there’s usually time to boil an egg before nine. This morning, as you see, we had over an hour. At least,” she corrected herself, “You didn’t, did you, dear? Adrian had to make a visit: poor old Mr. Thomas,” she said to Coombe. “Going, I’m afraid.”
“So you were alone, after all. When did you hear of the tragedy, Mrs. Carstairs?”
“Before matins. Half past ten. Several people had seen the — well, the ambulance and the stretcher, you know. And Adrian met Sergeant Pender and — there it was.”
“Is it true?” the Rector asked abruptly. “Was it — deliberate? Pender said — I mean…?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“How very dreadful,” he said. “How appallingly dreadful.”
“I know,” Alleyn agreed. “A woman, it appears, with no enemies. It’s incomprehensible.”
Coombe cleared his throat. The Carstairses glanced at each other quickly and as quickly looked away.
“Unless, I suppose,” Alleyn said, “you count Miss Pride.”
“There, I’m afraid,” the Rector said, and Alleyn wondered if he’d caught an overtone of relief, “there, it was all on Miss Cost’s side, poor soul.”
“You might say,” his wife added, “that Miss Pride had the whip hand.”
“Dulcie!”
“Well, Adrian, you know what I mean.”
“It’s quite beside the point,” said the Rector with authority.
A telephone rang in the house. He excused himself and went indoors.
“There was nothing, I suppose, in her day-to-day life to make people dislike her,” Alleyn said. “She seems, as far as I can make out, to have been a perfectly harmless obsessive.”
Mrs. Carstairs began to pick up her scattered belongings, rather as if she was giving herself time to consider. When she straightened up, with her arms full, she was quite red in the face.
“She wasn’t always perfectly kind,” she said.
“Ah! Which of us is?”
“Yes, I know. You’re quite right. Of course,” she agreed in a hurry.
“Did she make mischief?” he asked lightly.
“She tried. My husband… Naturally, we paid no attention. My husband feels very strongly about that sort of thing. He calls it a cardinal sin. He preaches very strongly against. Always.” Mrs. Carstairs looked squarely at Alleyn. “I’m offending, myself, to tell you this. I can’t think what came over me. You must have a — have a talent for catching people off guard.”
He said wryly: “You make my job sound very unappetizing. Mrs. Carstairs, I won’t bother you much longer. One more question and we’re off. Have you any idea who played those ugly tricks on Miss Pride? If you have, I do hope you will tell me.”
She seemed, he thought, to be relieved. She said at once: “I’ve always considered she was behind them — Miss Cost.”
“Behind them? You thought she encouraged someone else to take the active part?”
“Yes.”
“Wally Trehern?”
“Perhaps.”
“And was that what you were thinking of when you said Miss Cost was not always kind?”
“Oh no!” she ejaculated and stopped short. “Please don’t ask me any more questions, Mr. Alleyn. I shall not answer them, if you do.”
“Very well,” he said. He thanked her and went away, followed, uncomfortably, by Coombe.
They lunched at the village pub. The whole place was alive with trippers. The sun glared down, the air was degraded by transistors and the ground by litter. Groups of sightseers in holiday garments crowded the foreshore, eating, drinking and pointing out the Island to each other. The tide was full. The hotel launch and a number of dinghies plied to and fro, and their occupants stared up at the enclosure. It was obvious that the murder of Miss Cost was now common knowledge.
The enclosure itself was not fully visible from the village, being masked by an arm of Fisherman’s Bay, but two constables could be seen on the upper pathway. Visitors returning from the Island told each other, and anybody that cared to listen, that you couldn’t get anywhere near the spring. “There’s nothing to see,” they said. “The coppers have got it locked up. You wouldn’t know.”
When they had eaten a flaccid lunch they called on the nearest J.P. and picked up a search-warrant for Wally’s cottage. They went on to the station, where Alleyn collected a short piece of the trip wire. It was agreed that he would return to the Boy-and-Lobster; Coombe was to remain at the station, relieving his one spare constable, until the Yard men arrived. He would then telephone Alleyn at the Boy-and-Lobster. Pender would remain on duty at Miss Cost’s shop.
Coombe said: “It’s an unusual business, this. You finding the body, and then this gap before your chaps come in.”
“I hope you’ll still be on tap, but I do realize it’s taking more time than you can spare.”
“Well, you know how it is.” He waited for a moment and then said: “I appreciate your reluctance to form a theory too soon. I mean, it’s what we all know. You can’t. But as I’m pulling out, I can’t help saying it looks a sure thing to me. Here’s this dopey kid as good as letting on he pitched in with the stones. There’s more than a hint that his old man was behind it, and a damn good indication that he set the trip wire. The kid says Miss Pride came back, and there’s every likelihood he mistook Miss Cost for her. I reckon he’d let himself into the enclosure and was up by the boulder. He looked down and saw the umbrella below and let fly at it. I mean — well, it hangs together, doesn’t it?”
“Who do you think planted the figurine in Miss Pride’s sitting-room and sent her the anonymous messages and rang her up?”
“Well, she reckons Miss Cost.”
“So Miss Cost’s death was the end product of the whole series? Laid on, you might say, by herself?”
“In a sense. Yes.”
“Has it struck you at all,” Alleyn asked, “that there’s one feature of the whole story about which nobody seems to show the slightest curiosity?”
“I can’t say it has.”
Alleyn took from his pocket the figurine that he had wrapped in paper and in his handkerchief. He opened it up and, holding it very gingerly, stood it on Coombe’s desk. The single word, Death, gummed to a sheet of paper, was still fixed in position.
“Nobody,” Alleyn said, “as far as I can gather, has ever asked themselves who was the original Green Lady.”
“That piece of paper,” Alleyn said, “is not the kind used for the original messages. It’s the same make as this other piece, which is a bit of the Boy-and-Lobster letter paper. The word Death is not in a type that is used in your local rag. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s from a London sporting paper called the Racing Supplement. The printer’s ink, as you see, is a bluish black, and the type’s distinctive. Was Miss Cost a racing fan?”
“Her?” Coombe said. “Don’t be funny.”
“The Major is. He takes the Racing Supplement.”
“Does he, by gum!”
“Yes. Have you got a dabs-kit handy?”
“Nothing very flash, but, yes: we’ve got the doings.”
Alleyn produced his box of cigars. “He opened this up. There ought to be good impressions inside the lid. Bailey can give it the full works, if necessary, but we’ll take a fly at it, shall we?”