“I hope to God Colin’s all right,” said Rosemary anxiously, as Alastair pulled away from the hard.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said her husband crossly, “leave him alone. He can look after himself... That was a bloody awful evening. I’m sorry you people were let in for it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Emmy, gallantly, but without a great deal of conviction. “It had its moments.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with all of us,” said Rosemary. “We never used to be like this. You must think we’re a very odd lot.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Emmy. But she shivered slightly.
When they reached the boat, Rosemary said to Henry and Emmy, “There’s no need for you two to sit up for Anne. I’m going to turn in myself. If and when she comes, she’s only got to put her sleeping bag on the floor between our bunks and climb into it. She’s done it often enough before.”
“I’ll wait up for her,” said Alastair.
“Please yourself,” said Rosemary, with the faintest edge on her voice. “She probably won’t come at all. She’ll make it up with Colin and stay on Mary Jane.”
So Henry and Emmy climbed into the fo’c’sle, while Rosemary got into her bunk and instantly fell asleep. Alastair sat in the cockpit, smoking.
As they lay side by side in the darkness, Emmy said to Henry, “You’ve been very quiet all the evening, darling. What’s up?”
“My nose,” said Henry sombrely.
This was an expression with which all Henry’s colleagues were familiar. By it, he meant that strange mixture of intuition and deduction which had led him to the solution of many difficult cases. Although he always maintained that he was the most unimaginative of men, Henry undoubtedly possessed a flair. Tiny inconsistencies of fact and more important, of character, mounted up as an investigation proceeded until, taken together, they roused this constantly strengthening certainty of the direction in which truth lay hidden, which Henry had dubbed his “nose.” But this was not an investigation: ever since the previous weekend Henry had known—not the whole truth, but the direction in which to look. No amount of closing his eyes to facts, no amount of drowning his instinct in the pure pleasure of sailing, had been able to quieten the nagging insistence of the truth: and the events of the evening had clinched the matter. He knew now that, promises or no promises, he could not let it drop.
After a pause, Emmy whispered, “Oh dear. Is it that bad?”
“It’s all wrong,” said Henry. “I don’t pretend to know everything that’s going on, and I don’t know what Colin’s up to: but I do know that there’s something very wrong, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s going to blow up soon.”
“Not tonight, I hope,” said Emmy sleepily.
“I hope not,” said Henry.
Some unidentifiable time later, they were both dragged back to the brink of consciousness by the bumping of a dinghy alongside. David’s voice called “Goodnight,” and a peace descended on the river again, hardly broken by the murmuring voices of Anne and Alastair.
Henry drifted back into sleep. In a strangely vivid dream, he found himself in Priscilla, roaring downstream with Colin at the wheel.
“It’ll be rather fun,” Colin was shouting, and, in his dream, Henry knew that Colin was mad.
“Don’t do it!” he heard himself repeating urgently, although he had no idea of what Colin was proposing to do.
“Hole for Mayor!” replied Colin, spinning the wheel. “Who painted the notices new?”
Another boat loomed up ahead of them. It became desperately important that Henry should read the name of it, but Colin would not keep the wheel still. All that Henry could see was that Anne was at the helm of the other boat, and that Priscilla was going to ram her. Anne waved gaily, and shouted, “Darling Henry!”
“Stop the motor!” Henry yelled, “There’s going to be a collision!”
But the figure at the wheel had unaccountably turned into Hamish, who merely remarked, “A man has a right to do what he likes with his own money.”
For some reason, Sir Simon suddenly appeared in the cockpit beside Henry. “Unfortunately,” he said pompously, “I was in Ipswich at the time.”
Henry threw himself at Hamish, and tried to wrench the wheel from his hands, but Priscilla kept relentlessly on course. As the two boats collided, there was a deafening crash. And another...and another... Henry opened his eyes, and identified the sound. It was Rosemary, banging a mug of tea on the floor boards beside his face.
“Eight o’clock,” she said. “Time to get up.”
It was a glorious morning, sunny and windless. They breakfasted in the cockpit. Ahead of Ariadne, a vacant mooring buoy bobbed in the water.
“Good lord,” said Alastair. “David’s out already.” He looked sharply at Anne, but she turned her head away and gazed astern to where, some way downriver, Mary Jane rode quietly at her mooring.
Suddenly Anne said, “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” asked Alastair lazily.
Anne stood up and looked upriver. “It’s a stray dinghy,” she said. “Capsized.”
They all stood up to look. Sure enough, a tiny shell of a boat was drifting slowly toward them on the tide, upside down.
“It looks—” Anne began, and then stopped.
Alastair dived down into the cabin, and came up with a pair of binoculars. He focus
ed them on the little boat for a moment, and then said, “I’m going to have a look.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Anne.
“No,” said Alastair, with unexpected firmness. “Finish your breakfast.”
He climbed into Ariadne’s dinghy, and they all watched as he pulled strongly upriver. Soon he had the dinghy in tow, and it was not many minutes before he was once again alongside Ariadne. His face was very grave and troubled.
“Is it...?” said Anne, quietly.
“Yes,” said Alastair. “It’s Mary Jane’s dinghy.”
“Oh God,” said Anne. “I thought it was.”
“I’m going down to see if Colin’s all right,” said Alastair.
“May I come with you?” Henry asked.
“Of course.”
Neither of them questioned the fact that Anne, too, got into the dinghy. Still towing the deadweight of the capsized boat behind them, they rowed downriver to Mary Jane, and pulled alongside.
“Colin!” shouted Alastair.
There was no reply. “Colin, wake up!” Anne cried, a little desperately. There was no answer.
They all clambered on board. The hatchway leading to the cabin was swinging open. Mary Jane was in apple-pie order. Everything was neatly stowed, and the bunks made up in their daytime covers. There was nobody aboard.
In fact, it was Herbert Hole in his old grey launch who, two hours later, found Colin floating face downwards in the mud at the edge of the river, slightly upstream from Ariadne. He was quite dead, and there was no doubt at all that the cause of death was drowning.
The rest of the morning was spent in a nightmare of formalities. There would, of course, have to be an inquest. Alastair drove Henry into Ipswich, where the latter spent an hour talking to Inspector Proudie: Rosemary gallantly undertook to telephone Colin’s parents and break the news to them. Anne, who had maintained a dry-eyed calm during the anxious hours of searching, collapsed in a dead faint when Colin’s body was discovered. Hamish carried her up to his cottage, telephoned the doctor, and opened a bottle of whisky. In The Berry Bush, Herbert recounted the grim story of his find with much relish.
At midday, Henry and Alastair arrived back from Ipswich, bringing Inspector Proudie with them. Alastair parked the car outside The Berry Bush and walked across to Hamish’s whitewashed cottage, which stood at the water’s edge some hundred yards upriver. He came back with the news that Hamish was perfectly agreeable to lending his drawing room to Henry and Proudie for their interviews.