“I was sure I’d be able to talk him round,” said Hamish. “So sure that I’d already had the designs made without telling him, and work had started on the boat. That morning, I had a letter from the builders saying they must have their advance deposit, or... Well, Pete was off for a week’s racing, and he’d already set sail when the letter arrived. I just had to talk to him.”
“So when you saw him go aground, and the fog came down, you took the opportunity to—”
“Of course,” said Hamish brusquely.
“And what did your uncle say?”
Before Hamish could answer, Anne cried, “Tell him the truth, Hamish. It’s the only way. Tell him the truth.”
“All right,” said Hamish. “I was going to anyhow. Pete refused. We had a quarrel.”
Henry said, “I’m glad you told me that.”
“And so of course,” Hamish went on, with rich sarcasm, “I killed him so that I could inherit. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“It’s a tempting theory, you will agree,” said Henry.
Anne, her green eyes shining with tears, said, “Oh, Henry... Henry, you must believe me... Hamish—”
“I am not,” said Henry, “quite as silly as you think.”
Anne suddenly straightened her back. “What do you mean by that?”
Henry sighed. “You’ve fooled all of us, Miss Anne Petrie,” he said. “Me included. I hope you won’t do it any more. It’s a dangerous game. You run the risk of being disbelieved even when you’re telling the truth.”
Hamish stood up, his face dark with anger. “There’s no need to be offensive to Anne,” he said. “Say what you like to me. I’ve got broad shoulders.” He looked like a young bull, standing there in the cramped little parlour.
“I’m sorry,” said Henry. He suddenly realized that he was very tired, and middle-aged. “Just one more question, Anne? Where did you stow the sleeping bags on Mary Jane?”
“In the forepeak, of course,” said Anne, at once. “What has that got to do with it?”
“Nothing much,” said Henry. “You can both go now. Would you mind asking David to come and have a word with me?”
David Crowther came quickly and nervously into the room, lit a cigarette, and said, “How’s Emmy?”
“All right,” said Henry, “thanks to you. I’ll never be able to tell you how much—”
“It was nothing.” David sat down. “Just t-terribly lucky that I happened...that I was there.”
“It seems the worst sort of ingratitude to start asking you awkward questions just now,” said Henry, with some diffidence, “but I’m afraid I must. For instance—just what were you doing in Sir Simon’s boathouse this afternoon?”
David gave the ghost of a grin. “That’s not an awkward question,” he said. “I’ve been waiting to tell you about it.”
“About what?”
Instead of answering, David put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a small object and laid it on the table in front of Henry. It was a drop earring made in diamonds and emeralds. The two men looked at it in silence for a moment. Finally Henry said, “So you found it.”
“Yes,” said David. “I found it.”
“By accident?”
“Good God, no.”
“Please,” said Henry, “tell me all about it, fro
m the beginning.”
“There’s no beginning,” said David, with a trace of nervous irritation. “Not until yesterday evening. I don’t know what you mean, from the beginning.”
“Very well,” said Henry. “Tell me about it from yesterday evening.”
David took a long pull at his cigarette. “Anne and I,” he said, “went back to Pocahontas after that ghastly party. We had a drink and talked. About...about C-Colin.”
“Of course.”
“I was intrigued. I haven’t got Colin’s brains, and I never will have. J-just good old reliable David. But Anne told me that Colin had been reading Voss, and had made a cryptic remark to you about it when you were all in Walton Backwaters. And of course, we all heard what he said at dinner. So even my f-feeble intelligence began to click. After I’d ferried Anne to Ariadne, I went back and took a look at my own copy of the Venturesome Voyages, and of course it became obvious. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “But I was even slower than you were, if it’s any consolation. Now, to get back to last night. You and Anne talked for a long time on Pocahontas. What else did you talk about, besides Colin?”
David studied the tip of his cigarette. “I d-don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“I’m afraid it is. I may as well tell you at once that it’s perfectly obvious to everybody that you’re in love with Anne.”
David flushed. “That’s my affair,” he said.
“Colin and Anne had just had a big row,” Henry went on relentlessly. “It must have been an ideal moment for you to—to put your point of view.”
David said nothing. “I presume,” Henry added, “that she turned you down yet again. She probably told you that the only two men she’d ever cared about were Pete Rawnsley and Colin Street. Pete was dead. Colin was still alive.”
Slowly, David said, “If you’re implying what I think you are, it’s m-monstrous.”
“Perhaps Anne drew some withering comparisons between Colin’s mental ability and your own, so you determined to beat him at his own game.”
“That’s nonsense. I—”
“Last night,” said Henry, “when you had delivered Anne to Ariadne, did you go in your dinghy to Mary Jane?”
“Of course I didn’t. If I had, I’d have seen that Colin wasn’t aboard, and—”
“Colin was aboard,” said Henry quietly.
“What?” David was obviously stunned by this piece of news. “But Hamish said—”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I mean, we’ve all been talking about it,” said David defensively. “Hamish told me how Colin’s dinghy had capsized on the way back to the boat and... I never meant... I mean...”
“Why,” asked Henry, “didn’t you tell Sir Simon what you had found on Steep Hill Sands?”
There was a long pause. David passed his hand over his forehead. “Can I go back and tell it my own way?”
“Of course.”
“Well...last night, as I told you, I read Voss and came to the same conclusion as poor Colin had done. If you like, I did want to beat him to it. There’s no harm in that, is there? I wanted to prove that...well, it doesn’t m-matter. Anyway, I decided to go out and look for the jewels at low water this morning. I set sail at six—it was low tide at eight—and I ran the boat aground deliberately at about half past seven. I thought that would look less suspicious than rowing to the sandbank. Actually, I don’t think a soul saw me. Anyhow, the sands were dried out already, so I s-started searching.”
“How did you set about it?” Henry asked.
“I could remember roughly where it was that Pete went aground,” said David, “and it seemed likely that the stuff was s-somewhere near there. But it was much too big an area just to start digging in.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Henry.
“I decided,” said David, “that whoever had hidden the jewels must have marked the spot in some way.” He was speaking strongly and confidently now, with only the merest trace of a stutter. “A cross bearing seemed the obvious thing. It would have to be one that could be checked at night, and the only lighted objects in the neighbourhood are the flashing buoys—one off the sands and the other off the point. I reckoned our man would probably take the easiest and simplest method of marking. I got the compass out, and found there was a spot where I got a reading of due north on one buoy and due east on the other. At that point, I found I was almost standing on one of those biggish grey stones that you get washed up onto the sands at low water. I tried to lift it, and I couldn’t. Then I saw that it had a hole bored through the bottom of it, and a small chain attached which ran down into the sand.”