“For Christ’s sake,” said David. “I d-didn’t mean—”
“Unless, of course,” Henry added, “you’ve told me a pack of lies.” He opened the door of the car and got out. “You’d better get back to London now,” he said. “Thank you for an extremely interesting talk.”
David said nothing, but started the engine and slammed the car into gear. It shot forward and disappeared up the twisting lane. Henry watched it go, thoughtfully. Then he walked back into the bar.
He found Rosemary and Alastair just preparing to leave.
“We’re going out to dinner,” said Alastair.
“Good heavens,” said Henry, glancing down at his muddy jeans. “Where?”
“On Mary Jane. Colin and Anne have invited us.”
“Don’t you have to get back to town?” Henry asked Colin.
Colin, who had been gazing at Anne with a darkly adoring intensity, wrenched his attention away, and said, “What? Oh, no, not tonight. Anne’s got tomorrow off as a compensation for working on Saturday, and I’m able to take the odd free day here and there.”
“Well,” said Rosemary, “I absolutely insist that we bring the wine.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” said Anne. “If you can spare...”
“You go back to Mary Jane with Colin and Anne in their dinghy,” said Alastair to Henry and Emmy, “and Rosemary and I will come along via Ariadne and pick up the booze. O.K.?”
Mary Jane was a beautiful boat. Until then, Henry and Emmy had considered Ariadne the peak of perfection, but now they saw the difference between an elderly converted fishing smack and a modern, made-to-measure yacht. For, no getting away from it, Mary Jane was a yacht. Her saloon—considerably larger than Ariadne’s—had a fitted carpet of royal blue whipcord, which matched the tailored settee-covers and was echoed in the handles of the battery of aluminum saucepans hanging up in the galley. While Rosemary washed up in a tin bowl and cooked on an ancient Primus, Anne had the use of a stainless steel sink with a tap which worked, and a handsome stove, fed from a big bottle of liquid gas. A door led into the fo’c’sle, which was equipped with two comfortable bunks, and was unencumbered by the gear and tackle which cluttered the visitors’ sleeping quarters aboard Ariadne. Most impressive of all, there was even a miniature lavatory enclosed in a small compartment opposite the galley.
“All mod. con.,” remarked Emmy, admiringly.
Colin’s sombre face broke into a gratified smile. “Do you like her?” he asked, almost diffidently.
“She’s marvellous.”
“Next season,” said Colin, “I’m going to fit a diesel engine and run electric light off the batteries. And we need a fridge badly.”
“A fridge?” Emmy was almost speechless.
“Oh, yes,” said Anne. “We must have one. Everybody does, nowadays.”
“And do you mean to say,” said Henry to Colin, “that you can handle a big boat like this on your own?”
“Good lord, yes. For a short trip. She’s only eight tons.”
“The menu,” said Anne, “is watercress soup, followed by roast chicken, new potatoes and beans. O.K. for everyone?”
Henry and Emmy murmured reverently that it was most certainly O.K., and Emmy volunteered to help with the potatoes. The two girls disappeared into the galley, and Colin poured Henry a stiff whisky. Henry noticed that, as on Ariadne, the wine cellar was located under one of the bunks.
When the two men were comfortably settled with their drinks, Colin said, “Alastair never told us that you were a detective. Puts us more or less in the same line of country.”
“I’d hardly say that,” said Henry. “My work is done before yours starts. And if you’re acting for the defence, you spend your time trying to undo everything that I’ve done.”
“That’s true.” Colin considered for a moment. “Now that I come to think of it, haven’t I read about you somewhere? Wasn’t there a case in Italy—something to do with skiing?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “That was a messy business. It interrupted my holiday.”
“I wonder,” said Colin thoughtfully, “if you’ll find this holiday similarly interrupted?”
Henry looked at him with interest. Colin’s intelligent face was puckered into what looked like secret amusement.
“It’s rather fun to speculate, don’t you think?” Colin went on. “The only unnatural death that occurred round here recently was poor old Pete Rawnsley. You must have heard all about it. Perfectly straightforward, on the face of it. And yet I wonder. As a matter of fact, I’ve been amusing myself by trying to work up a murder mystery over it.”
“Have you succeeded?” Henry asked.
Colin frowned. “Motive. Plenty of that, when you look a bit. Hamish passionately keen to get a new boat, and unable to lay hands on the money while Pete was alive. Sounds a bit thin as a motive for murder unless you know Hamish. Me—better still. Pete had been running around with Anne—she told you so herself. I don’t pretend I liked him. Unfortunately, when you get to know my fian
cée better, you’ll realize that if I was going to commit murder for that reason, I’d have several deaths on my hands already.” Colin spoke with a bitter lightness. “Still, better put me down on the list. Then there’s Anne herself, of course—a woman scorned. That’s nonsense, too, but I could make a great deal of it in court if I were leading for the prosecution. And of course we mustn’t forget Herbert.”
“Herbert?” Henry was taken aback. “Good heavens, what did Herbert have against the man?”
Colin smiled. “What I meant was...” He stopped. “I’d better not say any more. After all, you are a policeman.
“Don’t tantalize me,” said Henry. “I can’t imagine that any misdemeanour of Herbert’s could possibly excite Scotland Yard’s interest.”
“No,” said Colin. “It wouldn’t be fair. All I’ll say is this. Pete had it in his power to lose Herbert his job. In fact, he had threatened to do just that. I heard him. The day before he...died.”
“Pete sounds rather a vindictive character,” said Henry.
“Not really,” said Colin reasonably. “He was quick-tempered, certainly, and Herbert can be maddening. I don’t think Pete’d ever have done anything about it, in fact.”
“I see,” said Henry. “Any more suspects?”
“That’s all I can think of, off-hand,” said Colin. “Isn’t it enough?”
“Not for a really ingenious detective story,” said Henry, grinning. “What about David?”
Colin shook his head. “No motive and no opportunity,” he said. “David was sailing with Anne that day, and Rosemary and Alastair were together. That lets them all out, I suppose, unless it was a conspiracy.”
“Who did have the opportunity, then?”
“Hamish and I are the obvious suspects,” said Colin promptly. “We were both single-handed. We both saw Pete go aground, and we both anchored just off Steep Hill in the fog.”
“Could you have rowed ashore and found your way back to your boat?” Henry asked.
“I wouldn’t have enjoyed it much,” said Colin, “but if I’d been desperate to kill Pete, I’d certainly have had a go. With the dinghy on the end of a long line. After all,” he added, warming to his theme, “it was a perfect situation for murder, wasn’t it? What with the fog, and—”
Anne suddenly came out of the galley, and it occurred to Henry that she must have overheard the whole conversation. She looked angry and a little frightened.
“I’ve never heard such childish rubbish,” she said. “You know very well that none of us could have rowed ashore. We were all much too far off the bank.”