“I wasn’t,” said Colin. “I was only about thirty yards from the bank at low water, and I’ve got a light nylon line sixty yards long. The one I use for—”
“Oh, shut up,” said Anne. “I don’t think it’s funny. In fact, I think it’s beastly, and in very bad taste. I wonder where Rosemary and Alastair have got to?”
Like a stage effect that comes promptly on its cue, there was a bumping sound as a dinghy drew up alongside. Rosemary and Alastair climbed aboard, Emmy came out of the galley, and the conversation became general.
After an excellent dinner, the crew of Ariadne took to the water again, having arranged a rendezvous with Mary Jane for the following day. As they settled themselves into their green sleeping bags, Emmy said to Henry, “That was a curious conversation yon had with Colin.”
“I don’t like it,” said Henry. “I don’t like it one little bit.”
“Oh, dear,” said Emmy. “You mean it’s getting serious.”
“Too damn serious,” said Henry. “And the worst of it is that I’m not the only person who thinks so.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Henry, “that someone has been expecting me. Or at least has considered the possibility of someone like me turning up. And, if I’m not mistaken, a pre-arranged plan of action is coming into operation.”
Emmy shivered. “You don’t mean...?”
“I don’t know exactly what I mean,” said Henry. “It’s just something I feel, supported by a few odd facts. Oh, God, why do these things always have to happen to me? I don’t want trouble.”
“You never do,” said Emmy, “but you always seem to walk into it.” She smiled in the darkness. “Can’t you see, darling, that you go out of your way to look for it?”
“I don’t. I’m a quiet-living man.”
“I seem,” said Emmy, “to have heard that somewhere before.”
She leant over and kissed him, and then snuggled down into her sleeping bag. Lying in the dark, listening to the soft lapping of the water against Ariadne’s hull, Henry reflected bitterly on the policeman’s lot, decided that he would not be able to sleep, and almost at once drifted into a wave-rocked slumber.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Ariadne and Mary Jane set sail on an ebbing tide, headed for Walton Backwaters.
“It’s a stupid place to go today,” Rosemary remarked at breakfast. “The tides are all wrong. We’ll be against the ebb going down and against the flood coming home. What’s the matter with going to the Deben?”
“Anne’s set her heart on Walton,” said Alastair.
“She would have,” said Rosemary, with more than a touch of asperity.
The sun shone, fitfully, through a thin tracery of very white clouds, and a light easterly breeze ruffled the blue-gray surface of the river. With the wind abeam, both boats skimmed merrily downstream, with Mary Jane drawing inexorably ahead, until her sail was only a white speck in the distance.
“I just can’t compete,” said Alastair. “She’s bigger and faster than we are, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Perhaps she’ll go aground,” said Emmy, with amiable malice.
“Not a hope. Not with a beam wind and Colin at the helm. He knows what he’s doing.”
By the time they reached the river mouth, the clouds had been swept neatly away onto the horizon. Henry, pulling off his heavy white sweater in the warm sunshine, was not surprised to see Priscilla’s bright, varnished hull throwing up a creamy arrow of spray as she roared out towards them from the Berry Hall boathouse.
“Sir Simon’s out,” he remarked. “Don’t blame him. Gorgeous day.”
“He’s got somebody with him,” said Rosemary. “Riddle, probably. They often go fishing together.”
“Can’t see from here.” Alastair screwed up his eyes into the sun. “Might be anybody.”
“We’ll see in a moment, when they get closer,” said Rosemary.
At that moment, however, Priscilla quite suddenly turned to starboard in a tight arc, and headed noisily upriver.
“Unsociable types,” said Alastair. Henry gazed thoughtfully after Priscilla’s retreating stern. Two blue-jerseyed back views were visible in the cockpit, but they were too far away for identification.
Ahead of Ariadne, the North Sea stretched dazzlingly to the horizon, the foreground dotted with the dark shapes of the buoys that marked the entrance to the River Berry. In the distance, a low-slung, black oil tanker ploughed solemnly down the coast towards the Thames Estuary, while to starboard the Harwich-Hook steamer made her way out of harbour. The salty breeze was fresh and invigorating. Emmy sat in the cockpit, poring over a chart, and deriving a ridiculous amount of pleasure from identifying the various buoys as they slipped astern in measured, silent procession. At the helm, Alastair puffed at his pipe and kept a wary eye on the sails. Nobody spoke. After half an hour, Alastair said to Henry, “I do hope you’re not bored.”
“Bored? Good heavens, no.”
“Good. Some people get bored in fine weather.”
Emmy looked up from the chart. “Then they must be mad,” she said. “Is that Harwich down there on the right?”
“No,” said Alastair. “What you can see on the starboard beam—which is I presume what you mean by ‘down there on the right’—is Felixstowe. Harwich is on the opposite side of the river mouth. We’ll see it soon when we turn down the coast.”
A mile out to sea, Ariadne rounded the last of the cylindrical red buoys, and Alastair freed the sheets and put the helm to port. The big white mainsail, now nearly at right angles to the boom, filled with the following wind, masking the jib, which flapped idly on the forestay. Once again, Henry and Emmy noticed the strange effect of turning down-wind. The boat, riding on an even keel, seemed becalmed: only the rapid retreat of the red buoy astern showed that she was, in fact, making progress.
“I wish to God we had a spinnaker,” said Alastair. “We’ve got another two and a half hours of ebb to plug.”
“Told you so,” said Rosemary, sleepily.
“I don’t care how long we take to get there,” said Emmy. “This is my idea of heaven.” She leant back luxuriously and closed her eyes. Silence reigned once more.
Slowly, Ariadne forged her way down the coast. The estuary of the River Orwell opened up to starboard, marked by the thin steeple of Harwich church and the distant, angular shapes of the cranes and derricks on Parkstone Quay. At half past twelve, Rosemary roused herself and went below with Emmy to open the bar, while Alastair scanned the water ahead with more than usual concentration.
From Dovercourt, the coastline swings southward in an arc which terminates in the Naze. As far as Henry could see, Ariadne was now sailing straight into the centre of this bay, and could only end up on the beach. He said as much.
Alastair smiled. “Don’t worry. The entrance is there, all right, but it’s almost impossible to see it until you’re right on top of it. What I’m looking for now is a small black buoy that marks the centre of the channel.”
Rosemary and Emmy had just distributed mugs of beer all round when the black buoy bobbed into sight, ahead and to starboard. It was followed by a red buoy, inscribed “Pye Hill,” which lay stranded on a bank of sand to port. From then on, the channel was clearly marked, and Henry could see that a wide-mouthed inlet was opening up ahead of them. In the centre of it were two more buoys, red and black respectively, apparently only a few feet from each other.
“What are those two doing so close together?” he asked.
“That’s the entrance,” said Alastair. “We go between them.”
Emmy surveyed the wide expanse of water a
nd grimaced. “You mean,” she said, “that all that lovely water—”