“Certainly,” replied Colin, with some dignity. “I want to think.”
“You’re very welcome,” said Alastair.
“I personally intend to explore the upper reaches of Hamford Water. Coming, Anne?”
“No,” said Anne. “I’m going ashore to pick buttercups. Coming, Henry?”
“I’d love to,” said Henry promptly.
Emmy and Rosemary exchanged the briefest of glances, and Emmy was annoyed to feel a distinct and sickening pang of something very like jealousy. She shook it off angrily. She said quickly, “Have a lovely time. I’m staying with Rosemary and Alastair.”
“Rendezvous here at four o’clock,” said Alastair. He seemed none too pleased with the afternoon’s arrangements. “No later. We’ve got a foul tide all the way back to the Berry and the wind’s falling away light. That gives you just an hour.”
So Colin rowed back to Mary Jane, and Ariadne got smoothly under way again, leaving Henry pulling for the green, reedy shore, with Anne perched like a water sprite on the transom of the dinghy. She had changed out of her wet bathing dress, and was now wearing minuscule shorts of blue denim and a blue and white striped cotton shirt. Her feet were still bare.
They beached the dinghy on the shingle shore, and set off across the dappled green meadow. For some time they walked in silence. Then Anne said, “I wish you didn’t dislike me so much, Henry.”
“Dislike you? Why on earth should you think that?” (“But it’s true,” muttered his conscience. “Why?”)
“You don’t trust me,” Anne went on. “You think I’m wicked... I suppose you think I’m marrying Colin for his money.”
“It hadn’t even occurred to me,” said Henry untruthfully. “It’s no business of mine.”
“But I want to tell you,” said Anne. “I like you so much, Henry.”
“All right,” said Henry. “Go ahead. What do you want to tell me?”
“Let’s sit down,” said Anne. She dropped onto the sweet-smelling grass and began to pull up long, feather-topped blades one by one. Henry sat beside her and waited. At length she said, “I don’t pretend that I’m wildly in love with Colin. Not as I am—as I was—with...with Pete. That was something quite different. I don’t suppose that’ll ever happen to me again.”
“My dear child,” said Henry, “you’re twenty-three and you’re one of the most attractive creatures I’ve ever met. It’ll happen again.”
Anne turned to him gravely. “Do you really mean that?” she said.
“Of course I do. You’ve got your whole life ahead—”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Anne. “I mean—do you really think I’m attractive?”
“You must know you are,” said Henry uncomfortably. He was aware of a growing mixture of embarrassment, irritation and excitement.
“You see,” said Anne slowly, “you remind me so much of Pete.”
“I’m interested in Pete.” Thankfully, Henry grasped his opportunity of changing the subject. “You must have heard by now that I’m not at all satisfied that his death was—accidental.”
“Oh, but it was.” Anne appeared to be stating an incontrovertible fact.
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’m going to tell you a great secret, Henry. I went ashore to Steep Hill Sands in the fog that day.”
“I know you did,” said Henry.
“Oh,” said Anne flatly. “So much for my big sensation. I suppose you’ve been talking to David. You don’t waste much time, do you? What did he tell you?”
“Not much,” said Henry. “I’d like to hear your version.”
“I simply had to talk to him, you see,” said Anne. There was no mistaking the simple sincerity in her voice. “I had to. I suppose I was a bit out of my mind just then. I made David row me ashore, and wait for me in the dinghy while I looked for Pete. I was on the end of a rope so as not to get lost.”
She stopped, and looked sideways out of her green eyes at Henry, who was doing his best to preserve the traditional poker face of Scotland Yard.
Anne rolled over onto her face, as she did so touching Henry’s leg with her own slim, brown one. “I suppose,” she went on, “that David told you it was he who went ashore and left me in the dinghy. He has very old-fashioned ideas about chivalry.”
Henry maintained a stubborn silence.
“Oh, very well,” said Anne lightly. “Don’t tell me. It makes no odds. I’m telling you the truth. It was I who went ashore, and I found Pete. That is, I found Blue Gull. Pete was below in the cabin. I tapped on the hull and called to him. He was very angry.”
“He spoke to you?”
“Oh, yes. He came up into the cockpit. He was furious and he looked terrible. He told me I was a bloody fool and that I was to go back to Pocahontas at once. I said I must talk to him, and he said, ‘I can’t talk to anyone. I feel lousy. I’ve just cracked myself over the head with the boom.’ Then I saw that he had a big bruise on the left side of his head.”
Henry took a deep breath. “He said that? You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Where was the boom? In the gallows or swinging free?”
For a moment, Anne hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said. “Swinging free, I think. I didn’t really notice.”
“What happened then?”
“I tried again to make him listen to me, and he got really livid. He said, ‘Are you going back or do I have to take you?’—and he climbed out of the boat and on to the sand. I was scared then. I knew if he left Blue Gull he’d never find his way back. So I said, ‘O.K., I’m going.’ And then I went back. He was still standing there on the sand behind Blue Gull when I left him. He...he must have collapsed after I’d gone. A sort of delayed concussion, I suppose.” Anne was speaking very quietly. “So you see, Henry, it was an accident. But if anybody killed him, I did. Because if it hadn’t been for me, he’d never have got out of the boat. You can imagine how many kinds of hell I’ve been through since.”
There was a long silence. “It’s a pity you didn’t tell the coroner all this at the inquest,” said Henry. “It certainly clears matters up.”
“I didn’t know anything about it. I went straight back to London with David, and the next day I went on holiday to the south of France. I didn’t even know that Pete was dead until Colin wrote and told me. When I got home, it was all over. And anyway, they came to the right verdict, so what did it matter?”
Henry said, “You didn’t see or hear anybody else on Steep Hill Sands?”
“No. Certainly not. Only Pete.”
“Have you any idea what time you went ashore?”
“About ten, I should think. I don’t know.”
“And how long did you stay there?”
“Oh, hardly any time. Not more than ten minutes.”
“You left Pete,” Henry went on, “and followed the rope back to the dinghy. What did you tell David?”
Again there was a trace of hesitation before Anne spoke. Then she said, “I felt a bit of a fool and very angry by then. It was so humiliating that he wouldn’t even speak to me. I told David I hadn’t been able to find him.”
“One more thing,” said Henry. “How far away was Blue Gull from the dinghy? I mean, do you think David could have overheard your conversation with Pete?”
Anne considered. Evidently the idea was new to her. “It’s terribly hard to say,” she said, at length. “Fog does such odd things to sound. I don’t know how far away we were. I suppose he might have heard.”
“It’s a very strange story.”
Henry looked at Anne, and saw that her green eyes were full of tears. “You don’t believe me,” she said miserably. “I knew you wouldn’t.” She turned away, young and hurt and defenceless.
Without thinking, Henry laid his hand on hers. “I never said I didn’t believe you, Anne. I only...”