long line of fishermen, ensconced in George’s place beside Simon. Only when the little convoy was well away did Hewitt climb ponderously into his Morris.
“We shan’t be going far out of our way. Just along the quay to where his girl lives. I thought a detached witness might come in handy, if you don’t mind being used. I’ve known Rose since she was first at school. Being this close to a place has its drawbacks, as well as its advantages.”
“I know,” said George, thinking of his own home village of Comerford, where every face was known to him. “Trethuan’s daughter?”
“Yes, only relative, as far as I know. She’s been married a year to a decent young fellow, Jim Pollard. Fisherman, of course, they all are. Lives about three minutes’ walk from where Trethuan lived.”
“Alone, I take it? Now that the girl’s married?”
“Yes, alone. Did for himself most of the time, and Rose did the real cleaning for him. Thought I’d better see her and tell her myself.”
It should have been a daunting prospect, but though he maintained his aspect of professional and permanent discouragement, Hewitt did not, in fact, appear at all daunted. And wasn’t there, perhaps, something in that gaunt, powerful, unprepossessing corpse in Treverra’s tomb that ruled out any harrowing possibilities of family lamentation? There are people it’s almost impossible to love, however the blood may struggle to do its duty.
They drove over the neck of the Dragon, the coastal road rising to its highest point near to the hotel. A fair portion of the juvenile population of Maymouth was still deployed along the cliff paths looking towards Pentarno; no doubt armed with fruit and sandwiches, and with an organised errand-service for ice-cream. Then the road dipped again, and the slate-grey cottages of the upper town closed in upon it, backgrounds for their small, crowded flower-gardens, that blazed with every possible colour. From the steep High Street they could see the harbour below them, locked between the huge bulk of the Dragon’s Head and the crook of the mole, all the invisible streets doddering down towards it, seen only as thread-like channels between the slate roofs. Uniformly grey from this aerial view, the houses flowered into apple-blossom pinks and forget-me-not blues as the car descended, every shade of peach and primrose and pale green, foaming with window-boxes full of geraniums.
In the square, four-sided about an ugly Victorian fountain and embattled with solid shop-fronts, they saw the Porsche and the Land-Rover parked. But Hewitt drove on imperturbably, down towards the harbour, and the clusters of colour-washed houses that clung like barnacles to the rocks along the sea-front.
A row of leaning cottages, six in all, propped their backs against the outlying rocks of the Dragon, and stared out to sea over beached boats and a flurry of gulls. Each was painted its own individual shade, two different pinks, a daffodil yellow, one blue, one green, and one dazzlingly white. Hewitt parked the car on the cobbled shoulder of the quay, and led the way to the second pink house. A little horse-shoe knocker rapped on the jet-black door. The whole row looked like toys in a child’s box.
Rose Pollard opened the door. At first glance Rose looked like a round, soft, primrose-haired doll to go with the toy house, but this illusion lasted only for the fraction of a second it took her large, inquiring eyes to recognise Hewitt. The round face, as delicately- coloured as a nursery-rhyme dairy-maid’s, nevertheless had some form and character when it sharpened into awareness; and there was nothing doll-like about the small, bright flares of fear that sprang up in her eyes. Hewitt was known to everyone, as surely as he knew everyone. But why should she be frightened at the very sight of him? Or, wondered George ruefully, was it occupational naivety on his part even to ask such a question?
She mastered her face, and rather nervously invited them in. The front door gave directly into the tiny living- room, which was as neat and frilly as the exterior of the house suggested it would be. The mind behind that pretty, plaintive face was probably itself furnished in the same innocent fashion; not much style, and no sophistication, but shining with cleanness and prettied up with pouffes, scatter cushions and net curtains. Not a very clever girl, but meant to be gay and bright; and certainly not meant to habit with things or people or thoughts that could frighten her.
“Sorry to butt in on you at dinner, Jim,” said Hewitt placidly, looking over her shoulder at the young man who rose from the table as they entered. “Just a few things I ought to ask you and Rose, if you’ve got a minute or two to give me.”
“That’s all right,” said Jim Pollard, uncoiling his tall young person awkwardly. “We’re finished, Mr. Hewitt. I was late coming in, or we’d have been all cleared away. Is there something the matter?”
He was a brown, freckled boy in a loose sweater and faded dungarees, with a face that must normally have been pleasant, good-natured and candid, but at this moment was clouded with the slight blankness and uncertainty consequent upon being visited by the police. It happens to the most law-abiding, it need mean nothing; but the barrier is instantly there, and the trouble is that there’s never any telling what’s behind it.
“Well, there’s just this matter of Mr. Trethuan’s movements,” said Hewitt with nicely calculated vagueness. “Have you seen him to-day?”
Rose said: “No!” She moved nearer to her husband, and the small, wary lights in her eyes burned paler and taller. The boy said: “No,” too, but in a mystified, patient tone, ready to wait for enlightenment. His steady frown never changed.
“Or yesterday? Well, when did you last see him, Mrs. Pollard?”
“Wednesday morning,” she said, “when I went in to clean. I usually go in Wednesdays and Saturdays and give the house a going-over. He was finishing his breakfast when I went. I only saw him for a few minutes, then he went off to work.”
“And you haven’t seen him since? You don’t know whether he came home that night?”
“Why should she?” said Jim Pollard evenly. “He’s capable, he can look after himself. Often we don’t see him for days on end.”
“Even though he only lives just round the corner in Fore Street?”
“Maybe he does, but it is round the corner, we don’t run into one another going in and out of the back doors. Thank God!” said Jim with deliberation, eyeing Hewitt darkly from under his corrugated brow.
“Now, Jim!” said Rose in a faint murmur of protest.
“Never mind: Now, Jim! Mr. Hewitt knows as well as you do there’s no love lost between your old man and me. Less I see of him, the better. I might as well say so.”
“So you might, lad,” agreed Hewitt placatingly. “Then I take it you don’t know anything about him since your
