Searle has told him.'
'Why Colonel Julyan, why?' I said.
'He's the magistrate for Kerrith.
He has to be present.'
'What did he say?'
'He asked me if I had any idea whose body it could be.'
'What did you say?'
'I said I did not know.
I said we believed Rebecca to be alone.
I said I did not know of any friend.'
'Did he say anything after that?'
'Yes.'
'What did he say?'
'He asked me if I thought it possible that I made a mistake when I went up to Edgecoombe?'
'He said that?
He said that already?'
'Yes.'
'And you?'
'I said it might be possible.
I did not know.'
'He'll be with you then tomorrow when you look at the boat?
He, and Captain Searle, and a doctor.'
'Inspector Welch too.'
'Inspector Welch?'
'Yes.'
'Why?
Why Inspector Welch?'
'It's the custom, when a body has been found.'
I did not say anything.
We stared at one another.
I felt the little pain come again at the pit of my stomach.
'They may not be able to raise the boat,' I said.
'No,' he said.
'They couldn't do anything then about the body, could they?' I said.
'I don't know,' he said.
He glanced out of the window.
The sky was white and overcast as it had been when I came away from the cliffs.
There was no wind though.
It was still and quiet.
'I thought it might blow from the south-west about an hour ago but the wind has died away again,' he said.
'Yes,' I said. 'It will be a flat calm tomorrow for the diver,' he said.
The telephone began ringing again from the little room.
There was something sickening about the shrill urgent summons of the bell.
Maxim and I looked at one another.
Then he went into the room to answer it, shutting the door behind him as he had done before.
The queer nagging pain had not left me yet.
It returned again in greater force with the ringing of the bell.
The feel of it took me back across the years to my childhood.
This was the pain I had known when I was very small and the maroons had sounded in the streets of London, and I had sat, shivering, not understanding, under a little cupboard beneath the stairs.
It was the same feeling, the same pain.