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a stringed instrument in one of the houses.
    Bolitho checked his piece of paper and looked at an iron gate which opened on to a courtyard with a fountain in its centre. They had arrived.
    He saw Jury staring round at the strangeness of everything, and remembered himself in similar circumstances.
    He said quietly, “You come with me.” He raised his voice, “Stockdale, take charge out here. Nobody is to leave until I give the word, understood?”
    Stockdale nodded grimly. He would probably batter any would-be troublemaker senseless.
    A servant led them to a cool room above the courtyard where Dumaresq was drinking wine with an elderly man who had a pointed white beard and skin like finely tooled leather.
    Dumaresq did not stand. “Yes, Mr Bolitho?” If he was startled by their unheralded arrival he hid it very well. “Trouble?”
    Bolitho glanced at the old man but Dumaresq said curtly, “You are with friends here.”
    Bolitho explained what had happened from the moment the clerk had left the ship with his bag.
    Dumaresq said, “Sergeant Barmouth is nobody’s fool. If the bag had been there he would have found it.”
    He turned and said something to the courtly gentleman with the beard, and the latter showed a brief flash of alarm before regaining his original composure.
    Bolitho pricked up his ears. Dumaresq’s host might live in Madeira, but the captain was speaking in Spanish, unless he was much mistaken.
    Dumaresq said, “Return to the ship, Mr Bolitho. My compliments to the first lieutenant and ask him to recall the surgeon and any other shore party immediately. I intend to weigh before nightfall.”
    Bolitho closed his mind to the obvious difficulties, to say nothing of the risk of leaving harbour in the dark. He sensed the sudden urgency, the apprehension which Lockyer’s murder had brought amongst them.
    He nodded to the elderly man and then said to Dumaresq, “A lovely house, sir.”
    The old man smiled and bowed his head.
    Bolitho strode down the stairs with Jury in his shadow, sharing every moment without knowing what was happening.
    Bolitho wondered if the captain had noticed. That his host had understood exactly what he had said about his fine house. So if Dumaresq had spoken to him in Spanish it was so that neither he nor Jury should understand.
    He decided it was one part of the mystery he would hold to himself.
    That night, as promised, Dumaresq took his ship to sea. In light airs, and with all but her topsails and jib brailed up, Destiny steered slowly between other anchored vessels, guided by the ship’s cutter with a lantern close to the water like a firefly to show her the way.
    By dawn, Madeira was just a purple hump on the horizon far astern, and Bolitho was not certain if the mystery still remained there in the alley where Lockyer had drawn his last breath.

3 S PANISH GOLD
    LIEUTENANT Charles Palliser closed the two outer screen doors of Dumaresq’s cabin and said, “All present, sir.”
    In their various attitudes the Destiny ’s lieutenants and senior warrant officers sat and watched Dumaresq expectantly. It was late afternoon, two days out of Madeira. The ship had a feeling of leisurely routine about her, as with a light north-easterly wind laying her on a starboard tack she cruised steadily into the Atlantic.
    Dumaresq glanced up at the skylight as a shadow moved past it. Most likely the master’s mate of the watch.
    â€œShut that, too.”
    Bolitho glanced at his companions, wondering if they were sharing his growing sense of curiosity.
    This meeting had been inevitable, but Dumaresq had taken great pains to ensure it would come well after his ship had cleared the land.
    Dumaresq waited for Palliser to sit down. Then he looked at each man in turn. From the marine officer, past the surgeon, the master and the purser, finally to his three lieutenants.
    He said, “You all know about the death of my