'They turned out quite well, I think, considering the lighting conditions. Cloud cover is always a problem,' Anne Woods comments.

Miss Beaux, or Bell or whatever her name may be, appears in five of the photographs, all hanging against a worn corkboard: a left profile as she emerges from the crowd on the right is followed by a view mostly from behind, with just a sliver of her face showing, as she begins to pursue the convoy.

This is followed by a really fantastic snap, Sam thinks, showing the woman, seemingly having realised that she's drawn the attention of a photographer, looking over her left shoulder, revealing most of her face.

Then comes a picture of her offering the flower she holds to Corporal Farnetti, showing her right profile, and she can be glimpsed from the rear in a final photograph as she runs off amidst the crowd on the left-hand side. The Wren who'd wanted to speak with Sam afterward is visible as well.

'Telephoto lens?' Foyle asks, indicating the last two pictures.

'Yes – I'll so miss that camera!' Sam's friend exclaims. 'My assistant cropped them a bit, as well.'

'Sam, is that the woman whom you and, um, the others assisted that day in September?'

'It is, sir. I'm quite sure of that after seeing these. And Glenda was right – she's put on a few pounds. It makes her look younger. The first time I saw her, I remember thinking that she might be thirty. Now I'd say that she must be in her middle twenties.'

'Who -' Anne begins to ask, but Sam cuts her off with a quick glance and a shake of the head.

'I don't suppose that it would be feasible for you to provide us with prints of these photographs?' Foyle asks.

Peter Greatorex, the editor of the Chronicle, has a walrus moustache and a faintly harassed air. The latter becomes more noticeable when he hears Foyle's request.

'This newspaper, like the rest of the country, is struggling with a shortage of all varieties of paper, Mr Foyle – including photographic paper.'

'Well, yes – understood,' Foyle concedes. They have gone into the editor's office to discuss the matter, leaving Sam and Anne in the production room.

'I do hope that Mr Foyle doesn't ask your editor to hold off printing these pictures,' she goes on, turning back to the photographs. 'It would really be a pity – they're awfully good.'

'Thank you! Sam, who is that girl?'

'I'm so sorry, Anne, but it's a police matter – I really can't talk about it, I'm afraid.'

'What's her name?'

'Not sure, actually,' Sam admits after a tiny silence.

'Is she suspected of having committed a crime, or did she witness one?' Anne presses further. Suddenly her eyes widen and her voice contracts to a whisper. 'Do the police think that she's a spy?'

'I... I don't know what the police think,' Sam replies, startled.

'Would it be possible, then, for me to borrow the existing prints for, um, a short period?' Foyle asks. 'They would be given excellent care, and I ought to be able to give them back to you in no more than twenty-four hours.'

'We go to press at noon on Fridays, and there's the matter of layout to be dealt with – I'd have to have them back by ten o'clock,' Greatorex insists. 'But yes, in the interests of law and order, Mr Foyle, I can do that for you.'

'Thank you.'

'I was afraid you were going to tell me that those pictures mustn't be printed,' the editor continues.

'Weelll, at this point I haven't been able to form an opinion on that subject,' Foyle tells him. 'I'll have more of a basis for doing that, I hope, after I've been able to show them to a few people.'

Carrying the photographs in the envelope that Mrs Woods' assistant let him take, Foyle approaches Mr Saxby's house without much hope of learning anything new. The place is darkened and still, the curtains tightly drawn in the front windows of both the ground and first floors.

Two rings of the doorbell, more than a minute apart, bring no answer. Foyle bends down and peers through the letter slot, but he can see nothing: the lights are switched off. Mr Saxby is clearly not at home.

Or dead. It's entirely possible that his body has been lying in the house since sometime after Milner and Sam made their return visit on Tuesday afternoon.

Foyle steps toward the kerb, looking at the windows of the surrounding houses. It is just long enough before the blackout that people will be starting to light their front rooms – if they're at home. And indeed, it's too early for most people to have returned from their jobs, war work or otherwise.

A gap in the wall of houses catches Foyle's eye. He walks towards the foot of the street.

He recalls John Kieffer telling him about the city, apparently rather far from his home, where he'd studied engineering. The streets were set out on a strict Cartesian grid with houses built on the longer edges of each the rectangles that the system created. Running down the center of each of these units – 'blocks,' John had called them – was an alley broad enough to allow a fire engine to come through. It was a feature intended to promote safety and sanitation – householders brought their refuse to the alleys to be collected – but the alleys, he'd explained, had developed into gathering places for the people in the houses, as useful to the community as the streets themselves.

Something like that would be very useful now, Foyle thinks. And of all things, the gap is the entrance to a narrow alley – too narrow to be called a twitten, and with no cottages opening onto it – between the back gardens of the modest houses in Plynlimmon Road and the considerably larger ones in St Mary's Terrace. Venturing in, though, he sees that it gives access only to the latter; Plynlimmon Road is at a higher elevation, and to reach its back gardens from here would require scaling a nine-foot wall. Possibly a task Sam might enjoy, if I asked for a volunteer, he thinks with some amusement, but not something that's going to be done today.

Foyle returns the way he came. He'd seen a pub where the two streets diverge; they might know something in there. But a notice is tacked to the door:

We regret to announce that
THE COMPASS PUBLIC HOUSE
will be closed until farther notice
owing to the death of the landlord
ARTHUR GEORGE MALLINSON
(3 January 1888 – 25 September 1942)
of injuries sustained during enemy action
on 24 September

Back in Plynlimmon Road, Foyle walks again in the direction of number 14, nodding in response to a curious glance from Sam inside the car. Alpine Road comes to a dead end directly opposite the house; and on the corner there is a house with a light on inside and a window that looks directly into Plynlimmon Road.

'Yes? Can I help you?' The woman who answers the door is undoubtedly well past sixty, but not in the least stooped, with a sharp-eyed air.

'Good afternoon. My name is Foyle – I'm a policeman. I'm very sorry to have to disturb you.'

'A policeman, is it? Well, I suppose you'd better come through.'

In the sitting room she introduces her husband, a man either older than she or with whom time has caught up more quickly. Seated in an armchair, he struggles to his feet with the aid of a cane as Foyle enters the room.

Their name is Grove; they live here by themselves. Their daughters-in-law and grandchildren have been evacuated to Wales. Both of their sons are in the R.A.F.

'So's mine,' Foyle tells them, having accepted a seat on what Rosalind would have called a slipper chair and declined an offer of tea. 'And you, um, chose not to be evacuated?'

'Of course!' Mr Grove thunders. 'Lived here all our lives. If Hastings falls, we'll fall with it!'

'What brings you here today, Mr Foyle?' Mrs Grove asks.

'Well. You may already be aware of this, but at some point on Tuesday morning there was a burglary at 14 Plynlimmon Road.'

'A burglary? No, I most certainly did not know that,' Mrs Grove replies. 'Did you, Harold?'

'Certainly not. And in wartime! Shocking,' her husband adds. 'Walter Saxby's house, isn't that?'

'Yes,' Foyle answers. 'Mr Saxby discovered the incident when he returned to the house at about a quarter past twelve that day.'

'Why, yes, I recall seeing him going into his house a bit before lunch on Tuesday!' Mr Grove exclaims. 'What was taken?'

'I'm afraid I can't discuss that – just as a matter of routine, you understand. The problem is, the police haven't had any contact with Mr Saxby since later that afternoon. I've been trying to reach him by telephone since yesterday morning, but no one answers. I've just tried the doorbell with no success, and the curtains are drawn shut. I was wondering whether either of you has seen him during the past 48 hours or so.'

'Dear me,' says Mrs Grove. 'No, I really can't say that I have. Have you, Harold?'

'No, definitely not,' Mr Grove agrees.

Foyle pulls a card from his coat pocket and hands it to Mrs Grove.

'If either of you does see him, of if you hear anything about him, would you let me know, please? Thank you,' he goes on as Mrs Grove nods assent. 'Mr Grove, you didn't happen to notice from which direction Mr Saxby approached the house on Tuesday, did you?'

'Why, from the North,' Mr Grove says.

'There's one other matter. I've borrowed these and they need to be handled with some care,' Foyle cautions, removing the photographs from their envelope. 'There's a young woman who appears in each of these pictures.'

'She's not wearing a hat,' Mrs Grove observes in a disapproving voice.

'I've seen this girl,' Mr Grove says. 'She used to be a regular visitor at, well, in fact, at Saxby's place.'

'"Used to be",' Foyle notes. 'When was this, please, Mr Grove?'

'During the summer, I suppose – perhaps as far back as late spring. I don't get about much any longer, with this leg,' Mr Grove explains – perhaps more for his wife's benefit than for mine, Foyle thinks – 'and the wireless does grow tiresome after a point, so I pass rather a good deal of time looking out of the window. At any rate, this girl used to call over there – not what you'd call frequently, but often enough. Saxby would show her in and out. I couldn't tell you how long her visits might have been, though. He's some sort of tutor. Maths, that's it. Struck me that she looked a bit long in the tooth for that sort of thing.'

'I see,' Foyle says. 'When was the last time you noticed her?'

'Oh, late in August – not much before the end of the month, I'd say,' Mr Grove replies. 'Looks as though she's put on a pound or two since then. Suits her.'

'I've seen this young woman as well, Mr Foyle,' Mrs Grove puts in, 'here in Alpine Road. I was going to the shops. She was approaching from the opposite direction – from Collier Road, walking towards Plynlimmon Road.'

'When was this?' Foyle asks.

'Late in the summer, possibly in August. No, I beg your pardon – it was the first of September. It has to have been, because in fact I was not going to the shops – I was going to the bank. I always go to the bank on the first unless it's a Sunday. As well, if I'd been going to the shops I'd have been carrying my market basket, which I wasn't. She was carrying an attaché case, however. A woman carrying such an item – there's something that one never saw before this war began. And she wasn't wearing a hat then, either.'

'The first of September,' Foyle notes. 'And you're fairly certain of that, Mrs Grove?'

'As certain as I can be.'

'Roughly what time of day was this?'

'Oh, rather early – between eight-thirty and nine o'clock, I'd say.'

When Foyle returns to the car he finds it empty. Looking up, he sees that Sam has gone over the road and is inspecting – for lack of a better word, Foyle thinks – a small saloon car, the sort with seating in the back but only two doors, dark blue in colour. It is one of more than a dozen cars that Foyle can see from where he stands, all idle since the end of the petrol ration.

'What are you doing, Sam?' Foyle asks when he reaches her. He at once regrets his irritated tone, which Sam as usual either doesn't notice or simply ignores.

'This is Mr Saxby's car, sir,' she explains. 'It's an Austin Seven, which probably isn't important. It's quite dirty, though.'

'Might expect that,' Foyle points out, 'given that it's up on blocks and probably has been for the past few months.'

'The other cars in this street are being kept fairly clean, and they're all on blocks as well,' Sam points out.

True enough, Foyle thinks, looking about.

'He's left some things inside it,' Sam points out.

Indeed he has. A pair of driving gloves, not as sturdy-looking as Sam's MTC-issue gantlets, lie on the driver's seat. On the back seat sits what appears to be a rolled-up newspaper, but the dirty windows make it difficult to see much more than that.

'There wouldn't happen to be any cleaning supplies in the Wolseley's boot, would there, Sam?'

When Sam returns to the Austin she carries a rag wrapped around a bottle of glass cleaner in one hand and a torch in the other.

'Might I ask you to hold this, please, sir?' she asks, proffering the torch. 'It's starting to grow dark, and I thought that it might be helpful.'

Sam sets to work on the window to the right of the back seat, and in a few minutes it's clean enough that when Foyle shines the torch through it the beam clearly lights up what's there.

It is indeed a newspaper, folded in such a way as to make it difficult at first to see anything other than the lower half of the masthead. But by aiming the beam carefully he can make out what the title must be – Les nouveaux temps – and a date: Le 20ème août 1942.

Sam is startled when Mr Foyle abruptly snaps off the torch – looking a bit perturbed, it seems to her.

'Let's be on our way, Sam,' he says.