The darkness was agitated around me, its peace shattered by the incessant rumble and chug of the train, the rolling movement imparted to the whole of the sleeping car, the sensation of proximity of a world of living humanity enclosed together in a series of wagons, all engaged in the communal business of trying to get some rest, not many, probably, succeeding. The train was the Irish Mail to Holyhead, which after stopping innumerable times to pick up the mail bags suspended for collection alongside the track, disgorged a group of dishevelled and exhausted passengers at the landing stage at the unholy hour of two-thirty in the morning.

I was on my way to the Kingstown Regatta. Mr Archer, who meant to return home in his own yacht, sailed by his friends, had naturally invited me to join him for the trip, but I had pleaded the necessities of my daily life and refused. Spending a festive day in town together was one thing; spending a night enclosed on a boat with no possibility of escape an entirely different one.

The decision to make the trip at all had not been taken lightly. I had thought long and hard, and I continued to do so, interrogating myself pitilessly as I lay, eyes open against the darkness, broken by flashes of light, bumps and shouts, as the train stopped at Harrow, at Hempstead, Bletchley, Nuneaton, Tamworth, Stafford, Rhyl, Bangor.

Logic, reason and Inspector Doherty told me that my entire investigation of the Archers must be a mistake; the alibis were too solid, the instantaneous message that would have solved the mystery remained inconceivable, Sir Oliver’s experiments in telepathy had done no more than convince me that the thing was impossible – and the Archers did not possess the telephone. Yet at the very moment when I was wavering, almost convinced by all these objections, Philip had revealed to me an overwhelmingly strong motive for the murder, of which I had suspected nothing. And Ivy had been killed in Heffers, or at least I was convinced that it was so. Then how could the Archers be unconnected with her killing?

I promised myself that this trip to Dublin represented my very last, final attempt at finding out the truth. If the Archers were guilty, I must discover it now, and if I failed, I must accept their innocence and either search for the murderer elsewhere against all my intuition, or give up the search altogether. Coming here at all seemed tremendously dangerous. If Mr Archer were guilty, then by questioning him too closely, I risked making myself suspicious to him. If he were innocent, then it was a frightening risk to go away leaving Jenny behind; Jenny, in the same town as Julian Archer, aware now of his role in her past life, filled with hatred and violent fury. Whatever I undertook seemed fraught with danger.

The sky was dark and cloudy when the train pulled into Holyhead. My eyes, which had firmly refused to shut for the entire duration of the journey, now protested vigorously at the necessity of remaining open. The other passengers and I trudged across the landing stage and embarked on the Royal Mail Steamer. For several hours, I lay in a berth in the ladies’ cabin, snatches of dreams mingling in my mind with moments of waking during which I perceived the slowly lightening sky through the porthole. Towards seven o’clock I gave up all pretence of sleeping and went above onto the deck.

The sight of the sea, infinite and twinkling, reflecting even the meagrest morsels of sunlight accorded to its purling surface, moved and awakened me to the sense of the largeness of the world. My own task gained in sharpness and perspective. I suddenly realised that outside the necessary contact with Mr Archer, the regatta might turn out to be one of the unforgettable travelling experiences of my life. I know nothing about boating, but who cannot be struck with admiration at the sight of a splendid yacht, manned by expert sailors exhibiting the kind of rapid, precise motion that one usually expects from horses or acrobats? I found myself looking forward with eager purpose to the coming day, and my sense of purpose began to share space in my breast with a sense of impending beauty and excitement.

The little train from Dublin to Kingstown, the first railway constructed on Irish soil, revealed to me a landscape whose dominant colour was a vivid green, produced, I thought sadly, by an enormous quantity of rainfall, which we were not absolutely certain to avoid that very day, since the sky overhead was becoming increasingly grey as the train progressed through the countryside. The ride was short; no more than six or seven miles later all passengers were invited to alight, and I found myself in Kingstown.

It was unmistakably a festival day, reminiscent of Ascot. The crowd that milled in the streets surrounding the port were dressed in clothes so elegant and fashionable that my own carefully chosen muslin gown and bonnet appeared countrified and even, in spite of my best efforts, slightly wrinkled. I smoothed out my skirts as well as I could, adjusted my shawl and proceeded to the Anchor Hotel.

It took some courage before I could persuade myself to enter, but when I did, I saw that the dark, quiet interior contained almost no clients, and my awkward shyness diminished. Mr Archer was nowhere to be seen, as it was still long before midday, but a kind gentleman pointed the way to the port, and told me that everyone had already gone there, as the race was about to begin.

The scene on the docks was impressive. A throng of passionate spectators crowded together so solidly that the sea was invisible behind them; their hats and umbrellas formed a screen impenetrable even to the tallest viewer. The jostling was indescribable, and only the masts of the boats could be perceived. The tall lamp posts surrounding the area in front of the dock were all covered with clinging and climbing boys, and these served as the only useful source of information about what was happening on the water.

‘They’re off for the Queen’s Cup!’ a voice cried; a general shout went up, and the boats sailed away – but only, as I soon understood, to take up their starting positions for the first race. This placing in position took up what seemed an immense amount of time, which was relieved by the boys on the lamp posts shouting out descriptions of the boats as they manoeuvred. Finally, when I had tired of moving around the edge of the crowd, waiting and trying unsuccessfully to find a loophole through which I could perceive the water, I heard the report of a gun, and knew the race had begun. I gave up on the waterfront altogether and moved to the outskirts of the crowd, hoping to hear something interesting, at least. But no.

‘There’s too much fog,’ shouted the boys to the people massed below. ‘We can’t see a thing – they’re already out of sight! If there’s as much fog out to sea, they’ll have to cancel the whole race!’

A collective groan went up from the rearguard formed by those, like myself, unable to push to the front of the crowd. But our disappointment was certainly less than that felt by the people who had struggled to obtain the best viewing places for the start of the race, some of them by arriving, with campstools, in the dark that precedes the dawn. Murmurs of discontent were heard from all sides, and there were some movements of departure.

Half an hour later, the crowd had thinned considerably, as people went off to console themselves with promenades or drinks, in the hopes that the mist would soon lift and that some distant trace of the boats could be made out with telescopes, or at least their return perceived. It was then that I spotted Mr Archer, standing amongst his friends, one of the last of the faithful, still eagerly peering out to sea. And as the crowd dissolved, I saw that the fog rendered it impossible to see the departing boats, even though they were probably still not out of sight of the starting point.

‘Goodness, what fog,’ I exclaimed, as I joined him. ‘I wonder how the sailors can see to sail!’

‘Miss Duncan!’ he exclaimed, greeting me with more warmth than I might have wished. ‘So you have managed to join us! This is delightful! I hardly dared hope!’

I applied a look of enthusiasm to my face.

‘I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds!’ I assured him. Then, glancing out over the sea, I modified, ‘At least, I didn’t expect it would be like this.’

‘The weather is rather unfortunate,’ he agreed. ‘And if the sailors cannot see to sail, they will have to put it off until tomorrow. But we may hope that there is little or no fog twenty miles out. It is difficult to know what is happening – quite a mystery! Well, let us make the best of it, now that you are here. Munroe, let me introduce you to my charming friend Miss Duncan. Miss Duncan, Mr Munroe, and Miss Eaglehurst.

Miss Eaglehurst was a young woman who corresponded physically much better to the type I was pretending to be than I did myself. Young and pretty, but tainted by a brash and forward manner, she shook my hand boldly. Apparently this young woman was beyond the need for a chaperone, unless, indeed, we could be considered to be chaperoning each other. But perhaps the mores and customs of the yachting world are different from those of the towns and villages, and chaperones are not considered necessary. As incorrect as I was well aware my own situation to be, Miss Eaglehurst’s was certainly much worse, since she had obviously come there together with Mr Munroe on the yacht. I hoped that Mr Archer was not going to renew his suggestion that I join him on it for the trip home, fingered my return ticket within my glove, and set myself to be as charming as he had announced me to be.

‘Do let’s take a turn; there’s nothing to see here,’ said Miss Eaglehurst in a rather petulant voice.

‘My dear girl, the fog may lift at any moment,’ replied Mr Archer optimistically. But his companion was less confident.

‘Oh, let’s go,’ he said, drawing the woman away on his arm. ‘We can come back soon enough, but in any case there’s nothing to see when the boats are distant. At any rate, we’ll all meet for luncheon at one, shall we?’ And they moved away, leaving me uncomfortably alone.

‘Well, well,’ said Mr Archer, instantly taking advantage of their departure to lay his hand undesirably upon my shoulder. ‘So here we are, are we?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, adopting a hypocritical look once and for all and willing myself not to depart from it even for a second. ‘How lucky you are, to come to such interesting events every year, and several times a year.’

‘Today is not the best example,’ he said, ‘although it might improve. Last year was much more splendid, with coloured flags waving from all the masts.’

‘Oh—’ I said, ‘but last year, you weren’t here with me. Still, I’ll wager you weren’t alone. Don’t lie now; I know you are very naughty, aren’t you? You must have been here with some other lady!’

‘I was,’ he said, pretending not to like having to admit it, but showing his pleased vanity clearly enough.

‘Was it the actress you told me about?’ I said, pouting jealously, and hoping I was not proceeding too quickly, too obviously.

‘Yes it was, as a matter of fact,’ he answered briefly, and a shadow crossed his face. He did not much want to talk about her, that was clear. My task was not going to be especially easy. Now that I had broached the subject, I thought that I had better forge ahead with it, for coming back to it later on might seem even more annoying and suspicious.

‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘I feel bad at taking the place which legitimately belongs to someone who died.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ he replied shortly.

‘Of course not,’ I assented, fluttering my eyelashes. ‘It’s just sad. It isn’t my fault or your fault, either, that she died.’

I scrutinised him intently from under the brim of my hat as I pronounced these daring words, wondering if the slightest sign of awareness or knowledge might not flash however briefly across his face. I did not expect him to turn towards me, suddenly black with fury, and shout,

‘Shut up, you imbecile!’

‘Oh,’ I said, stepping backwards and covering my mouth with my hands. There was a time when I had clearly suspected him of being the murderer. The idea came back to me sharply now. A frightening look shone from his eyes.

‘I am so sorry,’ I said quickly, soothingly. ‘Here I am, causing you pain by reminding you of it, when I should be helping to offer you a lovely, pleasant day. Please forgive me. Let us talk of other things.’ And I went so far, in my fear, as to lay my hand upon his arm.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, recovering his calm and squeezing my gloved fingers. ‘You’re upsetting me, harping on about that.’ He paused, then forced a smile, in an attempt to erase the negative impression his violence had left upon me. Then he leant towards me, and the smile converted itself into his usual strange leer, which always made me feel just a little bit like a piece of red meat.

I stared at him, fascinated as though by a serpent, and suffered him to provide me with an unwelcome caress, only pushing him away after a moment to remark feebly that ‘people will see us’. He appeared aware that although but few people were left on the docks, they were not of the sort that one might freely offend. We were surrounded by proper ladies, families with children in stiff frocks, monocled aristocrats and elegant dandies. The number of little boys in sailor suits was quite a bit larger even than the number one usually sees about the streets, and several little girls were wearing sailor-type collars over the shoulders of their navy-and-white dresses. Their image imprinted itself on my retina as though I were watching them through a glass. On the far side of the glass, the gay throng pressed in the streets to participate in the festivities. On my side, the inner side, a different scene proceeded: Mr Archer, asking Ivy to get him out of a scrape, by putting some money back into the till at Heffers before its loss was noticed. Ivy assenting willingly, used to rendering service, pleased to make a last gesture for the man who had at least treated her with kindness. And then, Mr Archer waiting calmly until she expressed the desire to leave – no hurry, no pressure – handing her a roll of bank notes, closing the door behind her, glancing at his watch, and then – then what?

Philip had claimed there was no telephone in the flat. But he had said there was one in the shop below. Could a wire not be brought upstairs? If the elderly gentleman had one in the manor, then might one not believe that it had somehow been done so?

‘Mr Archer,’ I said suddenly, ‘I know you’re very interested in machines. I wanted to ask you – do you have the telephone at home?’

‘No, I haven’t had one installed,’ he said, surprised at my odd question. ‘The Darwins have, though; they were one of the very first families in Cambridge to get it. Number 10, I believe they are, and they highly recommend it.’

‘Do they? And what do you think?’ I improvised quickly. ‘I wanted to ask your advice, because my parents were wondering if it would be a useful thing to have, and not too difficult or peculiar to use.’

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘it certainly isn’t difficult. And it’s absolutely fascinating, technologically speaking. But as to usefulness, it has its disadvantages, I find. As far as calling the tradespeople is concerned, they come to the house for their orders and deliveries, and for anything particular, I have servants who can just as well go and call upon them. And for any private communication, I prefer the post. There’s no privacy over the telephone, you know. The girl at the Exchange hears everything, to say nothing of other families, if you have a party line. It doesn’t tempt me.’

‘I wonder what it is really like to live with the thing,’ I said. ‘It is strange to think that a girl one doesn’t even know can listen to everything one is saying. Do you mean that a telephone call can never be secret in any way?’

‘Not even the fact that you made one,’ he answered, with a smile that struck me as smug.

The flame of hope that had suddenly awoken in me died down. Not only was every telephone in Cambridge apparently registered by number, so that it would be impossible to hide the fact of owning one, but the girl at the Exchange would know about and quite possibly remember precisely any call that had been made. One could not be sure that she would remember, of course, but the risk was far too great for him to have even considered using such a method.

Then what? What had he done?

‘Let’s do like Munroe,’ said Mr Archer, becoming impatient with my thoughtful silence and pulling me by the arm. ‘We’ll take a turn and see what’s happening in the streets.’

It was after a long time of strolling about the streets and lanes, punctuated by a pleasant cup of tea, that we began to notice that a large portion of the crowd that had previously been at the water’s edge was now headed inland, seemingly all in the same direction. A little automatically, we took to following them.

The moving stream thickened as we advanced, and there was a sense of expectation. The few people we crossed who were coming the other way were in animated conversation.

‘It’s some kind of hoax,’ said a man who passed us, speaking loudly, ‘to keep people from becoming bored with the whole race because they can’t see it.’

‘I wonder what’s happening?’ I said. ‘Shall we follow all these people and find out what the hoax might be?’

Mr Archer merely smiled enigmatically.

After just a few moments, we discovered the place where the stream of people had converged into an excited, milling pool. They all stood in front of a long, low, cream-coloured building, elegantly built in the style of a Palladian villa, its two Ionic porticoes linked by a colonnade, which ran down a great length of the street. People were pressing and crowding under the porticoes, in front of the enormous windows giving out on them. The words

Royal St George Yacht Club Founded 1838

were emblazoned over the main entrance, which was further decorated with a triangular flag, red with a white cross in the centre of which was a crown.

Starting on the fringe, we worked our way forwards as people looked and departed, until we finally reached the window which was the main feature of attraction. As it came into my field of vision, I saw a young man adding, from the inside, a piece of paper to a long column of papers already gummed to the pane. The top paper read

Queen’s Cup Reporting By The Irish Daily Express

Underneath was a list of handwritten messages describing the progress of the yachts in the race. Mr Archer began to read them eagerly.

stated the first one. All were brief, technically worded descriptions of the movements of the various boats.

‘And it’s nearly one o’clock now,’ said Mr Archer, taking out his watch and glancing at it. ‘They’ll be more than an hour finishing the loop and starting the second round. Let’s go get something to eat, shall we? We’re to meet the others at a very nice little place – you’ll like it.’

‘I should love to,’ I said. ‘But do tell me how the Yacht Club can know all this, when nobody can see anything?’

‘They’ve got a boat out there watching,’ he said shortly.

‘But…’ I stopped, staring at him, my heart pumping suddenly. ‘But…but how can the boat out there tell the people here what is going on?’

He hesitated, but before he could say anything, a lady standing near me, wearing a very large hat decorated with ostrich feathers, intervened excitedly. ‘Don’t you know?’ she asked. ‘Why, this is the work of the Italian boy genius Marconi. Don’t say you haven’t heard about his astounding discovery? It’s been in all the papers!’

I felt Mr Archer pulling on my arm, and a tiny alarm seemed to go off inside me. I wanted to know about Marconi – the name, already, reminded me of something – and I felt that Mr Archer did not want me to know. I resisted his pressure, and opened my mouth to put some questions to my informative neighbour, but I was forestalled by a gentleman standing close by.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘It’s all nothing but a great trick to keep us busy till the boats come in! Messages transmitted from the water twenty miles away! What will they expect us to believe next?’

‘I read that they are transmitted by waves travelling through the ether,’ cried the lady.

I felt a great shock of disappointment. The ether – why, Arthur had told me that modern physicists no longer believed that it even existed! This was no better than Sir Oliver. I shrugged gloomily, and followed Mr Archer.

‘Then it really is some great hoax?’ I said to him as we emerged into the street, in which the mist was lifting slowly, allowing glimmers of pale sunshine to seep through.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said brusquely. ‘We’ll see what is going on later on. It’s sure to be better by two or three. The Queen’s Cup will not be over until after four o’clock, so we’ll have plenty of time to go back down to the waterfront to watch the end. Do you like oysters?’

I admitted to a fondness for oysters, and allowed myself to be taken to a open-air restaurant looking directly out over the water. Mr Munroe and his lady friend were standing in front of it already, waiting for us. We were seated together at a table for four, and oysters duly arrived, followed by cod, Atlantic salmon and halibut. Mr Archer ordered conger eel.

‘We’ve been on a ramble,’ said Mr Munroe. ‘Can’t see a thing. Dead boring.’

I wanted to ask him if he had seen the messages at the Yacht Club, but I felt that the subject annoyed Mr Archer, perhaps because of the foolishness or pretence surrounding an activity to which he clearly attributed the highest importance. However, I soon became aware that two gentlemen at the table next to ours were discussing nothing other than that precise topic. Showing nothing, keeping up a light flow of conversation, I lent an ear to their words over the clink and scrape of glasses and forks.

‘The Flying Huntress is a good little tug,’ remarked the elder of the two, who was elegantly dressed in summer flannels and wore a close-cut beard. ‘Marconi did well to choose her. He’s a good sailor; he and his assistant will be able to follow the manoeuvres as accurately as it’s possible to think of doing.’

‘Yes, we’re in luck,’ replied the other. ‘Marconi knows as much about yachting as any good amateur; he and his assistant can handle the sailing, the messages and the transmission all by themselves.’

‘And know what to write,’ said the first. ‘Not that he couldn’t have taken an expert on board if he’d needed to. But he’s a loner, that fellow. Have you ever met him?’

‘No, have you?’

‘Once, at Cowes. The fellow’s a regular yachting maniac. He’ll change the future of yacht races with this system of his. It was a splendid idea of the paper’s, hiring him to report on the race. And they’ve got even more than they bargained for. They couldn’t possibly have guessed how foggy it would be.’

‘They say it’s all for the best,’ said the bearded gentleman. `His system works better in fog and stormy weather, so I’ve heard. Something to do with conductivity. I wonder what’s happening now? Just look at the time – they’ll be well into the Sovereign’s, and the Queen’s will be starting the second round. Let’s go and get some news.’

They paid, rose and left, leaving me filled with an odd confusion, increased by the impossibility of thinking clearly and calmly while sitting at a white-clothed table, covered with dishes containing the bony remains of aquatic creatures, together with a man who might or might not be the father of a murderer, a lady who had very clearly applied rouge to her cheeks and redness to her lips, and her swain who clapped his hand too familiarly upon her arm and drank at least four glasses of wine during the meal. The gentlemen at the neighbouring table took the messages seriously – and they continually mentioned Marconi. And the name appeared familiar to me. But where had I seen or heard it before?

A creamy syllabub concluded the meal. Mr Archer summoned the waiter with a lordly gesture and paid the bill, while I tried to pretend that this was perfectly normal and not a shameful and inadmissible proceeding which I would never dare to admit to any human soul. I felt more uncomfortable than I ever had, for money spent in one’s favour creates a debt towards the spender which is more dreadfully difficult to erase or forget than that created by words, smiles or even (Heaven forbid!) kisses. It was a relief when we arose and made our way back to the dock, but a disappointment to find that although the fog had turned to no more than a light mist inland, the worst of it appeared to have drifted out to sea, so that the horizon was still as invisible as before.

‘What shall we do?’ complained Mr Munroe, ‘We’re not going to stay here, are we? Why, we might as well be lying in bed!’

‘Let’s go back to the Yacht Club and look at the messages,’ I suggested quickly. ‘If you want to know how the race is going, you can find it out from there.’

He did not know about them. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked me, surprised.

‘They have information on the course of the race, that they are putting up on the front window for all to see,’ I said. ‘We were there just before lunch.’

‘What is this cock-and-bull story?’ asked Mr Munroe, turning towards Mr Archer.

‘I don’t know the details,’ he replied. ‘She’s correct that there are messages proclaiming the progress of the race, though I don’t know how accurate they can be.’

‘Well, let’s go and see!’ exclaimed Mr Munroe. ‘It’s almost three o’clock; the race is practically over anyway.’ He turned on his heel, and off we went, the four of us, back in the direction of the Yacht Club.

The list of messages on the door had become considerably longer, and another list had been started next to it, this one giving the progress of the Sovereign’s Cup race, which had started some two hours later than the Queen’s.

2:13:13        BONA rounded Rosberg, standing on
     
2:20:22   AILSA
     
2:28:50   RAINBOW gone about starboard tack
     
2:44:30   ISOLDE rounded. The vessels are very much scattered. BONA alone about on the port tack with a very long lead.

‘What do you make of all this?’ exclaimed Mr Munroe, with real amazement, when we had worked our way to the window and read over everything from the beginning.

I was beginning to answer him by some reference to the scientific impossibility of such a thing, but he had quite other ideas in his mind. Turning towards Mr Archer and gesticulating with annoyance, he cried,

‘Why, it says here that Bona’s ahead by seven minutes or more! I was certain Astrild couldn’t fail this year – she’s been so completely overhauled I thought she was primed to win!’

‘Astrild looks to be last,’ laughed Mr Archer. ‘Better luck next time, old fellow.’

The young employee of the Yacht Club, wearing his smart cap and buttons, appeared behind the window holding a rather large sheet and placed it carefully below the preceding one.

‘Twenty minutes! It’s all over,’ said Mr Munroe.

‘Let’s go back and see if we can see the boats coming around for the finish,’ said Miss Eaglehurst. ‘I’m sure the fog is gone by now, aren’t you?’

A great many other people had the same idea. Parasols went up in the street as a more and more shafts of sunlight pierced through the mass of grey clouds.

‘If they only rounded Kish ten minutes ago, they won’t be coming in for another half an hour,’ said Mr Munroe.

‘No, but if the fog keeps thinning we’ll be able to see them when they’re still quite far out. In fact, I wonder if we can’t make them out already,’ replied Mr Archer, as we came in sight of the sea. ‘Look, Munroe. Can’t you see those moving shadows way over there?’

‘Yes, by Heaven, I think you’re right!’ he exclaimed, and the cry was taken up by a hundred voices and as many pointing fingers. Ten minutes later the first of the returning boats was clearly visible. Comments burst forth all around me.

‘It’s the Bona,’ said someone. ‘But which is the second boat? I don’t recognise it.’

‘It isn’t a yacht,’ someone else answered. ‘Look, you can see it now. It’s just a tug.’

‘Oh, that must be the Flying Huntress, following the race! Yes, there it comes. Just look at the mast!’

‘Seventy-five feet it must be. That’s where the wires are. It has to be so high, they say, to transmit over ten or twenty miles. For a mile or two you don’t need nearly so much.’

‘Wires? Does he use wires? But they call it wireless transmission, don’t they?’ exclaimed another voice.

‘Do you mean to say it’s true?’ said a lady who stood so near me that the fragrance of the fresh violets she wore in her corsage wafted across my face, mixed with the strong, salty, fishy odour of the sea water and all the other nameless odours of the throng. ‘Do you mean to say it wasn’t all a big joke, those messages on the Yacht Club window?’

‘Of course not,’ replied a man near her. ‘It’s perfectly real! The messages are sent in Morse code, by electrical impulses which go up the wire there and out into the air, where they are captured by another wire set up in a tree next to the Yacht Club. The wire is connected to a Morse printer that reads the electrical impulses that come down it, and the messages are then copied out in longhand and handed to the Yacht Club and to the Irish Daily Express. The newspaper ordered up the whole operation. Oh, Marconi’s fame is going to multiply by a hundred after this publicity!’

All grew dark before my eyes. The sensation of loss of consciousness, of fainting, was so powerful that I believed I had fainted, and was almost surprised when my vision returned, no more at first than a little hole in the centre of which the Flying Huntress rose and fell on the waves. Two young men were now discernible on the boat; one was working at a machine set up on a table, and the other peered at the Bona, and then at the boats which were following behind, and made notes. A great cry went up from the crowd as the boat passed the finish. But it was not the Bona which was being thus acclaimed.

‘MARCONI! We want MARCONI!’ went up from every throat, and the applause swelled into a great thunder as the tugboat approached the dock and the smaller of the two young men stood on deck, waving at the people. A gaggle of journalists wriggled their way to the forefront of the crowd and began shouting questions at him before he was within earshot.

And in my mind, everything suddenly came together in a dreadful picture, terrifying in its simple completeness.

The wire in the tree!

A wireless transmitter: whatever that was, it was the machine which stood on the table on the deck of the boat now floating before me. And Mr Archer had one of them in his house. Of this I was now as certain as if I had seen it at work.

The Marconi Company; I remembered now that I had seen that name on the list of the companies in which he invested! Mr Archer, fascinated by all new technological inventions, had invested in the Marconi Company before the general public had even heard about it, and learnt all the details of the existence of this strange, incredible, unheard-of machine. Mr Archer was supposed to possess an immense talent for choosing intelligent investments. In this one, he had apparently surpassed himself.

The crowd pressed thickly forward, hats were thrown in the air, parasols were waved, and the man called Marconi was hailed as a triumphant victor and welcomed to land on the shoulders of a crowd so excited by his prowess that the skipper of the Bona stepped off his ship onto the dock practically unnoticed. With great aplomb, however, he shouldered his way to where Marconi was being celebrated and interviewed, moved up to him, and shook his hand, offering a great smile to the photographers as he did so.

I stared transfixed at the man who had succeeded in realising what Sir Oliver had made sound nothing more than a myth on the level of fairies and spiritualism séances. He had sent messages over the sea, through the air, from one wire to another; messages which had been encoded and decrypted, and then read and understood by hundreds or thousands of people. He had accomplished something which seemed but a dream. And there he stood, astonishingly young, barely more than twenty, his fair hair slicked back, his fine-featured face serious one moment, laughing boyishly the next.

There was no doubt about it: Marconi’s invention was more important than the boat race, more mysterious than telepathy, more powerful than the telephone, more astonishing even than electricity. For telephones and electricity run along wires, and our human brain is capable of comprehending transmission along a concrete object linking us to our destination. But wireless transmission – waves travelling, whether it be through the ether, through the air, or through absolute nothingness – this was something which, it seemed to me, would change the future of the world more than any of those.

The magnitude of the discovery thus revealed to me was so exhilarating, that it took many long minutes before I came to the realisation that I was finally in possession of the undoubted truth about Ivy’s death. I stared at Mr Archer as he gazed out over the sea, watching the slower boats arriving. He had pretended all day that he knew nothing about the wireless transmission. He had lied – but it would be easy to get proof!

Without attracting his attention, I slipped off through the close-packed crowd and made my way along the streets to Kingstown’s little station, where I boarded the first train to Dublin. I had only one idea in my mind: I must return to Cambridge instantly, at once, now. There was no time to be lost.