Weller answered questions eventually.
His account agreed with Marris's on one point: Bull's fall had not been planned.
Marris had pulled harder than he intended, then found Bull badly injured. He panicked and telephoned Weller for help.
Why he had called the man Bull had just named was something Relf returned to more than once. Marris said he had not understood what Bull meant. He knew Weller as a Customs man who might know what to do.
Weller went to the church.
When he reached the belfry, Bull was still alive.
"He recognised me," Weller said.
"How do you know?" Relf asked.
"He spoke."
"What did he say?"
"Hart."
Weller claimed that, had Bull remained unconscious, he would have called an ambulance.
"But you didn't," Relf said.
"No."
"What did you do?"
Weller looked down at the table.
He waited.
Bull died before Weller left the tower.
The account raised questions that the medical findings and further investigation would have to answer. Relf did not accept Weller's claim about what he would otherwise have done.
Weller also admitted moving Bull's body, removing a scrap of paper from his pocket and wiping a surface before leaving.
He had missed the boot marks.
He had not known the telephone was recording.
The loose tenor rope had meant nothing to him.
Three weeks later, the police found Benjamin Hale.
He was living in New Zealand under his own name.
At seventy-one, he looked older than the man in Margaret's photographs, but Eleanor recognised him as soon as the video link connected.
Relf began with the organisation.
"Did you found it?"
"No."
"Who did?"
"Nobody, in the way you mean."
"Explain."
Hale leaned back.
"Someone knew a fisherman. Someone else could get papers. There was a spare room, a man at a port who would look the other way. People helped with one journey, then another."
"And you coordinated them?"
"For a time."
"When did it become a system?"
"When we realised we kept asking the same people."
Relf made a note.
"Who devised the bell cipher?"
"I did."
"Why use inscriptions?"
Hale smiled faintly.
"I was a ringer. It amused me."
Eleanor glanced at Relf. He continued writing.
"Were people's lives depending on your amusement?"
"At first there were six of us. We moved three people in two years. The messages gave us a way to pass arrangements without writing them plainly."
"Who were those three people?"
"People who needed to leave."
"Wanted by the police?"
"No."
"And later?"
"I wasn't involved in every journey."
"Peter Wycliffe?"
"After my time."
Relf looked up.
"What happened when Hart took over?"
Hale's expression changed.
"There was money in it. More than we'd ever made."
"Had you made nothing?"
"I didn't say that."
"So what was the difference?"
"Who we moved. Why they were leaving."
"That distinction seems to excuse rather a lot."
"You can check the people I helped, Inspector. I'd prefer that to you taking my word for it."
Relf turned to a fresh page.
"Then give me their names."