She was very tall, and was dressed as dramatically and eccentrically as usual, in bright orange corduroy trousers, a fisherman’s smock and sandals. Her grey hair was short and her face was long and bony, very forceful and expressive. She was carrying a sketch pad and pencils.

“Darling boy,” she said. “ You knew I was bored and you’ve come to see me.” She still spoke with the extravagance that was fashionable in her pre-war adolescence. It was as if time had stopped with the death of her husband at the beginning of the war, when she was twenty.

“Not exactly to see you,” he said, “ but I want to talk to you.”

“You must come for lunch. Come now, before I die of curiosity. I want to know all about it. What’s brought you here? Not a rare bird because I should have heard, and we should be invaded by hundreds of dirty young men. How’s darling Molly? You didn’t come last autumn. I do miss you both.”

Her cottage was shady and smelled, George thought, like a good whole-food shop. She made tea deftly and seriously like an oriental woman, then brought out a loaf, cheese and smoked fish. They sat together by an open window. The breeze moved the curtains and carried into the house the scents of the garden. George sat without eating, without thinking, just enjoying the peace.

“Darling, do stop being so mysterious. Tell me what it’s all about.”

“Did you ever meet Tom French?” he asked. “He came here a few times, although I think he stayed on St. Mary’s when he was last on Scilly. He was a birdwatcher. He was murdered about a fortnight ago, in Rushy, the village on the north Norfolk coast.”

She was not shocked. Very little shocked her.

“I’ve probably met him. I try to see most of the rarities. The birdwatchers all seem to know me, and I talk to them, but I don’t know any names. Are you involved in it professionally?”

“Not really. I retired last year, you know. But I was asked to find out if the murderer was a birdwatcher and I agreed.”

“And what brings you here?”

“Peter Littleton.”

“Ah, of course, dear Peter. Did he know the poor boy?”

“He was a friend. But I think there were other connections.”

“And you’ve come here to find out what they were?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m not sure that I want to help you. Peter was a dear friend.” He must have shown his disappointment, his tiredness, because she grinned. “But of course I’ll talk to you about Peter. If I don’t someone else will, and the islanders don’t like him.” She smiled again, a wide mischievous smile. “When he left, it wasn’t with a whimper. They’re still talking about it. He wrote a rude, if accurate description of his wife in red paint on the post office wall. You can still see it faintly even now. And he drove Ted Baxter’s tractor into the harbour.