Hawthorne, for his part, never came close. I noticed him in the kitchen, in conversation with Colin Matheson. Although we had arrived together, we had hardly spoken a word all evening. Perhaps we had nothing to talk about. All the time we had spent together – in London, Kent and Yorkshire, in taxis and trains, his home and mine – we had been pursuing an investigation. He was the detective. I was the writer. That was what defined us as far as he was concerned.

Even so, we had come to Alderney as a team. I had thought we might enjoy our time on the island but even that small hope had been dashed by the appearance of Derek Abbott. Was I wrong to have been so angry? The trouble with Hawthorne was that he had his own way of doing things, his own code of conduct. He wouldn’t care if you disagreed with him. But if you tried to argue with him, you’d almost certainly come off worse and maybe that was what I was discovering now.

I was just going over to join him when Charles le Mesurier stepped in front of me, blocking my way. He was closer than I would have liked and I could smell the alcohol on his breath. ‘I enjoyed that little chat of yours this afternoon,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I like your house.’

‘Yes. I had a whole load of designers in, but in the end I came up with most of it myself.’ He was quite drunk, not exactly slurring his words but a little too emphatic in the way he spoke. I noticed that while we had all been given wine or beer, he had a crystal flute of champagne, which he was holding with his thumb and first finger on either side of the rim.

‘What’s the building at the bottom of the garden?’ I asked.

‘That was put there by the Germans in the war. It’s actually a gunnery, but after I bought the place I turned it into a sort of summer house . . . somewhere private to hang out.’ He leered at me. ‘I call it the Snuggery. I rather like that. Gunnery to Snuggery.’

‘Do you spend a lot of time here?’

‘God, no! As little as possible! You know what they say about this place? Two thousand alcoholics clinging to a rock. I’d go mad if I stayed here more than a couple of months at one go. I have my business interests. Spin-the-wheel and all the rest of it. But I like to move around. London, the South of France, New York . . .’

‘And you’re involved with the power line.’ I was remembering what Elkin had told me.

He looked at me queerly. ‘Who’s been talking to you about that?’

‘I’ve noticed the signs.’