‘Well, I’m sure it goes without saying. But if you do happen to crack the case, and I have every confidence that you will, you will make sure that I’m the first to know, won’t you? I wouldn’t dream of taking credit for anything you do, but there is the reputation of the States of Guernsey Police Service to consider. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Completely.’

‘Excellent. In which case – ah, thank you, Whitlock! Here’s my tea, at last. I’ll wish you a good day!’

It was a dismissal, delivered with a genial smile, but a dismissal nonetheless.

The two of us walked out of the front door to where Terry, the young taxi driver who had brought us here, was still waiting. Hawthorne exchanged a few words with him and we both got into the car. I thought we would be heading back to the hotel, but after we had joined the main road, we travelled just a short distance before we stopped again.

‘You can follow the path down from here,’ Terry told us.

‘We’ll be about twenty minutes,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Can I come?’

‘No. Wait for us here.’ We got out of the car and began to make our way down. ‘I’ve hired him,’ Hawthorne told me. It took me a moment to realise he was talking about Terry. ‘He’s going to drive us the whole time we’re on the island.’

‘That’s a good idea.’

‘I said you’d pay.’

‘Oh.’

We had arrived at a crescent-shaped beach – more shingle than sand – and I wondered what Hawthorne had in mind. We turned left and walked back the way we had come. Looking up, I saw the top half of the Snuggery looming above the edge of the cliff – except that it wasn’t really a cliff at all, more a rocky wall that rose up about ten or fifteen metres with a well-defined walkway zigzagging towards the top. I rather doubted that the path dated back to the war. Why would the Germans have made it easy for Allied forces to climb up to their defences? Charles le Mesurier must have constructed it himself so that when he had finished whatever he did in the Snuggery, he could come down here for a swim.

‘Could someone have got in this way and killed him?’ I asked. I assumed this was the reason we had come down here.

‘It’s a possibility. Except that the door was bolted from inside . . . or at least it was when I looked this morning.’ Hawthorne glanced left and right and I found myself thinking of the trip we had made to Deal in Kent together, the last time we had stood beside the sea. ‘If someone went up to the house from here, they’d have to have had someone at the party to let them in.’

‘What time was le Mesurier killed?’ I asked.