The conspiracy begins the moment you arrive, as he pointed out to Evelyn, who was knitting, and wasn’t listening. There’s the grinning doorman who yanks open the door of your taxi and gabbles a greeting in pidgin English. There’s the beaming girl in black behind the reception desk who exclaims, in her bouncy way, that it is a pleasure to welcome you back, even though you’ve never stayed here before. There is the porter, lean and stooped, with a melancholy eye and a moustache that might have been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil, who festoons himself with your suitcases and staggers away with them, to arrive at the door of your room a mysterious twenty minutes later – was he off in some cubbyhole in the meantime, going through your things? – and, having shown you how the light switches work and how to open and close the curtains, loiters expectantly on the threshold, with his fake, ingratiating smile, waiting for his tip.

‘And why,’ he called out whiningly, Evelyn having taken his place in the bathroom, ‘why must there be so many staff?’

They were everywhere: porters, receptionists, waiters, barmen, chambermaids, bellboys, cleaners, and those unaccountable, bossy-looking, middle-aged women in white blouses and black skirts who stride along the upstairs corridors bearing in their chubby hands those mysterious but important-looking clipboards.

Evelyn came back into the bedroom.

‘Why did you bring this woollen jumper?’ she asked, holding up the heavy brown garment by the sleeves. ‘We are in Spain, not Scandinavia.’ She paused, and looked at him vaguely. ‘What were you saying, dear, about hotels?’

When they were first married, Quirke would divert himself by seeing how far he could push her before she lost her temper. She never did. She responded to everything, all his taunts and teases, without the least sign of anger or annoyance, but with what was no more than a kind of clinical interest. It was, he supposed, another way of having the last word, only more so.

Despite everything, and though he wouldn’t dream of admitting it to Evelyn, he had come to quite like the Londres. It was discreetly self-confident, with an understated style. It didn’t nag, but left him largely to his own devices. The restaurant was good, the bar well stocked. He was even acquiring a taste for the briny olives, a fresh dish of which was served with every drink he ordered.