Troy stared at him and he reddened. ‘Pardon my French,’ he said, ‘I’m naturally crude. I do not paint. I just take a fancy to look.’

‘Fair enough,’ Troy said pacifically.

He gave her a shamefaced grin and said oh well he supposed he’d better do something about the nightlife of Crossdyke. As he was evidently first going below Troy asked him to keep the drawing for the time being.

He paused at the companion-way for Miss Rickerby-Carrick. She erupted with monotonous precipitancy through the half-door, saw Mr Pollock who had the Zodiac drawing open in his hands, looked at it as if it was a bomb and hurried on to Troy.

‘Do let’s go,’ she said. ‘Do come on.’

They took their long strides from the gunwale to the bank, a simple exercise inevitably made complex by Miss Rickerby-Carrick, who, when she had recovered herself, seized Troy’s arm and began to gabble.

‘At once. I’ll tell you at once before anyone can stop me. It’s about—about—’ She drove her free hand through her dishevelled hair and began distractedly to whisper and stammer quite incomprehensibly.

‘—about last evening—And—And—Oh God!—And—’

‘About what?’

‘And—wait—And—’

But it was not to be. She had taken a deep breath, screwed up her eyes and opened her mouth, almost as if she were about to sneeze, when they were hailed from the rear.

‘Hi! Wait a bit! What are you two up to?’

It was Mr Lazenby. He leapt nimbly ashore and came alongside Troy. ‘We can’t have these exclusive ladies’ excursions,’ he said roguishly. ‘You’ll have to put up with a mere man as far as the village.’

Troy looked up at him and he shook a playful finger at her. ‘He’s rescued me,’ she thought and with what she herself felt to be a perverse change of mood suddenly wanted to hear Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s confidences. ‘Perhaps,’ Troy thought, ‘she’ll tell us both.’

But she didn’t. By means of sundry hard-fingered squeezes and tweaks she conveyed her chagrin. At the same time Mr Lazenby went through much the same routine with Troy’s left arm and she began to feel like Alice between the Queens.

She produced, once more, her story of the lost fur and said she was going to inquire at the local police station.

‘I suppose,’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick observed, ‘they make great efforts for you. Because—I mean—your husband—and everything.’

‘Ah!’ Mr Lazenby archly mocked. ‘How right you are! Police protection every inch of the way. Big drama. You heard her say yesterday, Miss Rickerby-Carrick. The landscape’s swarming with Constables.’

The hand within Troy’s right arm began to tremble. ‘She meant the painter,’ whispered Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

‘That’s only her cunning. She’s sly as you make ‘em, you may depend upon it. We’re none of us safe.’