The fingers on Troy’s right arm became more agitated while those on her left gave it a brief conspiratorial squeeze. ‘Arms,’ Troy thought. ‘Last night Dr Natouche and tonight, these two, and I’m not the sort to link arms.’ But she was aware that while these contacts were merely irksome, last night’s had both disturbed and reassured her.

She freed herself as casually as she could and talking disjointedly they walked into the village where they were overtaken by Caley Bard, complete with butterfly net and collector’s box. All desire for the Rickerby-Carrick disclosures had left Troy. She scarcely listened to madly divergent spurts of information: ‘…my friend, Mavis…you would love her…such a brilliant brain…art…science…butterflies even, Mr Bard…though not for me—Lamborine—…my friend, Mavis…Highlands…how I wish she was here…Mavis…’

The undisciplined voice gushed and dwindled, gabbled and halted. Troy had an almost overwhelming urge to be alone with her headache.

They came up with the cottage police station. A small car and a motorcycle stood outside.

‘Shall we wait for you?’ Bard asked. ‘Or not?’

‘Not, please, I may be quite a time. They’ll probably want to telephone about it. As a matter of fact,’ Troy said, ‘I believe when I’ve finished here I’ll just go back to the Zodiac. For some reason I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

It was an understatement. Her headache was ripening. She was subject to occasional abrupt onsets of migraine and even now a thing like a starburst pulsed in one corner of her field of vision and her temples had begun to throb.

‘You poor darling,’ cried Miss Rickerby-Carrick. ‘Shall I come back with you. Would you like a sleeping-pill? Miss Hewson’s got some. She’s given me two for tonight. Shall I wait for you? Yes?’

‘But of course we’ll wait,’ Mr Lazenby fluted.

Caley Bard said that he was sure Troy would rather be left to herself and proposed that he and Mr Lazenby and Miss Rickerby-Carrick should explore the village together and then he would teach them how to lepidopterize. Troy felt this was a truly noble action.

‘Don’t let those bobbies worry you,’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself, do. Hope you recover your morsel of mink.’