‘Right. It is odd. What else?’

‘I don’t know why, on March 6th, she mentions Fenton’s returning for the cigar case. It wasn’t interesting and she was limited for space. She doesn’t record the name of a single guest at the dinner party, doesn’t say what any of the women wore, but she carefully notes that her brother had left his cigar case in the Paraleash House dining room and had to go back for it. Why does she?’

‘Oh, surely because by now she’s nervous whenever Frank is alone with Florence.’

‘But he wouldn’t have been alone with Florence, Winchurch would have been there.’

They discussed the script throughout the meal, and later pored over it, Ireland with his brandy, Wexford with coffee. Dora had been wise not to come. But the outcome was that the new facts were really new and sound and that Carlyon Brent could safely publish the book in the spring. Wexford got home to find Dora sitting with a wobbly looking halffinished coil pot beside her and deep in the Cosmos Book of Stars and Calendars.

‘Reg, did you know that for the Greeks the year began on Midsummer Day? And that the Chinese and Jewish calendars have twelve months in some years and thirteen in others?’

‘I can’t say I did.’

‘We avoid that, you see, by using the Gregorian Calendar and correct the error by making every fourth year a Leap Year. You really must read this book, it’s fascinating.’

But Wexford’s preference was for the Vassili Vandrian and the farming trilogy, though with little time to read he hadn’t completed a single one of these works by the time Burden returned on the following Monday week. Burden had a fine even tan but for his nose which had peeled.

‘Have a good time?’ asked Wexford with automatic politeness.

‘What a question,’ said the inspector, ‘to ask a man who has just come back from his honeymoon. Of course I had a good time.’ He cautiously scratched his nose. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Seeing something of your brother-in-law. He got me to read a manuscript.’

‘Ha!’ said Burden. ‘I know what that was. He said something about it but he knew Gandolph’d get short shrift from me. A devious liar if ever there was one. It beats me what sort of satisfaction a man can get out of the kind of fame that comes from foisting on the public stories he knows aren’t true. All that about Paxton was a pack of lies, and I’ve no doubt he bases this new version of the Winchurch case on another pack of lies. He’s not interested in the truth. He’s only interested in being known as the great criminologist and the man who shows the police up for fools.’

‘Come on, Mike, that’s a bit sweeping. I told Ireland I thought it would be OK to go ahead and publish.’

Burden’s face wore an expression that was almost a caricature of sophisticated scathing knowingness. ‘Well, of course, I haven’t seen it, I can’t say. I’m basing my objection to Gandolph on the Paxton affair. Paxton never confessed to any murder and Gandolph knows it.’