It was an amazingly young-looking Alice, her hair rinsed primrose, her figure the trimmest it had been in ten years, who met Guy and Pamela at the station. She was driving a new white Lancia coupé and wearing a very smart knitted suit in a subtle shade of burgundy.

‘I love your suit,’ said Pamela.

‘I made it.’

‘I really must take up knitting again. I used to be so good at it, didn’t I? And think of the money one saves.’

On the following evening, a Sunday, after they had spent most of the day on the beach, Pamela again reverted to the subject of knitting and said her fingers itched to start on something straightaway. Alice looked thoughtful. Then she opened the bottom drawer of the chest and took out the saxe blue wool.

‘You could have this if you like, and this pattern. You could make it for Guy.’

Pamela took the pattern which had apparently been torn in half and mended with sticking tape. She looked at the hanks of wool. ‘Has some of it been used?’

‘I didn’t like what I’d done so I undid it. The wool’s been washed and carded to get the crinkles out.’

‘If you’re thinking of making that for me,’ said Guy, ‘I’m all for it. Splendid idea.’

‘All right. Why not? Very fine needles it takes, doesn’t it? Have you got a pair of fourteens, Alice?’

A shadow passed across Alice’s face. She hesitated. Then she picked up the plastic envelopes one by one, but desultorily, until Pamela, fired now with enthusiasm, dropped on her knees beside her and began hunting through the drawer.

‘Here we are. Number fourteen, two millimetres, US double O . . . There’s only one needle here, Alice.’

‘Sorry about that, it must be lost.’ Alice took the single needle from her almost roughly and made as if to close the drawer.

‘No, wait a minute, it’s bound to be loose in there somewhere.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t, it’s lost. You won’t have time to start tonight, anyway.’

Guy said, ‘I don’t see how you could lose one knitting needle.’

‘In a train,’ said Pamela, peering into each needle packet. ‘It could fall down the side of the seat and before you could get it out you’d be at your station.’

‘Alice never goes in trains.’

‘I suppose you could use it to unblock a drainpipe?’

‘You’d use a big fat one for that. Now if this situation happened in one of my books I’d have it that the needle was a murder weapon. Inserted into the scalp of a person who was, say drugged or drunk, it would penetrate the covering of the brain and the brain itself, causing a subdural haemorrhage. You’d have to sharpen the point a bit, file it maybe, and then of course you’d throw it away afterwards. Hence, you see, only one number fourteen needle in the drawer.’

‘And immediately they examined the body they’d find out,’ said his wife.