‘I wonder why she always sits there,’ said Cecily.

‘Who sits where?’

‘That old woman. She always sits on that particular seat. She was there yesterday and the day before.’

‘Didn’t notice,’ said Hugh.

‘You never notice anything. While you were in the pub yesterday,’ said Cecily with emphasis, ‘I waited till she’d gone and then I read the inscription on that seat. On the metal plate on the back. D’you know what it says?’

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Hugh, opening the window to let out cigarette smoke. An icy breeze hit him in the face.

‘Do close the window. It says: “Rupert Moore gave this seat to Northwold in thanks for his deliverance. I was in prison and ye came unto me, Matthew, chapter twenty-five, verse thirty-five.” How about that?’

‘Remarkable.’ Hugh thought he knew all about being in prison. He looked at his watch. ‘Opening time,’ he said. ‘We can go and get a drink, thank God.’

On the following morning he went out fishing without her. They met in their room before dinner, Hugh bracing himself to face certain sarcastic questions, not without precedent, as to whether he had had a nice day. Forestalling them by telling her they had caught only one small mackerel, for the censure would be greater if he had enjoyed himself, he was soon interrupted.

‘I’ve got the whole story about the seat out of that nice man with the beard.’

Hugh’s memory was poor and for a moment he didn’t know which seat she was talking about, but he recognized the nice man from her description. A busybody know-all who lived in Northwold and hung about the hotel bar.

‘He insisted on buying me a drink. Well, two, as a matter of fact.’ She smiled archly and patted her hair as if the bearded know-all had, at the very least, invited her to Aldeburgh for the weekend. ‘He’s called Arnold Cottle and he said this Rupert Moore put that seat there because he’d murdered his wife. He was put on trial and he was acquitted and that’s what it means about “deliverance” and being in prison.’

‘You can’t say he murdered his wife if he was acquitted.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Cecily. ‘It was ages ago, in 1930. I mean, I was only a baby.’ Hugh thought it wiser not to point out that at ten one is hardly a baby. ‘They acquitted him, or he got off on appeal, something like that, and he came back here to live and had that seat put there. Only the local people didn’t want a murderer and they broke his windows and called after him in the street and he had to go.’

‘Poor devil,’ said Hugh.

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Hugh. From what Arnold said, the case was very unsavoury. Moore was quite young and very good looking and he was a painter, though he had a private income. His poor wife was much older and an invalid. He gave her cyanide they’d got for killing wasps. He gave it to her in a cup of coffee.’