“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Superintendent,” she said calmly. “ I first saw Jerry Packham this morning when he came in late to breakfast.”

He seemed about to question her, to make perhaps some teasing comment, then he changed his mind, looked at his watch and stood up to dismiss her.

“Oh well,” he said easily. “I’ll be speaking to Mr. Packham this afternoon, I expect.”

She looked at him defiantly and walked out.

Savage stretched back in his chair and motioned Connibear to sit opposite to him.

“She was lying,” he said. “ But perhaps she was just worried about her fancy man. How long have we got, before we need to leave the island?”

“Until five this afternoon, sir. Otherwise, it’ll mean staying until nearly midnight.”

“I’ll try to finish by five.”

There was a knock on the door and a uniformed constable came in. “The pathologist and some of the scene-of-crime team have finished, sir. Can they get the body off now?”

“You take them off in the old Land Rover. Get some food—you’d better start taking orders—and come straight back. I’ll see if I can negotiate for a pot of tea. I expect the local press will be on to the case by now. If there are any reporters on the quay tell them that I’ll have a few words at about five-thirty. We don’t want them trying to make their own way over here. But don’t say anything else to them.”

“Sir.”

For the first time since Savage had arrived they were without a police presence. The constable who had been sitting with them in the common room had not followed into the dining room. Elizabeth ladled out a thick vegetable soup. There was home-baked bread which she had retrieved from the freezer and put into the oven to warm, and cheese and fruit. They all seemed to be hungry and to be enjoying the food. The absence of the policeman had made them all curiously light-hearted, light headed even. The wind had dropped a little, and that too was a relief. There was a general murmur of conversation, but they all heard the Land Rover start.

“What’s that?” John said. “Are they going already? It would have been polite to come and tell us.”

“Oh I don’t think they’ll be going yet,” George said. “They’ll be taking off the body. In any event, they’ll certainly be coming back. You do understand, don’t you, that someone here killed Charlie Todd? The police won’t go away until they find out who that was.”