‘You wrote to her from France telling her you proposed to visit her?’

‘Yes. I told her I was going on a yachting cruise and that we should probably arrive at Torquay or Helmmouth round about this date, and that I would let her know later exactly when I should arrive.’

Inspector Bland stared at him. This statement was at complete variance with what he had been told about the arrival of Etienne de Sousa’s letter at the breakfast table. More than one witness had testified to Lady Stubbs having been alarmed and upset and very clearly startled at the contents of the letter. De Sousa returned his stare calmly. With a little smile he flicked a fragment of dust from his knee.

‘Did Lady Stubbs reply to your first letter?’ the inspector asked.

De Sousa hesitated for a moment or two before he answered, then he said:

‘It is so difficult to remember…No, I do not think she did. But it was not necessary. I was travelling about, I had no fixed address. And besides, I do not think my cousin, Hattie, is very good at writing letters.’ He added: ‘She is not, you know, very intelligent, though I understand that she has grown into a very beautiful woman.’

‘You have not yet seen her?’ Bland put it in the form of a question and De Sousa showed his teeth in an agreeable smile.

‘She seems to be most unaccountably missing,’ he said. ‘No doubt this espèce de gala bores her.’

Choosing his words carefully, Inspector Bland said:

‘Have you any reason to believe, Mr De Sousa, that your cousin might have some reason for wishing to avoid you?’

‘Hattie wish to avoid me? Really, I do not see why. What reason could she have?’

‘That is what I am asking you, Mr De Sousa.’

‘You think that Hattie has absented herself from this fête in order to avoid me? What an absurd idea.’

‘She had no reason, as far as you know, to be – shall we say – afraid of you in any way?’

‘Afraid – of me?’ De Sousa’s voice was sceptical and amused. ‘But if I may say so, Inspector, what a fantastic idea!’

‘Your relations with her have always been quite amicable?’

‘It is as I have told you. I have had no relations with her. I have not seen her since she was a child of fourteen.’

‘Yet you look her up when you come to England?’

‘Oh, as to that, I had seen a paragraph about her in one of your society papers. It mentions her maiden name and that she is married to this rich Englishman, and I think “I must see what the little Hattie has turned into. Whether her brains now work better than they used to do.”’ He shrugged his shoulders again. ‘It was a mere cousinly politeness. A gentle curiosity – no more.’