The Mayor looked at him. ‘Very good,’ he said. He appeared to be struck with a sudden thought. ‘I can tell you this much,’ he continued with a short laugh. ‘The Rector handled her with ease, being well-versed in middle-aged maidens. And she had no luck with me and the doctor. Hot after him, she was, and drawing attention and scorn upon herself right and left. But we kept her at bay, poor wretch, and in the end she whipped round against us with as mighty a fury as she’d let loose on the pursuit. Very spiteful. Same with the Major.’

‘What!’ Alleyn ejaculated. ‘Major Barrimore!’

Mr Nankivell looked extremely embarrassed. ‘That remark,’ he said, ‘slipped out. All gossip, I daresay, and better forgotten, the whole lot of it. Put about by the Ladies’ Guild upon which Mrs Nankivell sits, ex officio, and, as she herself remarked, not to be depended upon.’

‘But what is it that the Ladies’ Guild alleges? That Miss Cost set her bonnet at Major Barrimore and he repelled her advances?’

‘Not azackly,’ said the Mayor. His manner strangely suggested a proper reticence undermined by an urge to communicate something that would startle his hearer.

‘Come on, Mr Mayor,’ Alleyn said. ‘Let’s have it, whatever it is. Otherwise you’ll get me jumping to a most improper conclusion.’

‘Go on, then,’ invited Mr Nankivell, with hardihood, ‘Jump!’

‘You’re not going to tell me that Miss Cost is supposed to have had an affair with Major Barrimore?’

‘Aren’t I? I am, then. And a proper, high-powered, blazing set to at that. While it lasted,’ said Mr Nankivell.

III

Having taken his final hurdle, Mr Nankivell galloped freely down the straight. The informant, it appeared, was Miss Cissy Pollock, yesterday’s Green Lady and Miss Cost’s assistant and confidante. To her, Miss Cost was supposed to have opened her heart. Miss Pollock, in her turn, had retailed the story, under a vow of strictest secrecy, to the girlfriend of her bosom whose mother, a close associate of Mrs Nankivell, was an unbridled gossip. You might as well, the Mayor said, have handed the whole lot over to the Town Crier and have done with it. The affair was reputed to have been of short duration and to have taken place at the time of Miss Cost’s first visit to the Island. There was dark talk of an equivocal nature about visits paid by Major Barrimore’ to an unspecified rival in Dunlowman. He was, Mr Nankivell remarked, a fullblooded man.