‘Look,’ Jenny said. ‘Which is it? Me going off with Mr Alleyn to see Wally? Me being late for our date? Or me going to Dunlowman with Miss Emily tomorrow? Or the lot? Come on.’

‘You’re at perfect liberty to take stewed tea and filthy cream buns with anybody you like for as long as you like. It was evidently all very private and confidential and far be me from it – I mean it from me – to muscle in where I’m not wanted.’

‘But I told you. He asked me not to talk about it.’

Patrick inclined, huffily. ‘So I understand,’ he said.

‘Patrick! I’m sorry, but I do find that I respect Mr Alleyn. I’m anti a lot of things that I suppose you might say he seems to stand for, although I’m not so sure, even, of that. He strikes me as being – well – far from reactionary,’ said young Jenny.

‘I’m sure he’s a paragon of enlightenment.’

She wondered how it would go if she said: ‘Let’s face it, you’re jealous,’ and very wisely decided against any such gambit. She looked at Patrick: at his shock of black hair, at his arms and the split in his open shirt where the sunburn stopped and at his intelligent, pig-headed face. She thought: ‘He’s a stranger and yet he’s so very familiar.’ She leant forward and put her hand on his bony knee.

‘Don’t be unhappy,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Good God!’ he said. ‘Can you put it out of your mind so easily! It’s Miss Cost, with her skull cracked. It’s Miss Cost, face down in our wonderful Spring. It’s your pin-up detective, inching his way into our lives. Do you suppose I enjoy the prospect of – ’ He stopped short. ‘I happen,’ he said, ‘to be rather attached to my mother.’

Jenny said quickly: ‘Patrick – yes, of course you are. But –’

‘You must know damned well what I mean.’

‘All right. But surely it’s beside the point. Mr Alleyn can’t think –’

‘Can’t he?’ His eyes slid away from her. ‘She was a poisonous woman,’ he said.

A silence fell between them and suddenly Jenny shivered: unexpectedly as if some invisible hand had shaken her.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said irritably. ‘Are you cold?’

He looked at her miserably and doubtfully.

Jenny thought: ‘I don’t know him. I’m lost.’ And at once was caught up in a wave of compassion.

‘Don’t let’s go on snarling,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home and sort ourselves out. It’s clouded over and I’m getting rather cold.’

He said: ‘I don’t blame you for wanting to get away from this mess. What a party to have let you in for! It’s better you should go to Dunlowman.’

‘Now that,’ said Jenny, ‘is really unfair and you know it, darling.’