A silence fell between them. Alleyn walked over to the window. It looked down on a small garden at the back of the old pub. As he stood there, absently staring, someone came into the garden from below. It was Mrs Barrimore. She had a shallow basket over her arm and carried a pair of secateurs. She walked over to a clump of Michaelmas daisies and began to cut them, and her movement was so unco-ordinated and wild that the flowers fell to the ground. She made as if to retrieve them, dropped her secateurs and then the basket. Her hands went to her face and for a time she crouched there, quite motionless. She then rose and walked aimlessly and hurriedly about the paths, turning and returning as if the garden were a prison yard. Her fingers twisted together. They might have been encumbered with rings of which she tried fruitlessly to rid them.

‘That,’ said Miss Emily’s voice, ‘is a very unhappy creature.’

She had joined Alleyn without attracting his notice.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘No doubt her animal of a husband ill-treats her.’

‘She’s a beautiful woman,’ Alleyn said. He found himself quoting from – surely? – an inappropriate source. ‘ “What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands”’ and Miss Emily replied at once: ‘ “It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands”.’

‘Good heavens!’ Alleyn ejaculated. ‘What do we think we’re talking about!’

Margaret Barrimore raised her head and instinctively they both drew back. Alleyn walked away from the window and then, with a glance at Miss Emily, turned back to it.

‘She has controlled herself,’ said Miss Emily. ‘She is gathering her flowers. She is a woman of character, that one.’

In a short time Mrs Barrimore had filled her basket and returned to the house.

‘Was she very friendly,’ he asked, ‘with Miss Cost?’

‘No. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a certain animosity. On Cost’s part. Not, as far as I could see, upon Mrs Barrimore’s. Cost,’ said Miss Emily, ‘was, I judged, a spiteful woman. It is a not unusual phenomenon among spinsters of Cost’s years and class. I am glad to say I was not conscious, at her age, of any such emotion. My sister Fanny, in her extravagant fashion, used to say I was devoid of the mating instinct. It may have been so.’

‘Were you never in love, Miss Emily?’

‘That,’ said Miss Emily, ‘is an entirely different matter.’

‘Is it?’

‘In any case it is neither here nor there. What do you wish me to do, Roderique? Am I to remain in this place?’ She examined him. ‘I think you are disturbed upon this point,’ she said.

Alleyn thought: ‘She’s sharp enough to see I’m worried about her and yet she can’t see why. Or can she?’