‘Yes. It’s really rather a nice old one. Pinchbeck and paste but long and quite good. I lent with reluctance but she was so keen to have it because of the glitter and then, of course, what must her great Cissy do but drop it at the first thunder-clap and in the stampede, nobody remembered. I said we’d retrieve it after church or why not let Cissy go? But no: she made a great to-do, poor Miss Cost (when one thinks) and insisted that she would go herself. She was rather an on-goer: conversationally, if you know what I mean: on and on and I wanted to go into church and say my prayers and it was pouring. So then she saw Dr Maine and she was curious to know if it was Mrs Trethaway’s twins, though of course in the event it wasn’t twins, (that was all nonsense) so I’m afraid I left her to tackle him as she clearly died to do. And after church I saw her streak off through the rain before anyone could offer. Isn’t it dreadful?’ Mrs Carstairs asked energetically. ‘Well, isn’t it? Adrian! Can you spare a moment, dear?’

‘Coming.’

The Rector, wearing his cassock, emerged through french windows. He said how extraordinary it was that Alleyn should have been at Portcarrow, added that they were lucky to have him and then became doubtful and solemn. ‘One finds it hard to believe,’ he said. ‘One, is appalled.’

Alleyn asked him when the first service ended and he said at about a quarter to eight. ‘I’d expected a large congregation. There are so many visitors. But the downpour, no doubt, kept a lot of folk away and there were only six communicants. The nine o’clock was crowded.’

Alleyn wondered absently why clergymen were so prone to call people ‘folk’ and asked Mr Carstairs if he knew Miss Cost very well. He seemed disturbed and said: well, yes, in so far as she was a member of his congregation. He glanced at his wife and added: ‘Our friendship with Miss Cost was perhaps rather limited by our views on the Spring. I could not sympathize or, indeed, approve of her, as I thought, rather extravagant claims. I thought them woolly,’ said the Rector. ‘Woolly and vulgar.’ He expounded, carefully, his own attitude which, in its anxious compromise, declared, Alleyn thought, its orthodoxy.

‘And you saw her,’ he asked, ‘after the service?’

They said simultaneously that they did.

‘I’m one of those parsons who come out to the porch and see folk off,’ the Rector explained. ‘But Miss Cost was on her way when I got there. Going down the path. Something about my wife’s necklace. Wasn’t it, Dulcie?’

‘Yes, dear. I told Mr Alleyn.’

Coombe said: ‘The necklace has been recovered and will be returned in due course, Mrs Carstairs.’

‘O, dear!’ she said. ‘Will it? I – I don’t think –’