‘I’m an independent consultant,’ I said. ‘Rather different remit, you see.’

‘What remit?’ he demanded, almost aggressively.

I ignored the question and looked again at Mrs Salton, who was sitting watchfully with no expression at all on her face. I said, ‘What was Mr Salton’s departure point when he took the boat out that final time?’

She stirred. ‘He sailed from here.’

‘The boat was found four days later drifting off Buque Island – that’s the other side of Campanilla. A long way.’

‘That was gone into at the inquest,’ said Stern. ‘The wind direction and the current drift accounted for it satisfactorily.’

‘Maybe, but I was looking at the sea as I came here. In whichever direction I looked there was a boat. There are a lot of yachts here and four days is a long time. It seems odd that Mr Salton’s boat wasn’t discovered earlier.’

‘A matter of chance,’ said Stern. ‘And boats don’t approach each other too closely anyway. Even at a hundred yards you couldn’t tell …’ He looked at Mrs Salton and stopped.

‘But Mr Salton was missing for four days. Didn’t anyone worry about that?’

Stern started to speak but Mrs Salton interrupted. ‘I’ll explain. I didn’t know David was missing.’ She paused. ‘My husband and I had a quarrel – a rather bad one. He left the house in a fit of temper and went across to the main island. We have an airstrip there where we keep a plane.’

She must have noticed my reaction to this exemplar of the super-rich, because she added, ‘My husband had many interests in the United States and it was convenient to run our own aircraft.’

I straightened out the expression on my face. ‘Did he pilot it himself?’

‘No. We have a pilot and an engineer. Shortly after David left here, the plane took off. I didn’t think much of it at the time but when David didn’t come back I went across to the airstrip. The plane wasn’t there, of course, and I couldn’t find Philips, the engineer. I went to see Mrs Haslam, the pilot’s wife – Haslam and Philips both have houses on the estate. She said she had seen Haslam talking to my husband and they got into the plane. I assumed he had flown to the United States.’

‘Just like that? Without packing a suitcase?’

‘It wasn’t necessary,’ she said. ‘He maintains a wardrobe in the apartment in New York.’

‘What was he wearing when he left?’

She considered. ‘A polo shirt, shorts and sandals.’