I felt her watching my back as I walked down the street. Actually my head was buzzing, and I almost turned the wrong way onto the high street. She had said that Bobo had been to the seaside for the good fresh air. The postcard had come from Worthing on the south coast. And it had been important enough to Mary Boyle to keep it on her mantelpiece for two months. But it had been signed Kathleen. And I realized something else. As I came down the dark and narrow hallway in her house I had glimpsed something standing behind the stairs. It was a pram.

A postcard from the south coast. And I remembered the two women at the party talking about that place on the south coast where one went to take care of unfortunate occurrences. Was it just possible that Bobo Carrington’s real name was Kathleen? In which case was Mary Boyle a relative and not her maid after all? Didn’t she say that the last girl had proved unsatisfactory? That seemed to indicate she had never acted in that capacity herself. And she was older than I had expected. I stood on the street corner, finding it hard to breathe with excitement. Those women had speculated that Bobo wouldn’t have had an abortion because she was Catholic. Was it possible that Mary Boyle was her mother? In which case that pram in the front hall might actually mean that she was looking after the baby. I was tempted to stake out the house and see if she came out later with the pram, but I knew that my time was precious and limited and I wanted to accomplish as much as possible.

Should I go to see if Granddad had located his safecracker yet, or—I took a deep breath at this daring thought—should I go down to Worthing myself and see if I could locate the place where Bobo had gone? I wasn’t quite sure what this might accomplish, but perhaps I’d find out when she’d had the child and possibly secure details of the birth certificate. If I didn’t succeed in this, then at least Sir Jeremy could see if one Kathleen Boyle had filled out a birth certificate recently and whether she had named the father.