True, he’s professional. He does what he says, when he says, and the job gets done – but that’s about the sum of it. Meetings between us are strained. Usually when people are devoid of edge, when they don’t employ the tools of sarcasm or have wit or irony at their disposal, you’re left with a ponderous bore. Duval isn’t dull, he’s just pathologically unresponsive, and being one of those sorry people who tend to compensate by twittering into other people’s awkward silences, the more taciturn he is, the more garrulous I become until I’m left with the humiliating feeling that it is I who have bored him and not the other way round.

When not discussing plans with me, or checking the Mexican’s work, pencilling notes and measurements onto the walls of whichever cabin they’ve been assigned, Duval stations himself on the porch of the boarding house and works large blocks of wood, whistling softly under his breath.

I watch him from a distance as he runs long fingers over their surfaces, feeling for gnarls and splinters, and I wonder – is he without a sense of humour? Uninteresting? A little slow? – but every time I’m prepared to throw in my lot with one of these theories, some warning blips red on my radar. Some discrepancy or irregularity I can’t put my finger on. Whenever we meet, I feel like I’m watching a faulty video on which the soundtrack has been badly dubbed and I just can’t rid myself of the instinct that something about Duval is a little off.

And then the dog incident happens.

Since its arrival in our lives, the dog has taken to coming and going as it pleases. During school hours, it makes itself scarce, padding out of the door behind the children as though commuting to some smart job. In the evening, before darkness falls, it reappears. It no longer whines and scratches questioningly outside the door. Now it merely barks an order in full expectation of being obeyed. For the most part it lives under the kitchen table, its two-tone eyes fastened upon us in a myopic squint. During the night, however, it creeps stealthily up the wooden stairs and curls up to sleep at the foot of my bed. Despite such show of affection, which secretly I find endearing, it remains an aloof creature, summoning up a deep-throated snarl should anyone make the mistake of venturing too close.

On the day of the incident the dog had been unwell, coughing up, earlier in the morning, some disgusting fur ball of recent kill. Subsequently, I can only assume it called in sick to its day job because it remained under the kitchen table all day, feeling sorry for itself and ignoring my every attempt to force it outside until eventually, bored of trying, I forgot it was even there.