The introductions and greetings concluded, the stalwarts back from their walk had news to impart.

‘The ghost leaves footmarks,’ said Obury.

‘Not boots or shoes, either,’ added Miss Hughes.

‘More like stockinged feet,’ said Mansell, laughing. ‘Anybody here guilty?’

‘Let’s all go and look,’ suggested Jonathan. How this suggestion might have been received remained obscure, for at that moment a knock at the front door, followed by the clanging sound of its ancient bell, announced the arrival of the Fullalove cousins, who had returned home on Christmas night and now had come to spend Boxing Day. Cocktails having been handed round by the attentive host, and strange but palatable snacks having been supplied as the result of Mrs Bradley’s experiments in the kitchen, the conversation became split like the effects of light in a prism, and the ghost’s footmarks were left for the time in limbo, that magic fourth-dimension of the psychologists.

Mrs Bradley, returning from the kitchen with reinforcements of the dishes she had concocted, decided that her strong feelings about Tiny Fullalove had not altered at this second meeting, and she also found that she distrusted the bluff Bill as much as she disliked his brown-faced, jovial cousin. Bill was good company; there was no doubt about that. He was a man of wide experience and knowledge. He was good-humoured, good-looking and attractively jolly. No one would share her feeling about him except Miss Hughes, she thought.

She tried to rationalize her emotional reactions, but about both cousins there was something which repelled her; something which, to her analytical mind, did not ring true. She could not account for the feeling, for Jonathan most obviously liked Bill, and Deborah’s little revelation that it was within Tiny’s scope to play the wolf with a lovely girl affected Mrs Bradley not at all. Deborah, like most lovely girls, was very well able to lob back undesirable passes, particularly since her most happy and satisfying marriage, and a layman who never deviated from the path of monastic virtue was a phenomenon which, so far, Mrs Bradley had not encountered. It was not, therefore, Tiny as a potential home-and-heart-breaker to whom Mrs Bradley objected, nor to Bill as a lively good fellow. No; there was something else; but what it was she could not, so far, hit upon. She put the subject out of her mind and joined in the animated noise of a roomful of people, most of whom were obviously and heartily enjoying themselves.

Boxing Day lunch, tea and dinner passed pleasantly enough, and immediately dinner was over the Fullaloves and their two friends went off. Mrs Bradley was interested to observe the reactions of the others at their going, for it seemed early to break up the party.