“We can’t all be Mr. Grisham, and retire quietly with nobody asking awkward questions. Jimmy’s going to be the next earl; of course he’ll marry at some point. One has...diversions, before marriage. That’s the way of things.”

“Rubbish. Don’t tell me you’re a casual diversion sort of chap when you’ve been looking like a chewed piece of string since we got here. Before that, in fact, because you looked dreadful at Jonty’s wedding. Is that why you were so unkind about Fen? And angry that he took her to the theatre?”

Bill winced. “Don’t. We’d been that same week, Jimmy and I, and it stung. He didn’t warn me, and when I found out...” He made a face. “I don’t suppose I had any great right to make a fuss. But I did, because it hurt dreadfully.”

“Oh, Bill.”

“I didn’t want to come here at all after that, but it was all arranged, and the office insisted and I couldn’t find a good excuse to get out of it. I told myself I could at least tie things up properly, only then I arrived and learned Miss Carruth would be here too, and that made everything worse to a degree I can’t tell you. I thought I might go mad watching Jim dance attendance on that—”

“Hoi!”

“I don’t mean to be rude to Miss Carruth,” Bill said hastily. “None of this situation was her fault, and she’s behaved with great good sense, but I wasn’t in a frame of mind to appreciate her qualities. And then they ended the engagement, you see, and you told me what Jimmy had said.”

“That he was in love with someone else and hadn’t realised it.”

“Mmm.” Bill seemed to be concentrating on the picture above the mantelpiece. His cheeks were red. “And—well, anyway, we’ve been trying to settle our differences.”

Pat suspected that covered a great deal of desire, desperation, love, and pain, none of which she wanted to hear about from her brother. “It seems to me that Jimmy has behaved extremely badly.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” Bill said, with feeling. “He’d worked himself into a rotten state. He does that, you know, for all everyone thinks he’s a country squire type without a thought in his head. And in fairness, he was faced with an appalling situation.”

“Which he made appalling for you and Fen.”

Bill gave a sudden, rueful grin. “He’s an oaf. Never thinks before he acts, as with that stupid lie earlier today. He’s terrified of being caught for—you know.”

“That’s fair enough, surely?”

“It’s how things are, and one has to cope. And there’s no sense living in dread of two years for gross indecency if it means one talks oneself into being the prime suspect for murder.”