‘How nice to see you, Mark,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard your voices. Is this a professional call?’

Mark said: ‘Partly so at least. I ran down with a message for Colonel Cartarette, and I had a look at your gardener’s small girl.’

‘How too kind,’ she said, glancing from Mark to her stepdaughter. She moved up to him and with her gloved hand took a dark rose from the basket and held it against her mouth.

‘What a smell!’ she said. ‘Almost improper, it’s so strong. Maurice is not in, but he won’t be long. Shall we go up?’

She led the way to the house. Exotic wafts of something that was not roses drifted in her wake. She kept her torso rigid as she walked and slightly swayed her hips. ‘Very expensive,’ Mark Lacklander thought; ‘but not entirely exclusive. Why on earth did he marry her?’

Mrs Cartarette’s pin heels tapped along the flagstone path to a group of garden furniture heaped with cushions. A tray with a decanter and brandy glasses was set out on a white iron table. She let herself down on a swinging seat, put up her feet, and arranged herself for Mark to look at.

‘Poorest Rose,’ she said, glancing at her stepdaughter, ‘you’re wearing such suitable gloves. Do cope with your scratchy namesakes for Mark. A box perhaps.’

‘Please don’t bother,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll take them as they are.’

‘We can’t allow that,’ Mrs Cartarette murmured. ‘You doctors mustn’t scratch your lovely hands, you know.’

Rose took the basket from him. He watched her go into the house and turned abruptly at the sound of Mrs Cartarette’s voice.

‘Let’s have a little drink, shall we?’ she said. ‘That’s Maurice’s pet brandy and meant to be too wonderful. Give me an infinitesimal drop and yourself a nice big one. I really prefer crème de menthe, but Maurice and Rose think it a common taste so I have to restrain my carnal appetite.’

Mark gave her the brandy. ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’m by way of being on duty.’

‘Really? Who are you going to hover over, apart from the gardener’s child?’

‘My grandfather,’ Mark said.

‘How awful of me not to realize,’ she rejoined with the utmost composure. ‘How is Sir Harold?’

‘Not so well this evening, I’m afraid. In fact, I must get back. If I go by the river path perhaps I’ll meet the Colonel.’

‘Almost sure to, I should think,’ she agreed indifferently, ‘unless he’s poaching for that fabled fish on Mr Phinn’s preserves which, of course, he’s much too county to think of doing, whatever the old boy may say to the contrary.’

Mark said formally: ‘I’ll go that way, then, and hope to see him.’