Alleyn said: ‘If I may, I’ll borrow the clothes, gloves, and stockings. We’ll pick them up at Hammer Farm on our way back to Chyning.’

Kitty accepted this. She was looking at Alleyn with the eye, however wan, of a woman who spots a genuine Dior in a bargain basement.

‘I’ll hurry back,’ she said, ‘and get them ready for you.’

‘There’s no immediate hurry.’

Mark said: ‘I was wearing whites. I put brogues on for going home and carried my tennis shoes.’

‘And your racket?’

‘Yes.’

‘And, after Bottom Bridge, Lady Lacklander’s sketching gear and shooting-stick?’

‘That’s right.’

‘By the way,’ Alleyn asked him, ‘had you gone straight to your tennis party from Nunspardon?’

‘I looked in on a patient in the village.’

‘And on the gardener’s child, didn’t you?’ Kitty said. ‘They told me you’d lanced its gumboil.’

‘Yes. An abscess, poor kid,’ Mark said cheerfully.

‘So you had your professional bag too?’ Alleyn suggested.

‘It’s not very big.’

‘Still; quite a load.’

‘It was rather.’

‘But Lady Lacklander had left it all tidily packed up, hadn’t she?’

‘Well,’ Mark said, with a smile at his grandmother, ‘more or less.’

‘Nonsense,’ Lady Lacklander said, ‘there was no more or less about it. I’m a tidy woman and I left everything tidy.’

Mark opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘Your paint rag for instance?’ Alleyn said, and Mark glanced sharply at him.

‘I overlooked the rag, certainly,’ said Lady Lacklander rather grandly, ‘when I packed up. But I folded it neatly and tucked it under the strap of my haversack. Why have you put on that look, Mark?’ she added crossly.

‘Well, darling, when I got there, the rag, far from being neatly folded and stowed, was six yards away on a briar bush. I rescued it and put it into your haversack.’

They all looked at Alleyn as if they expected him to make some comment. He was silent, however, and after a considerable pause Lady Lacklander said: ‘Well, it couldn’t be of less significance, after all. Go indoors and ask them to get the clothes together. Fisher knows what I wore.’

‘Ask about mine, old boy, will you?’ said George, and Alleyn wondered how many households there were left in England where orders of this sort were still given.

Lady Lacklander turned to Rose. ‘And what about you, child?’

But Rose stared out with unseeing eyes that had filled again with tears. She dabbed at them with her handkerchief and frowned at herself.

‘Rose?’ Lady Lacklander said quietly.

Still frowning, Rose turned and looked at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘They want to know what clothes you wore, my dear.’

‘Tennis things, I imagine,’ Alleyn said.

Rose said: ‘Oh, yes. Of course. Tennis things.’

Kitty said: ‘It’s the day for the cleaner. I saw your tennis things in the box, didn’t I, Rose?’