‘Mrs Cartarette. An outsider, you might say, dumped down in a little place where they’ve known each other’s pedigrees since the time they were all using bows and arrows. Bit lonely. More she tries to fit in, I dare say, the less they seem to take to her. More polite they get, the more uncomfortable they make her feel.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said, ‘true enough. You’ve shoved your great fat finger into the middle of one of those uncomfortable minor tragedies that the Lacklanders of this world prefer to cut dead. And I’ll tell you something else, Fox. Of the whole crowd of them, not excluding your girlfriend, there isn’t one that wouldn’t feel a kind of relief if she turned out to have murdered her husband.’

Fox looked startled: ‘One, surely?’ he ejaculated.

‘No,’ Alleyn insisted, with a sort of violence that was very rare with him. ‘Not one. Not one. For all of them she’s the intruder; the disturber; the outsider. The very effort some of them have tried to make on her behalf has added to their secret resentment. I bet you. How did you get on in Chyning?’

‘I saw Dr Curtis. He’s fixed up very comfortably in the hospital mortuary and was well on with the PM. Nothing new cropped up about the injuries. He says he thinks it’s true enough about the fish scales and will watch out for them and do the microscope job with all the exhibits. The Yard’s going to look up the late Sir Harold’s will and check Commander Syce’s activities in Singapore. They say it won’t take long if the Navy List gives them a line on anybody in the Service who was there at the time and has a shore job now. If they strike it lucky they may call us back in a couple of hours. I said the Boy and Donkey and the Chyning station to be sure of catching us.’

‘Good,’ Alleyn said without much show of interest. ‘Hallo, listen who’s coming? Here we go.’

He was out of the car before Fox could reply and with an abrupt change of speed began to stroll down the drive. His pipe was in his hands and he busied himself with filling it. The object of this unexpected pantomime now pedalled into Mr Fox’s ken; the village postman.

Alleyn, stuffing his pipe, waited until the postman was abreast with him.

‘Good morning,’ said Alleyn.

‘Morning, sir,’ said the postman, braking his bicycle.

‘I’ll take them, shall I?’ Alleyn suggested.

The postman steadied himself with one foot on the ground. ‘Well, ta,’ he said, and with a vague suggestion of condolence added: ‘Save the disturbance, like, won’t it, sir? Only one, anyway.’ He fetched a long envelope from his bag and held it out. ‘For the deceased,’ he said in a special voice. ‘Terrible sad, if I may pass the remark.’