Lady Lacklander moved slightly. Mr Phinn made a noise in his throat.

‘Well, Occy?’ she said.

Mr Phinn, summoned by telephone and strangely acquiescent, said: ‘My dear Lady L., I can only repeat what I’ve already told you, had you all relied on my discretion, as I must acknowledge Cartarette did, there would have been no cause for anxiety on any of your parts over Chapter 7.’

‘You’ve behaved very handsomely, Occy.’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Believe me, no.’

‘Yes, you have. You put us to shame. Go on, George.’

‘I don’t know that there’s anything more. Except –’

‘Answer me this, George. Did you suspect her?’

George put his great elderly hand across his eyes and said: ‘I don’t know, Mama. Not at once. Not last night. But this morning. She came by herself, you know. Mark called for Rose. I came downstairs and found her in the hall. It seemed queer. As if she’d been doing something odd.’

‘From what Rory tells us she’d been putting my shoes that you’d lent her without my leave, in the downstairs cloakroom,’ Lady Lacklander said grimly.

‘I am completely at a loss,’ Mr Phinn said suddenly.

‘Naturally you are, Occy.’ Lady Lacklander told him about the shoes. ‘She felt of course that she had to get rid of them. They’re the ones I wear for sketching when I haven’t got a bad toe and my poor fool of a maid packed them up with the other things. Go on, George.’

‘Later on, after Alleyn had gone and you went indoors, I talked to her. She was sort of different,’ said poor George. ‘Well, damned hard. Sort of almost suggesting – well, I mean it wasn’t exactly the thing.’

‘I wish you would contrive to be more articulate. She suggested that it wouldn’t be long before you’d pay your addresses?’

‘Er – er –’

‘And then?’

‘I suppose I looked a bit taken aback. I don’t know what I said. And then – it really was pretty frightful – she sort of began, not exactly hinting but – well –’

‘Hinting,’ Lady Lacklander said, ‘will do.’

‘– that if the police found Chapter 7 they’d begin to think that I – that we – that –’

‘Yes, George. We understand. Motive.’

‘It really was frightful. I said I thought it would be better if we didn’t sort of meet much. It was just that I suddenly felt I couldn’t. Only that, I assure you, Mama. I assure you, Octavius.’

‘Yes, yes,’ they said. ‘All right, George.’

‘And then, when I said that, she suddenly looked,’ George said this with an unexpected flash, ‘like a snake.’

‘And you, my poor boy,’ his mother added, ‘looked, no doubt, like the proverbial rabbit.’

‘I feel I’ve behaved like one, anyway,’ George rejoined with a unique touch of humour.