Alleyn said harshly: ‘The case will rest on expert evidence of a sort never introduced before. If her counsel is clever and lucky she’ll get an acquittal. If he’s not so clever and a bit unlucky she’ll get a lifer.’ He looked at Fox. ‘Shall we go?’ he said.

He thanked Oliphant and Gripper for their work and went out to the car.

Oliphant said: ‘Has something upset the chief, Mr Fox?’

‘Don’t you worry,’ Fox said. ‘It’s the kind of case he doesn’t fancy. Capital charge and a woman. Gets to thinking about what he calls first causes.’

‘First causes?’ Oliphant repeated dimly.

‘Society. Civilization. Or something,’ Fox said. ‘I mustn’t keep him waiting. So long.’

III

‘Darling, darling Rose,’ Mark said. ‘We’re in for a pretty ghastly time, I know. But we’re in for it together, my dearest love, and I’ll watch over you and be with you, and when it’s all done with we’ll have each other and love each other more than ever before. Won’t we? Won’t we?’

‘Yes,’ Rose said, clinging to him. ‘We will, won’t we?’

‘So that something rather wonderful will come out of it all,’ Mark said. ‘I promise it will. You’ll see.’

‘As long as we’re together.’

‘That’s right,’ Mark said. ‘Being together is everything.’

And with one of those tricks that memory sometimes plays upon us, Colonel Cartarette’s face as Mark had last seen it in life, rose up clearly in his mind. It wore a singularly compassionate smile.

Together, they drove back to Nunspardon.

IV

Nurse Kettle drove in bottom gear to the top of Watt’s Hill and there paused. On an impulse or perhaps inspired by some unacknowledged bit of wishful thinking, she got out and looked down on the village of Swevenings. Dusk had begun to seep discreetly into the valley. Smoke rose in cosy plumes from one or two chimneys; roofs cuddled into their surrounding greenery. It was a circumspect landscape. Nurse Kettle revived her old fancy. ‘As pretty as a picture,’ she thought, wistfully and was again reminded of an illustrated map. With a sigh, she turned back to her faintly trembling car. She was about to seat herself when she heard a kind of strangulated hail. She looked back and there, limping through the dusk came Commander Syce. The nearer he got to Nurse Kettle, the redder in the face they both became. She lost her head slightly, clambered into her car, turned her engine off and turned it on again. ‘Pull yourself together, Kettle,’ she said, and leaning out, shouted in an unnatural voice: ‘The top of the evening to you.’

Commander Syce came up with her. He stood by the open driving window and even in her flurry, she noticed that he no longer smelt of stale spirits.