‘You never know,’ Alleyn repeated. ‘So the Swevenings families,’ he added, ‘tend to gravitate towards foreign parts?’

Nurse Kettle said that they certainly seemed to do so. Apart from young Viccy Danberry-Phinn getting a job in Sir Harold’s embassy there was Commander Syce whose ship had been based on Singapore and the Colonel himself who had been attached to a number of missions in the Far East, including one at Singapore. Nurse Kettle added, after a pause, that she believed he had met his second wife there.

‘Really?’ Alleyn said, with no display of interest. ‘At the time when Syce was out there, do you mean?’ It was the merest shot in the dark, but it found its mark. Nurse Kettle became pink in the face and said with excessive brightness that she believed that ‘the Commander and the second Mrs C.’ had known each other out in the East. She added, with an air of cramming herself over some emotional hurdle, that she had seen a very pretty drawing that the Commander had made of Mrs Cartarette. ‘You’d pick it out for her at once,’ she said. ‘Speaking likeness, really, with tropical flowers behind and all.’

‘Did you know the first Mrs Cartarette?’

‘Well, not to say know. They were only married eighteen months when she died giving birth to Miss Rose. She was an heiress, you know. The whole fortune goes to Miss Rose. It’s well known. The Colonel was quite hard up but he’s never touched a penny of his first wife’s money. It’s well known,’ Nurse Kettle repeated, ‘so I’m not talking gossip.’

Alleyn skated dexterously on towards Mark Lacklander and it was obvious that Nurse Kettle was delighted to sing Mark’s praises. Fox respectfully staring at her, said there was a bit of romance going on there, seemingly, and she at once replied that that was as plain as the noses on all their faces and a splendid thing, too. A real Swevenings romance, she added.

Alleyn said: ‘You do like to keep yourselves to yourselves in this district, don’t you?’

‘Well,’ Nurse Kettle chuckled, ‘I dare say we do. As I was saying to a gentleman patient of mine, we’re rather like one of those picture-maps. Little world of our own if you know what I mean. I was suggesting …’ Nurse Kettle turned bright pink and primmed up her lips. ‘Personally,’ she added rather obscurely, ‘I’m all for the old families and the old ways of looking at things.’

‘Now, it strikes me,’ Fox said, raising his brows in bland surprise, ‘and mind, I may be wrong: very likely I am: but it strikes me that the present Mrs Cartarette belongs to quite a different world. Much more mondaine if you’ll overlook the faulty accent, Miss Kettle.’