‘Bridling is not my line. More ham?’

‘Please.’ Martin passed his plate.

‘I hope you will soon give up your unsporting occupation and find a girl of the right age,’ said Calypso, referring obliquely to Martin’s profession.

‘I thought unsought advice was against your principles,’ answered Martin. Secretly he agreed with E. M. Forster that it was more important to be loyal to one’s friends than one’s country.

Calypso laughed. ‘A slip, my dear. The great improvement in your cousin Willy since he married Poppy makes me hopeful for others.’

‘I shall bear your concern in mind,’ said Martin. ‘I am due in Washington next week.’

‘Another job?’ Martin sensed an unsniffed sniff. ‘Won’t your bachelorhood be at serious risk? Those American girls are delicious.’

‘It has survived on previous assignments.’ Martin met his aunt’s eye.

‘All right.’ She tacitly admitted that she had teased him enough. ‘All right.’

Later that evening, driving through a downpour of rain along the road to the Old Rectory, Martin thought it was pleasant to be free of Clug. What really bugs me, he thought, hesitating in the rain in the darkness of the Old Rectory drive, is why a woman like Laura Thornby should have bothered with Clug when there was so obviously no future in it?

Standing in the shelter of the laurel hedge he reviewed such facts as he had gleaned that day. Brought up by her mother and uncle, school fees paid by someone called Ned Peel, who might or might not be her father. A wickedly mischievous child who had turned into a woman no one seemed to know much about; there was the impression that she was more feared than liked, that she was remarkably secretive. I know why I am secretive, Martin thought, why should she be? There was the emphasis on her wearing bright colours, a linking of her name with Ned Peel’s son Christopher (old, very old history this). Her parent was considered a handicap, well, that’s not unusual. ‘A bit lonely, or perhaps I should say solitary.’ The man in the bookshop. ‘Not someone you’d care to tangle with.’ The woman in the flower shop.

Encouraged by a fresh burst of rain Martin shook off his hesitation and rang the Old Rectory bell. There was an instant barking uproar from a well-lit hall. Martin waited, then rang again. The barking increased but nobody came. He lifted the letterbox flap and squinted in. Across a hallway he could see an umbrella stand and in it his forebear’s umbrella. Some attempt had been made to furl it and it looked extraordinarily disreputable. His view was blotted out by snapping teeth and hot doggy breath accompanied by choking barks.

Martin withdrew and began circling the house; many people he knew sat asking to be burgled as they watched loud television. At the back of the house light streamed out from a ground floor window; there was a door with a knocker. He knocked. Since nobody came he pushed and the door swung open to show a large room which smelled of woodsmoke, flowers, garlic, pepper. Martin called, ‘Hullo? Anybody there?’