The first impression of Jonathan Mercer, whose bestselling crime novels were occasionally erotic, usually dark and often violent – though never without a certain black humour – was not what most of the students at Glendrochatt expected. Joyce and Marnie were the only two who had never read any of his books. Christopher, Win and the Colonel pronounced themselves ardent fans, while Bunty said disapprovingly they weren’t at all her sort of thing and she couldn’t see why they were so popular but she had just dipped into the odd one occasionally to keep herself informed of the current literary scene.

‘Just reading all the juicy bits more likely – the old hypocrite,’ muttered Louisa to Isobel.

Morwenna admitted that she could easily become addicted to them, but found them so scary that she could only allow herself to read them when staying in other people’s houses and had to forgo them when alone in her isolated Cornish cottage.

‘He’s the sort of writer who makes you jump at the sound of a falling leaf, and hesitate to pass your own totally unalarming broom cupboard under the stairs,’ she said. Morwenna might look stolid and unimaginative but her new acquaintances were discovering that her facade of stodgy practicality in no way corresponded to the gentle and vulnerable character who lurked inside. They were all becoming very fond of the gardening correspondent – especially the Colonel. Beady-eyed Win had noticed that he usually managed to seat himself next to Morwenna, though Bunty always rushed for the chair on his other side, making the seating of the class resemble a competitive game of musical chairs.

Tickets for Jonathan Mercer’s talk had sold out weeks before and the little theatre was full. Daniel Hoffman’s delightful backdrop, which depicted not only the romantic setting of Glendrochatt and the immediate Grant family members, but one or two of the arts centre’s chief patrons as well – wittily representing their various quirks and enthusiasms – had been let down at the back of the stage. Isobel had done two spectacular arrangements of young beech leaves, ‘pheasant eye’ narcissi and the yellow mollis azaleas that grew, semi-wild, all over the garden. She had put the two big urns she kept for these occasions on pedestals at either side of the stage and the whole theatre smelt delicious. The buzz of conversation stopped as Giles and Isobel came into the theatre accompanied by a small, round teddy bear of a man, with thick pebble glasses and an ill-fitting jacket of a peculiarly unbecoming shade of ochre. He shambled on to the stage with the absentminded look of one who has mislaid his car keys, is finally driven to searching for them in rather an unlikely place, and then can’t remember how he came to be there.