‘Well,’ he said, ‘your friend seems to agree with me that perhaps something might be arranged on the lines you suggest.’ We kept our faces solemn. Then we got down to battle-orders, liaised with Connétables and people on the telephone, arranged time-schedules.

‘Above all,’ I said as we were leaving, ‘see that your men do not attempt to arrest the large, ugly man – called Jock. First, he would hurt them badly and second, he is not in on the deal.’

‘Did I agree to that?’

‘Surely it was understood. He’s only my servant, you see.’

‘Has he any record on the Island?’

‘None whatever, I promise you. Just hates having his fingerprints taken.’

‘Hmph. All right.’

As we were leaving the main entrance a uniformed sergeant neatly cut me out of the mob and asked whether I could give the Com mander a few minutes more of my time – alone. Quaking with guilt and terror I told the others that I would take a taxi home, then I followed the broad-based sergeant back to the C of D’s office.

‘It’s all right, Mr Mortdecai,’ he said, ‘sit down. You needn’t worry. I won’t pretend I don’t know who you are but I have no quarrel with you. That I know of.’ He let that sink in a little.

‘What I wanted was to ask you a couple of questions that I couldn’t very well ask your friends, since their wives were victims, you understand.’

I didn’t understand.

‘Well, I’m not too happy about saying positively that all these offences are by the same artist. There’s been another one, by the way, here in St Helier, but we’ve kept it out of the papers and the victim passed out: no description at all. But you know, these things catch on, they sort of become a fashion. It’s like little boys setting old ladies on fire in dark alleys – one of them does it and they all think they’ve got to.’

I shuddered. Some of my best friends have been old ladies – not to mention little boys.

‘Now,’ he went on, ‘we got a semen smear from the doctor’s wife and your Centenier contrived to get one from Mrs Davenant’s sheets – oh aye, your Centenier isn’t half as thick as he likes to pretend – and they’re both from the same class of secretor. But that’s like saying that they’re both blood-group “O”. And, as you know, Mr Breakspear was adamant about that sort of thing with regard to Mrs Breakspear, and we couldn’t get one from the new victim for reasons I needn’t go into. So we haven’t even got a third vector.’

I knew what he was going to ask, of course, but I wasn’t going to help him, was I?

‘I don’t understand how I can help you,’ I said.