Then he muttered his excuses quietly and left the room. As I watched him feel his way back down the corridor, moving slowly and in obvious discomfort, my worry for him was tinged only slightly with the familiar exasperation. My own illness had passed with the rising of the sun, leaving only a faint headache.

More confrontation. There was no alternative.

I went to his room, taking seconds to make the walk down the passageway that had taken him minutes. He wasn’t there. I knew he hadn’t come back past me. On down the passageway, and I saw the door to the doctor’s room standing open: on the table between the beds, Gideon had arrayed his implements—the brass microscope, the case that contained his scalpels and tweezers, a mortar and pestle and a jar, in which floated a spread-eagled mouse. I stepped closer, drawn by horror, and stared through the curved glass at the tiny filigrees of its whiskers, the delicately furred snout. He’d moved fast to capture that one, I thought. I hadn’t seen him venture out.

A movement reflected in the curve of the jar. I spun around. No one.

I turned down the remainder of the corridor and out the door that had led me to the privy last night. I knocked there and got no response, so I walked up a short rise, sand alternating with granite, and found my father sitting alone on a boulder. He knew my footfalls.

‘Darling.’

I sighed in response. ‘You’re not well.’

A dry laugh. ‘And for once, nor are you.’ The wind in his hair, sand on his feet. Age was wasting the bulk from his thighs, and now his knees poked comically at his trousers.

‘It wasn’t suicide,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone killed him.’

‘Father, I wouldn’t raise this, but last night he was drunk and he—he more or less professed his love for me. And I rejected him, I suppose you would say.’

It wasn’t that clear, of course, but how could I explain all of it?

He considered this a moment. ‘Well, that may be, but he was killed. There’s a fracture in the back of his skull. About six inches long. It’ll be a blunt object: rounded, not edged. Jemmy or some such.’

‘Why would they kill Connolly? They’d barely met him. He was drunk, but he wasn’t causing any trouble.’

‘What about the native woman? She seems to hate us all. Maybe Connolly was an easy target for her.’

‘What, easier than a drunk blind man three times his age?’ It was a lazy swipe. ‘Sorry.’

He had turned his head slightly in response to the barb but said nothing.

‘I’ve asked you many times but you never answer me. How are you drinking, Father?’

‘What do you mean?’