We located it easily enough. It wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting. It was an old yellow stone building in the middle of town, but we were greeted with great deference, indicating that Belinda’s arrest had not ever made it to the newspapers. She was so happy I had brought her suitcase of possessions with me in the motor. “My clothes,” she sighed. “A long hot bath and clean clothes. Bliss. And you can take back Jonquil’s cashmere dress. I never want to see it again.”

I waited until she had changed and reluctantly took possession of the dress. I wasn’t about to go to Trewoma to return it.

“I’ll be back,” I said. “You don’t mind if I borrow Brutus, do you?”

“He seems to like you,” Belinda said. “I’m sure you’ll be nicer to him than I am. I seem to do horrible things to his gears.”

“Well, I’ll be on my way, then,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward.

Then she flung her arms around me. “You’ve been an absolute brick,” she said. “The way you spoke to that inspector! Darling, you could be a barrister. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be languishing in there, living on bread and water. Shall we go and have a jolly good lunch somewhere?”

“I’m afraid I have to meet a person at a specific time,” I said. “You enjoy your lunch. I’ll see you later.”

I watched her waving to me as I drove off, back to Rock. This time I had to put my foot down and go rather faster as I had that assignment with Darcy to keep. I arrived back in the village at 11:45, left Brutus by the church and then sauntered across to the village shop. That was when, of course, I remembered that it was Sunday. The shop was closed. There were a couple of men heading for the pub but apart from that the village was empty and silent. It wasn’t the kind of weather to be sitting outside or messing about in boats and I supposed everyone would be at home, preparing to eat Sunday lunch. This reminded me I was hungry. And no shop open to buy supplies if I spent the night at White Sails again. Then I reasoned I could do nothing more useful here after I had seen Darcy and I didn’t want him risking his safety by taking the motorboat to see me in the middle of the night, however much I had appreciated his presence.