“It doesn’t matter. It’s still supposed to be for motorcars,” she said, inching Brutus forward as the sheep progressed at a snail’s pace. Eventually we were free and found the builder in the village of Rock. He was an amiable sort and said if we gave him half an hour he’d have time for us. “Not that I can guarantee when I could get to the work,” he added. “It all depends on how much that foreign bloke wants done. My word. Talk about fancy. All those bathrooms!”

We left him and wandered down to the quayside. The tide was coming in and it was interesting to watch how quickly the sandbars were swallowed up and the boats suddenly bobbed at their moorings. The sun had come out and it transformed the view into a perfect picture-postcard scene.

“It’s lovely here, isn’t it?” I said when at the same time Belinda muttered, “Oh no. Not Uncle Francis again!”

And he was coming up the steps from the jetty toward us. There was no way to avoid him. He saw Belinda and reacted with surprise.

“You’re not in jail. I heard you’d been arrested. You didn’t escape, did you?”

“If I did, I’d hardly be waiting on a public dock for the police to find me,” she said.

“You might be trying to get somebody to sail you across to the Continent,” he replied. “So they let you out on bail. That’s good of them, considering that you’d be a flight risk. But, my dear child, I have to shake your hand for doing the dirty deed for me. Getting rid of that blighter Tony Summers. What a coup! I’m sure the watermen of Cornwall will erect a statue to you after you are no more.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Uncle Francis,” Belinda said calmly, “but I am no longer a suspect in the murder of Mr. Summers.”

“You’re not?” I could read the disappointment on his face. “But I thought you were caught red-handed, holding the knife over his body.”

“Alas no,” Belinda said. “The police jumped to the wrong conclusions.”

“The police actually questioned me,” he said. “Apparently you told them I had a good motive. Not very sporting of you, I thought.”

“You did suggest that I might put poison in his tea, I remember,” Belinda said.

“But, my dear girl, that was a joke. Simply a joke. My God, Belinda. If I hadn’t drunk a little too much that night and stayed on at the pub, I might have found myself behind bars. Usually I’m all alone on my boat. But thank God, for once I got involved in a game of dominoes.”

“I’m sorry if I wrongly suspected you,” Belinda said, “but I did ask myself why you had shown up at the house that day. You’d seen the daggers displayed.”