“Fine. But why don’t you talk to this horse person?”

“Because she won’t talk to a copper. Her granddad is a famous one, Tom Brownell, and she won’t talk to him about her mother’s death—”

“Hold on, hold on. I’m trying to follow this. So her mother died in suspicious circumstances and you think this—what’s her name?”

“Sydney Cooke. I think she knows something and you’re very good at prying information out of people. She doesn’t like people; she’s crazy about horses. So I need a horse person.”

“Get Diane to do it. She knows all sorts of arcane things about horses and she’s sitting right here.”

“You mean like that horse-racing walk-around thing?”

“I don’t think ‘walk-around’ is the right word, but—” The mobile was yanked from his hand by Diane. “Superintendent, you mean ‘walkover.’ It hardly ever happens. Spectacular Bid did it in the Woodward Stakes in—I don’t remember the year. ‘Walkover.’ A horse that runs by itself because it’s so incredible no other horse will take it on. Here.” The “here” was for Melrose, to whom she returned the phone.

“As I said, let Diane talk to the girl.”

“No,” said Diane. “To whatever.” She held up her glass toward Dick Scroggs, who was chewing on a toothpick behind the saloon bar.

Strether broke into this phone business, announcing his own welcome by asking, “What are you all drinking?”

They knew it was a hint and not an offer, and each one chimed in with his separate request.

“Can’t expect me to remember all that, can you?” Strether fluttered his fingers as if he were about to bring down the house with a piano concerto, but only brought down the handle of Mrs. Witherby’s mop on his shoulder.

“Gin. That’s easy enough, ain’t it?”

Caught, Strether brought out his old wallet, creaked it open, and every moth in town made its weary way home. “Uh, I’m a bit short today. We should really have a Barclay’s branch in town.”

“In this village?” said Vivian. “Hardly. There’s a branch in Sidbury, right next door, so to speak.”

“Want me to run you over?” said Trueblood.

“Uh, no, no,” said Strether, returning his wallet to a dusty pocket.

Trueblood caught Dick Scroggs’s attention and circled a finger round the table for refills.

“Why would you want a bank in Long Piddleton, Mr. Strether?” said Joanna Lewes. “You don’t even live here.”

“But I soon will do.” He smiled a toothy grin.

“You’re actually buying a place?”

“Not buying. I’m negotiating with the owners of Watermeadows to let that little cottage on their property.”

“What?” said Melrose, alarmed that Strether would be living next to Miss Flood when he himself had barely got to know her! “Do you mean the Floods? But they don’t own Watermeadows.”