The young fellow didn’t acknowledge that, but you could see he was worried about all these plates of food, the last thing anyone wanted on a hot day like this. ‘What’s your name?’ she said to him, and he told her but she couldn’t catch it. He had been staying with an uncle near Athlone, he said; he’d had a terrible journey down through the country in order to attend the wedding. He was considered delicate, he told her as well.

‘You have a delicate look to you all right.’

The brother began to go round with a bottle of champagne. Other bottles had been brought out from the house and were standing on the grass at the edge of the flowerbed. ‘Or would you prefer a glass of burgundy?’ the brother said when he came to her, as nice as anything.

‘Ah no, no, I must definitely be going.’ She’d have stood up only she was afraid of feeling groggy due to the sun. ‘I was drinking Paddy,’ she explained to the brother. ‘There’s some inside there on the sideboard.’

She waved down the table again, smiling at everyone in case they hadn’t noticed the little movement of her hand. If he looked up from carving the fish she’d point at the bag, which she’d put on the table in front of her for safety. As soon as she caught his eye she’d get up on to her feet, groggy or not, so that he could see where she was heading and come on after her. Funny the Prille fellow being invited, and the wife with him.

‘I’m a widow myself,’ she said to the Bishop, feeling he should know that before they went any further. She told him about the death that had taken place in a back bedroom of the Rose of Tralee, how it had had to be a bedroom at the back owing to the boarding-house proprietor’s aversion to sunlight.

‘I said to Woulfe would he operate but you could be talking to the wall.’ She waved across the table at the medical man in question to show that no offence had been taken, then she took the ten-pound notes out of her handbag and counted them again. ‘D’you know Corcoran in the Munster and Leinster?’ she said.

The Bishop replied that he was not of the neighbourhood. He was not acquainted with the local people. He had noticed the man who’d driven the motor-car to and from the church, but he could not claim that he had in any way got to know him. He hadn’t even spoken to him.

‘That’s Coyne you’re talking about. Corcoran’s a different kettle of fish.’

‘I am not acquainted with Mr Corcoran either.’

‘Are you acquainted with McGrath? Or Tobin?’

‘I’m afraid not.’