In the face of his bland and insolent assurance, her own excited loathing was beginning to look foolish. For the thousandth time in her life – even now at this special pitch of guilt – she could not prick his guard.

“If you hurt her, Charles,” she said at last, intensely, “it will finish everything. I’ll go to the police.”

His face, mildly surprised, regarded hers steadily.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stepped between the curtains, and out on to the cork floor: she saw that he was in his shirtsleeves, and carried some kind of wrench or spanner in his hand. He held it out to her. “See?” he said amiably. “I was fixing the tap.”

“You were waiting for Esther.”

He shook his head, as if the situation were beyond him. “Very well,” he said cheerfully, “I was waiting for her. With a spanner. I always use a spanner. The adjustable kind – so convenient for little girls.”

“You filthy bastard!” she shouted at him, suddenly beyond control. His unabashed and smiling face, mature, experienced, elegantly framed by the iron-grey hair, was more than she could stomach. “Is there any rotten thing in the world you wouldn’t do?”

“The tap,” he said quietly. It was the lunatic, nightmare answer once more. “It leaks. I was fixing it.”

“If you harm her,” she said, “I’ll kill you!”

“I wouldn’t harm her.” She saw that he was now laughing quietly. “Not with my little adjustable spanner. Never … I’m much too fond of her.”

It was like a siege, a siege with the enemy already within the ramparts; a jungle with the bandit waiting in silence beneath the trees, ears cocked for the snap of a twig. It was like the doors double-locked for the night, and the burglar within; it was the zoo gardens at dusk, with the gates closed and the cages left open. It was the food, gratefully swallowed, that will swell and choke in the throat; the welcomed caress that turns to throttling.

That particular night, the night before they sailed, Charles Bannister got drunk at dinner; otherwise Mrs Bannister would never have left him alone in the hotel. But by nine o’clock he was snoring on the sitting-room sofa; she had some friends she wanted to say goodbye to, and she welcomed the chance of leaving him, with a clear conscience, and going out. The unrelaxed surveillance of the past few days had been getting on her nerves.

Esther was in her own room, with the door locked. Jack Lett would be back from his party before very long. There was nothing that could go wrong … She could still hear Charles’ steady snores as she let herself out of the front door.

Esther had laid down her Braille edition of David Copperfield, and was drowsing in bed, when she felt the draught from the open window strike upon her bare arms, and ruffle her hair. For a moment she was puzzled, and then she decided that Mrs Bannister must have come in, as she had promised to do, and opened the balcony window to the cool of the night. She waited without anxiety for the touch on her shoulder which would be her familiar greeting.