‘Not to me, either. As a matter of fact, I want to go to Selbury. I went in on Saturday and forgot the most important thing of all – a new lipstick. And I have a date tomorrow evening. I really need that lipstick.’

In the end Miss Benson was begging to be allowed to drive her into Selbury.

Miss Mayfield kept her eye on the speedometer, and every time the wobbling needle went about forty, she said, ‘Please.’ Only once did she drop her role of nervous, slightly unwilling passenger, and that was when Miss Benson said:

‘D’you know, I have a theory about Ethel Rigby, something nobody else has thought of, and if I said it, they’d just laugh and say, “But they’re only kids.” The average person is very Ignorant and sentimental about the young. Trained people know differently. Ethel was dotty about Sidney Baines, and I mean dotty.’

‘Then why should she go to Yarmouth? I’m sorry. I don’t see . . .’

‘I’ll bet you Sydney knew where they were going and let it out.’

Almost afraid to think lest telepathy should be as efficient as some people claimed, Miss Mayfield thought, But Mrs Baines wrote to me from London.

Aloud she said, ‘That is possible. Yes, very possible. And no one else ever thought of that.’

‘I’m a bit of a psychologist. Ethel and Sydney did more than gather rabbit food.’

‘He was only twelve,’ Miss Mayfield protested.

‘Did you never read your Aldous Huxley?’

‘We’re touching seventy. Please!’ Miss Mayfield said.

‘There’s the Post Office. I’ll park on the Square and go to the chemist’s and turn round and pick you up.’

‘I wonder would you very much mind getting something for me as well? I’ve made a list, and here,’ she fumbled a little, ‘here is a prescription, and some money.’

The prescription was old, a remedy for the indigestion which living with Janet Lovelace had provoked, and the last time she had used it, it had taken fifteen minutes to prepare. Everything else on her list was as simple, old-maidish and troublesome as she could make it. Half an ounce of powdered orrisroot, for example. ‘It may seem old-fashioned,’ she explained, ‘but it is a better moth deterrent than any of these new things. The same with the sweet spirits of nitre; half a teaspoonful in a glass of hot water, with two lumps of sugar, breaks up a cold more quickly than anything I know.’

They’ll think I’ve gone crackers, Miss Benson thought.

Harmless and bumbling Miss Mayfield made her way into the Post Office, went with a sudden briskness to the row of telephone booths and shut herself in and asked for the Yarmouth Telephone Exchange.