Spinsters in Jeopardy. Ngaio Marsh

I fancy this ménage is not entirely your cup of tea. You’re almost pathologically normal, aren’t you? Forgive me if I bolt back to my burrow, the glare is really more than I can endure. God, somebody’s coming!’

      He stumbled away from the door. Alleyn with Ricky in his arms, came out of the hall followed by Robin Herrington. Glande ejaculated: ‘Oh, sorry!’ and bolted down the stairs. Herrington scowled after him and said: ‘That’s our tame genius. I’ll come to the car, if I may.’

      As they walked in single file down the steps and past the maker of figurines, Troy had the feeling that Robin wanted to say something to them and didn’t know how to begin. They had reached the open platform where Raoul waited by the car before he blurted out:

      ‘I do hope you will let me drive you down, to see the yacht. Both of you, I mean. I mean …’ he stopped short.

      Alleyn said: ‘That’s very nice of you. I hadn’t heard about a yacht.’

      ‘She’s quite fun.’ He stood there, still with an air of hesitancy. Alleyn shifted Ricky and looked at Troy, who held out her hand to Robin.

      ‘Don’t come any farther,’ she said. ‘Goodbye and thank you.’

      ‘Goodbye. If we may, Ginny and I will call at the hotel. It’s the Royal, I suppose. I mean, it might amuse you to come for a drive. I mean, if you don’t know anybody here …’

      ‘It’d be lovely,’ Troy temporized, wondering if Alleyn wanted her to accept.

      ‘As a matter of fact,’ Alleyn said, ‘we have got someone we ought to look up in Roqueville. Do you know anybody about here with the unlikely name of Garbel?’

      Robin’s jaw dropped. He stared at them with an expression of extraordinary consternation. ‘I … no. No. We haven’t really met any of the local people. No. Well I mustn’t keep you standing in the sun. Goodbye.’

      And with a precipitancy as marked as his former hesitation, he turned and limped off down the passageway.

      ‘Now what,’ Troy asked her husband, ‘in a crazy world, is the significance of that particular bit of lunacy?’

      ‘I’ve not the beginning of a notion,’ he said. ‘But I suggest that when we’ve got time to think, we call on Mr Garbel.’