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advice and went inside.
    Madame Zetterling looked like MarieAntoinette’s elder sister. Her technique was different inasmuch as the tools of her trade consisted of a pack of very greasy playing cards which she shuffled and dealt with a speed and dexterity that would have had her automatically blackballed in any casino in Europe, but the forecast for his future was exactly the same. So was the price.
    Cecile was still waiting outside, still smiling. Ferenc was standing now by the archway in the hedge and had clearly taken over the eye-riveting stint from the shooting-stall attendant. Bowman polished his glasses some more.
    â€˜God help us,’ Bowman said. ‘This is nothing but a matrimonial agency. Extraordinary. Uncanny.’ He replaced his glasses. Lot’s wife had nothing on Ferenc. ‘Quite incredible, in fact.’
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜Your resemblance,’ Bowman said solemnly, ‘to the person I’m supposed to marry.’
    â€˜My, my!’ She laughed, pleasantly and with genuine amusement. ‘You do have an original mind, Mr Bowman.’
    â€˜Neil,’ Bowman said, and without waiting for further advice entered the next booth. In the comparative obscurity of the entrance he looked round in time to see Ferenc shrug his shoulders and move off into the forecourt.
    The third fortune-teller made up the cast for the three witches of Macbeth . She used tarot cards and ended up by telling Bowman that he would shortly be journeying across the seas where he would meet and marry a raven-haired beauty and when he said he was getting married to a blonde the following month she just smiled sadly and took his money.
    Cecile, who now clearly regarded him as the best source of light entertainment around, had a look of frankly malicious amusement on her face.
    â€˜What shattering revelations this time?’
    Bowman took his glasses off again and shook his head in perplexity: as far as he could see he was no longer the object of anyone’s attention. ‘I don’t understand. She said: “Her father was a great seaman, as was his, as was his.” Doesn’t make any kind of sense to me.’
    It did to Cecile. She touched a switch somewhere and the smile went out. She stared at Bowman, green eyes full of perplexed uncertainty.
    â€˜My father is an admiral,’ she said slowly. ‘So was my grandfather. And great-grandfather. You – you could have found this out.’
    â€˜Sure, sure. I carry a complete dossier on every girl I’m about to meet for the first time. Come up to my room and I’ll show you my filing cabinets – I carry them about in a pantechnicon. And wait, there’s more. I quote again: “She has a roseshaped strawberry birthmark in a place where it can’t be seen.”’
    â€˜Good God!’
    â€˜I couldn’t have put it better myself. Hang on. There may be worse yet to come.’ Bowman made no excuse and gave no reason for entering the fourth booth, the only one that held any interest for him, nor was it necessary: the girl was so shaken by what she’d just been told that the oddity of Bowman’s behaviour must have suddenly become of very secondary importance.
    The booth was very dimly lit, the illumination coming from an Anglepoise lamp with a very low wattage bulb that cast a pool of light on a green baize table and a pair of hands that lay lightly clasped on the table. Little of the person to whom the hands belonged could be seen as she sat in shadow with her head bent but enough to realize that she would never make it as one of the three witches of Macbeth or even as Lady Macbeth herself. This one was young, with flowing titian hair reaching below her shoulders and gave the vague impression, although her features were almost indistinguishable, that she must be quite beautiful: her hands certainly were.
    Bowman sat on the chair opposite her and looked at the card on the table which bore the