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Frances returned brightly. She watched him stride confidently to the open door which was set in the centre of the building between two beds of colourful geraniums. Presently a worried-looking woman with wispy untidy hair and dressed in an overall appeared. Andrew put one hand on his hip and stamped his feet about as he spoke to her, which was how he always stood when he was being aggressive and not quite sure of himself.
    The woman put a hand up to her hair as though making sure it was still untidy, and glanced vaguely in the direction of the utility as she listened. Presently she interrupted the barrage and disappeared into the house. With a wink and a thumbs-up sign at Frances, Andrew followed.
    A few minutes later, he emerged, grinning triumphantly. “Okay, Frankie! I’ve made it. Hop out and I’ll get our stuff.”
    â€œAndy, you’re marvellous! However did you do it?”
    â€œGift of the gab mostly. Though there was a room booked and the people haven’t turned up. Had a telly or something from them only this morning. So balls to that stuttering little chap we met. Will his face be red when he sees us!”

PART TWO
    Murder and Motives
    Â 
    I
    The flat-bottomed old boat rocked dangerously as Athol Sefton staggered, gave an odd little choking cough, then sagged slowly across the gunwhale. His twelve-gauge double-barrelled Greenet sank into the muddy water, his hand trailing limply after it.
    The two explosions had sounded almost simultaneously. Out of the beat of wings and noises of alarm above the lagoon, a chestnut-breasted teal, caught in flight, had dropped a hundred yards away. It lay floating in eddying circles with its neck askew. Wimpey, one of the spaniels from the Duck and Dog, went out to it almost as soon as it hit the water.
    Charles Carmichael, sitting in the stern of the boat, stared incredulously at the humped figure of his uncle leaning over the side—the result of the second shot. The bright stain spreading over Athol’s shooting jacket held his bemused gaze.
    Presently all became still again. The birds had made off and the boat stopped its crazy movement. The spaniel bitch came swimming back with the dead bird in her jaw. She nosed around the limp, trailing hand and made whining sounds. Receiving no response, she swam to Charles. He released the bird and flung it distastefully on the bottom of the boat. Then he climbed along the tilted boat and with much effort managed to turn the body over. Athol’s eyes were open and glazing fast. There was a frothy stain on his lips and the blood on his jacket was starting to congeal. He had been shot under Charles’s gaze, standing up to fire at the ducks.
    Cautiously, Charles stood upright so that he was head and shoulders over the thicket of reeds into which they had pushed the boat. He gave an apprehensive look around, ready to duck for cover, but apart from the birds settling on the further end of the lagoon, there was no sign of movement. The scene was as desolate and uninviting in his eyes as when, less than an hour earlier, feeling cold, sleepy and irritable, he had crept with Athol through the low-lying scrub with a gun under his arm. He had not seen the sense of getting up at an ungodly hour just to bring down a few ducks before anyone else, but Athol had insisted upon his companionship.
    Now look what has happened, thought Charles—so staggered by the turn of events that he felt a puerile indignation.
    In spite of his absorption in fictional crime, an interest amounting almost to an intellectual passion, it was to come to him only slowly that the shot which had killed Athol had not been the accidental firing of a careless gunman, but the well-aimed shot of a marksman.
    Leaving the boat wedged in the reeds, he made his way across the marshy ground to the track which led to the road. From there he jog-trotted the mile and a half back to the Duck and Dog.
    The hotel was in the depths of early Sunday silence,