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you’re thinking, Sam. But where does Shelley come in?’
    The sergeant sighed. ‘Maxwells ain’t a local family,’ he said, ‘I don’t know everything about’n. ’Tis round twenty year or so back that Sir Joseph bought the Place. In those days there was a son. He wasn’t here much o’ the time; he was in some kind of a job up to London—Sir Joseph’d never be one to let a son idle, no matter how much money there was. He’d be down for a weekend now and then, or sometimes longer. A wild one he was; he was a daddy for the girls and liked to go on the tiddly. More than once there was stories of the trouble he had with his father. And then, all to once, he stopped comin’. Vanished. Lots o’ people asked questions. There was some stories too …’ He hesitated. ‘I always allowed as he’d had a big row with his old man over somethin’ and got thrown out.’
    â€˜And was his name Shelley?’
    The sergeant gave a troubled shake of his head. ‘I can’t remember as I ever heard his name. Folk always called’n by a kind of nickname—Bish, they called’n. Short for Bishop, I reckon, because a bishop was what he wasn’t like.’
    â€˜No,’ said Toby, ‘I’m afraid not, Sam. That wasn’t the reason. And I’m afraid his real name was Shelley.’
    â€˜Think so?’ The sergeant sighed again. ‘Not as it’s anythin’ to me, one way or the other, but ’tis the devil’s own job when you’ve any o’ these big people in on a case. Seem to think the law wasn’t meant for them.’ He swore wearily.
    Toby Dyke thrust back the black lock that curved down into his eye. It immediately fell down again. ‘Have you got that check about you, Sam, the one that was found in the man’s pocket?’
    â€˜Why?’ said the sergeant, but he produced it in the automatic way of a man who is worried and tired.
    â€˜ “Mrs Milne, The Laurels, Chovey.” Mrs Milne—that’s the woman who was in the bar, you say, the one in the blue dress. Must have been good-looking not so very many years ago—still is, if it comes to that. But tough—got a bit tough with the passing of time, eh, Sam? And who was the man who was with her?’
    â€˜Major Maxwell.’
    â€˜No, the other one—the young one who stayed behind.’
    Yawning, the sergeant answered: ‘That was Mr Laws. Relative of the Maxwells.’
    â€˜What does he do?’
    â€˜Writes books.’
    â€˜What kind of books?’
    â€˜How should I know?’
    Toby Dyke handed back the check. ‘Well, so far as I can see, Sam—this is my serious opinion—there’s going to be a certain amount of fun in the neighbourhood during the next few days. Or, as you might say, drama. Perhaps George and I will stay to see a little of it. We’re just taking a holiday, walking about and looking at things. George needs a holiday; he’s been indoors a lot too much lately—got no colour in his cheeks. What’s that you say, George?’ For George had made his little coughing noise again.
    Wringing his cap between his hands in a bashful fashion, George gave it as his opinion that it was time to go to bed.

    Having told Tom Warren that he and his friend would like their breakfast at half-past eight, Toby Dyke came down to eat it at half-past eleven.
    Even then he had not shaved. With bristles on his chin and an unfed irritability in his eye, his long, dark face looked truculent and dangerous. He made impatient gestures, opening and shutting the door of the coffee-room noisily and scraping his chair on the floor as he pulled it out from under the table, as if it were not he but the breakfast that was late. George was sitting on the window-seat, reading a newspaper.
    The coffee-room was a genteel room with white tablecloths on small round tables and some potted palms.