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in to do secretarial work for me two or three days a week, but he doesn’t yet know that I’m back. Fortunately, there’s nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow. Cold consommé, Viola, or would you prefer hors d’oeuvres?”
    It was a good lunch, the early fruits were delicious and the coffee excellent. But Sally was too inwardly restless to eat cheerfully, and by the time Marcus was sitting back and suavely offering cigarettes she was so knotted up that she could have screamed. Perhaps Marcus sensed her tautness, for as soon as they had finished coffee he said.
    “You’ll find the siesta is a good habit, Viola. An hour’s sleep after lunch makes you feel good for the rest of the day. Do you like your room?”
    “Enormously. And since leaving England I’ve acquired the habit of an afternoon rest, and can’t do without it.” She looked up at him as he stood with her. “Sally’s a wee bit blue, Marcus. I don’t think she’s been quite so bright since we lost that delightful young pianist at Malaga. Can you think of some nice man who’ll cheer her up?”
    “I might,” he said easily, as he went with her to the nearest door into the house.
    Sally had stood up too, and had moved along the courtyard towards the steps. But she hadn’t quite reached them when Marcus came beside her, and they descended side by side without speaking, curved down, round the end of the rockery and on to the path below it. There, in the shade of an old magnolia tree, Sally stopped and faced him. But it was Marcus who spoke first, very calmly.
    “It’s not the end of the world, you know, so let’s be sane about it, shall we?”
    “I’ll try, but it’s not going to be easy. I know you’re someone rather marvellous here on San Palos, but I’m just not the type to be overawed into posing as something I’m not. I think I have a right to demand that you make it quite clear to everyone that my mother and I are merely two people you took pity on in Barcelona!”
    With dangerous softness he answered, “I’m hardly likely to make that kind of statement about my house guests; even you know enough about me to realize that. And now, perhaps, you’ll let me explain a few things. Come over here and sit down.”
    He motioned towards a white seat under a huge old peach tree that was a billow of pale pink blossom. They sat, Sally ramrod-straight at one end of the bench and Marcus half facing her at the other.
    “Cigarette?”
    “No, thank you.”
    He shrugged, and pushed the thin silver case back into his pocket. “All this, of course, began with McCartney’s surprising us at the door of my cabin the night before last,” he said evenly. “He blundered to conclusions which he’s no doubt been airing down at the hotel all morning.”
    “You could have stopped him,” she said accusingly.
    “I thought I had, but the man is like a waggish bull; once he has hold of one idea there’s not much room for anything else. After you’d left the cabin that night I was disturbed about it and went straight along to see him. I told him you and your mother were friends I’d met on board, but all he did was laugh and say he quite understood. I decided to leave it till yesterday, when the fumes should have dispersed.”
    “What happened?”
    “Something I couldn’t have foreseen. We’d no sooner tied up at Marseilles than the ‘Bellesta,’ as usual, was connected to a telephone line. McCartney’s wife was in some sort of dilemma here and she phoned him to ask what she should do about it.”
    “Is that all?”
    “It was all I found out, but it was enough. Knowing McCartney, I was pretty sure he’d tell his wife to guess who was on board ... and all the rest of it.”
    “But you had no proof. Did you see the man again?”
    “No, I left things alone; the more I’d said the more he was likely to make of it in the hotel saloon. Compared with my concern about Dona Inez. McCartney and his drunken rambling didn’t seem very important ... till I