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Paddington is an enormous station, and the police can’t be everywhere at once. He could probably slip through.’
    â€˜Then why hasn’t he?’ I stopped in the middle of the pavement, causing annoyed pedestrians to jostle around us. ‘If he left yesterday after lunch, that’s nearly twenty-four hours he’s had to get here and get on a train to London. Plenty of time. So why is he still here?’
    Alan propelled me into the doorway of a shop, out of the stream of traffic. ‘Dorothy, we don’t know. We don’t know anything. And yes, I can understand your concern. I rather like the boy, too, and I agree it’s frustrating not to be able to help him.’
    â€˜You could find out about the case. They’d tell you, of all people, whether it was murder, and whether they suspect Paul – all that.’
    â€˜Perhaps. But don’t you see our position? Or mine, at any rate? I have no right to go poking about in a case that would be well out of my jurisdiction even if I had any authority anywhere, which I no longer do. The police are jealous of their prerogatives, Dorothy, and they don’t like superannuated bigwigs trying to throw their weight around.’
    â€˜But  . . .’ But what? But he’s only a child? That was no argument. Paul was plainly in his early twenties, and however childlike that might appear to me, he was an adult. But he was in trouble. That didn’t need saying.
    I could understand what Alan was saying, and why he felt he couldn’t get involved. We had gone a-sleuthing together several times, most recently at a country house where we were spending a long weekend. But that was different. We were isolated by an epic storm, and there had been no other police presence to look into the strange things that were happening.
    This time there were plenty of official toes to be stepped on.
    I took a deep breath. ‘Alan, I do understand. But is there any reason why I shouldn’t do a little nosing around? Strictly unofficially, and without your trying to get any information from anybody?’
    He looked at me and shook his head, but with affection. ‘And can I stop you, my dear? I’ve never known you to see another human being in distress and not try to do something about it. All I ask is that you leave me out of it.’
    â€˜But we can talk about it, can’t we? Of course we can. Reason things out together. I go off at tangents, you know, and I need you to do a reality check for me now and then.’
    He hugged my shoulders. It was as overt a demonstration as he would allow himself in a public place, and it made me feel warm all over. ‘Nor have I ever been able to stop you talking. Hold off the fire in your eyes, woman! I suggest we defer any talk until we are in a place where we can hear ourselves think. Meantime, shall we enjoy the beauties of Cheltenham?’
    I’m afraid I remember very little of the beauties of Cheltenham, though I’ve seen pictures since, and regretted what I missed. Alan tells me we saw a good deal of Regency architecture, walked through some lovely gardens, saw buskers advertising the performing arts festival being held in the city.
    It was mid-afternoon when we walked, weary and footsore, into the cool and quiet oasis of a church.
    â€˜This is the famous All Saints’, with the Burne-Jones windows,’ said Alan, looking not at the windows but at me.
    â€˜Oh. Oh! Yes, they’re lovely,’ I said, glancing at a window presumably by Burne-Jones.
    â€˜Dorothy.’ Alan’s tone drew my attention. ‘My dear, you don’t like the Pre-Raphaelites.’
    Well, no, I didn’t like them much. They were a group of English painters and decorative artists – Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, others I’d forgotten – in the mid-1800s who believed that painting was at its best and highest level before the time of the