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but we have galoshes galore. We get Admirals and Painted Ladies regularly vying for supremacy over the honeysuckle. The Painted Ladies invariably win.
    Sybil liked Society too much. She enjoyed gallivanting. Calling on people. Staying with people. Dining out. Attending matinees. Eating violet creams. Having tea at Brown’s. Going to the Chelsea Flower Show. Filling the house with crowds of people.
    If Sybil had managed to bag a husband, it would have been the husband who made the expert small talk and poured the drinks – but that, alas, wasn’t to be. Too late now – poor old Syb was the sexual equivalent of one of those 240 -volt electric kettles plugged into a 110 -volt socket – doomed never really to come to the boil.
    The woman with the booming voice was probably a matron on loan from some psychiatric institution. She certainly sounded the kind that imagined they knew exactly what was to be done about the toff fou .
    John pulled at his lip as he sat considering his next step.
    He could always barricade himself in his room. He was, after all, a soldier; being under siege was something soldiers took in their stride. Or he could write an SOS note, shove it in a bottle and throw it into the sea. As soon as the police found his message, they would send a chopper and have him rescued. But that would mean leaving the island and once he left, it might be a little difficult to get back. By the time he did manage to get back, the man in the yachting cap might already be in residence. That was something he should never allow to happen …
    ‘I don’t want to leave the island,’ John de Coverley said in a defiant voice. ‘ Ever. ’
    For a moment or two he remained deep in thought. Then, putting up his monocle, he turned his head and gazed at his gun.

    It was extremely important, Romany Garrison-Gore said, that everybody should act in a coordinated but natural enough manner, even when performing trivial and seemingly irrelevant acts, like opening a paper or asking the time, adding cream to a cup of coffee or complimenting someone on the freshness of their complexion.
    She appeared to be in complete control of her audience, but she wasn’t truly at ease. There was something in the air. She was aware of certain vibes. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she knew she wasn’t imagining it. She had always been sensitive to atmosphere, ever since she was a girl. Where were vibes coming from?
    Not from Oswald Ramskritt, she didn’t think. She rather liked Oswald. Something engagingly boyish about him and he had a vast fortune, which was again something she admired … Ella Gales looked composed and dignified as she always did, and she was holding her head high – that’s what Queen Christina must have looked like – if the Greta Garbo film was anything to go by … Little Maisie Lettering was smiling her artless smile – butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth – a Daisy Miller kind of figure – ten minutes in Maisie’s company and Romany felt like being suffocated by candyfloss … Doctor Klein brought to mind a giant balloon that had been inflated to bursting point and was about to rise at any moment … Lady Grylls had fallen into a doze again. Really, the upper classes were so terribly rude … Feversham was the picture of gentlemanly nonchalance, very smart, yet very languid, which was so English, smiling in an amused fashion as though at a joke which only he had understood. His eyeglass wasn’t exactly like John de Coverley’s – it was tortoiseshell-rimmed, while John’s was silver-rimmed, she couldn’t help noticing. Not that it mattered.
    They probably thought she was enjoying haranguing them, but that was far from being the case. Like the characters that populated her books, Romany Garrison-Gore was not what she seemed. What most people took for breathtaking conceit was actually a cover for a deeply seated sense of insecurity. She was frequently tormented by a dreadful sense of