Miss Rickerby-Carrick crinkled her eyes and stripped her teeth. “Jolly good show,” she said. She gazed at Troy for some time and then returned to her writing. An affluent-looking car drove half-way down the cobbled passage. Its uniformed driver got out, walked to the quay, looked superciliously at nothing in particular, returned, spoke through the rear window to an indistinguishable occupant and resumed his place at the wheel.

“When I examine in depth the motives by which I am activated,” wrote Miss Rickerby-Carrick in her book. “I am appalled. For instance. I have a reputation, within my circle (admittedly a limited one) for niceness, for kindness, for charity. I adore my reputation. People come to me in their trouble. They cast themselves upon my bosom and weep. I love it. I’m awfully good at being good. I think to myself that they must all tell each other how good I am. ‘Hay Rickerby-Carrick,’ I know they say, ‘She’s so good.’ And so I am. I am. I put myself out in order to keep up my reputation. I make sacrifices. I am unselfish in buses, upstanding in tubes and I relinquish my places in queues. I visit the aged, I comfort the bereaved and if they don’t like it they can lump it. I am filled with amazement when I think about my niceness. O misery, misery, misery me,” she wrote with enormous relish.

Two drops fell upon her open notebook. She gave a loud, succulent and complacent sniff.

Troy thought: “Will she go on like this for five days? Is she dotty? O God, has she got a cold!”

“Sorry,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick. “I’ve god a bid of cold. Dur,” she added making a catarrhal clicking sound and allowing her mouth to fall slightly open. Troy began to wonder if there was a good train to London before evening.

“You wonder,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick in a thick voice, “why I sit on my suitcase and write. I have lately taken to a diary. My self-propelling confessional, I call it.”