Just as it was getting too dark to continue, the clip was found by Arthur, her husband, in a clump of zinnias that he had already ransacked a dozen times. Faint with our search, we returned to the house and the others drank whisky-and-sodas in the dining room. Unfortunately I’m not allowed alcohol. Ursula Harme hurried away to return the clip to Flossie. The wool-shed was in darkness. She was not in her drawing-room or her study. When Ursula went up to her bedroom she was confronted by a poisonously arch little notice that Flossie was in the habit of hanging on her door handle when she didn’t want to be disturbed.

Please don’t knock upon my door,

The only answer is a snore.

“Disgusted but not altogether surprised, Ursula stole away but not before she had scribbled the good news on a piece of paper and slipped it under the door. She returned and told us what she had done. We went to our beds believing Flossie to be in hers. Shall I go on, sir?”

“Please do.”

“Flossie was to leave at the crack of dawn for the mail car, thence by train and ferry she was to travel to the seat of government where normally she would arrive, full of kick and drive, the following morning. On the eve of these departures she always retired early and woe betide the wretch who disturbed her.”

The track descended into a shingle bed, and the car splashed through a clear race of water. They had drawn nearer to the foot-hills and now the mountains themselves were close above them. Between desultory boulders and giant tussocks, coloured like torches in sunlight, patches of bare earth lay ruddy in the late afternoon light. In the distance, spires of Lombardy poplars appeared above the naked curve of a hill and, beyond them, a twist of blue smoke.

“Nobody got up on the following morning to see Flossie off,” said Fabian. “The mail car goes through at half-past five.