Verity Preston was really sorry. McBride was often maddening and sometimes rude but they shared a love of old-fashioned roses and respected each other. When she had influenza he brought her primroses in a jampot and climbed a ladder to put them on her window-sill. She was touched.

An immediate result of his death was a rush for the services of Mrs. Black’s newly arrived brother. Sybil Foster got in first, having already paved the way with his sister. On the very morning after McBride’s death, with what Verity Preston considered indecent haste, she paid a follow-up visit to Mrs. Black’s cottage under cover of a visit of condolence. Ridiculously inept, Verity considered, as Mr. Black had been dead for at least three weeks and there had been all those fulsomely redundant expressions of sympathy only the previous afternoon. She’d even had the nerve to take white japonica.

When she got home she rang up Verity.

“My dear,” she raved, “he’s perfect. So sweet with that dreary little sister and such good manners with me. Called one Madam which is more than — well, never mind. He knew at once what would suit and said he could sense I had an understanding of the ‘bonny wee floods.’ He’s a Scot.”

“Clearly,” said Verity.

“But quite a different kind of Scot from McBride. Highland, I should think. Anyway — very superior.”

“What’s he charge?”

“A little bit more,” said Sybil rapidly “but, my dear, the difference!”

“References?”

“Any number. They’re in his luggage and haven’t arrived yet. Very grand, I gather.”

“So you’ve taken him on?”

“Darling! What do you think? Mondays and Thursdays. All day. He’ll tell me if it needs more. It well may. After all, it’s been shamefully neglected — I know you won’t agree, of course.”

“I suppose I’d better do something about him.”