I thought about that while I set down my drink and unfolded the deck-chair. It could mean a lot of things, including dishonest. I tried to look at ease in a deck-chair, which I wasn’t, and intelligent.

“What’s your trouble, Mr Gutteridge?”

He put the pistol down and sipped his drink. He was one of those people you describe as painfully thin. He had a small, pointed blonde-thatched head on top of shoulders so narrow they scarcely deserved the name. His bony torso and limbs swum about inside his beautifully cut linen clothes. He was deeply suntanned but didn’t look healthy. Under the tan there was something wrong with his skin and his eyes were muddy. He didn’t seem particularly interested in his drink so the cause of his poor condition might not be that. He was somewhere in his late thirties and he looked sick of life.

“My sister is being harassed and threatened,” he said. “She’s being goaded into killing herself- in strange ways.”

“What ways?”

“Phone calls and letters. The caller and the writer seem to know a lot about her. Everything about her.”

“Like what?”

“People she knows, things she does or has done, the perfume she wears. That sort of thing.”

“Has she done anything special with anyone in particular?”

“I resent that Hardy, the implication…” I cut in on him, “Resent away. You’re being vague. Is this private information coming through damaging to your sister’s reputation?”

He clenched his teeth and the skin stretched tight over the fine bones of his face. Letting my roughness pass exasperated him. He gave a thin sniff and took a tiny sip of his Scotch. “No, it’s quite innocent — innocent meetings, conversations reported back to her. Very upsetting, almost eerie, but not what you’re getting at. Why do you take this line?”