He went into the drawing room and picked up the phone. “I’m on my way, Earl.”

“I’ll be ready, Sir Paul.”

Chavasse pulled on a navy blue raincoat, switched off the light and went downstairs.

Earl Jackson was black, a fact which had given him no trouble at all with the more racist elements in the British army, where he had served in both 1 Para and the SAS, mainly because he was six feet four in height and still a trim fifteen stone in spite of being forty-four years of age. He’d earned a Distinguished Conduct Metal in the Falklands and he and his wife, Lucy, had been with Chavasse for ten years now.

It had started to rain and when Chavasse opened the front door he found Jackson waiting with a raised umbrella, very smart in grey uniform and peaked cap. As they went down the steps to the Jaguar, Chavasse glanced across at the garden. There was a slight movement in the shadows.

“Still there?”

“He certainly is,” Jackson told him, and opened the passenger door at the front, for Chavasse always sat with him.

“You mean it’s a man?” Chavasse said as he got in.

Jackson shut the door, put the umbrella down and slid behind the wheel. “But no ordinary man.” He started the engine. “Lucy says he’s sort of Chinese.”

Jackson drove away and Chavasse said, “What does she mean by ‘sort of’?”

“She says there’s something different about him. Not really like any Chinese she knows and quite different from those Thais and Koreans you see in their restaurants.”

Chavasse nodded. “And the skirt?”

“She just got a glimpse while he was under the lamp. She said it seemed like some sort of robe and as far as she could make out in the bad light it was a kind of yellow colour.”

Chavasse frowned. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

“You want me to do something about it, Sir Paul?”