There were three upper-class ones sporting expensive clothes and loud braying voices, two men and a woman. One man was elderly with a yellowish-white moustache, glasses and a pink scalp where the sun had scorched his bald spot. The other man was tall and thin and sallow and appeared to be married to the woman, who was also tall and thin and sallow but with a deep bosom and a hard air of sexiness about her. They belonged to that stratum which has adopted the very worst manners of the aristocracy and none of the better ones. They shouted at each other rather than spoke and they stared at the other passengers with a sort of “my God” look in their eyes. Their contemptuous gaze focused in particular on a woman named Rose, middle-aged, blonde-haired with black roots, diamond rings on her long, tapering fingers, who was also accompanied by two men, one quite elderly and the other middle-aged. The three were in their way a sort of mirror image of the upper-class ones, Rose having a sexy appeal, the middle-aged man appearing to be her husband, and the elderly one a friend.

Agatha wished she had brought a book or newspaper to barricade herself behind. The skipper made the introductions. The upper-class ones were Olivia Debenham and her husband George and their friend, Harry Tembleton; the lower-class were the afore-mentioned Rose, surname Wilcox, her husband Trevor and their friend Angus King. Trevor had a beer belly and a truculent look, cropped fair hair and thick lips. Angus was an old Scotsman with sagging breasts revealed by his open-necked shirt. Like Rose and Trevor, he appeared to be pretty rich. In fact, thought Agatha, they probably belonged to the new rich class of Essex man and woman, risen to prosperity during the Thatcher years, and they could probably buy and sell the upper-class ones who were gazing at them with such contempt. Then there was a dreary couple who said in whispers that they were Alice and Bert Turpham-Jones, and Olivia sniggered and said in a loud aside that having a double-barrelled name these days was no longer what it had been.