“Just evidence that you are Peter Kennedy.”

The other grinned, showed a badge, and gave a mock salute.

After he had gone, Roger looked about the room, inspected the cups and saucers and everything on the table, reading the story they told; that the Shawns had been overwhelmed with tiredness at the end of the meal, had dragged themselves up to bed and had “slept” for twelve hours and more. At eight-ten when Lissa Meredith had arrived, they had been unconscious; probably they had come round half an hour or so ago.

He walked about the room, which wasn’t large — perhaps fifteen feet by twenty or so. It had a fitted carpet in pearl grey, the furniture was contemporary, spindly and expensive, as far removed from utility as a mink fur coat from a coney. Everything was pleasing to the eye. There were no pictures, not even the half-expected abstracts, only three framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Roger looked at the middle picture, which was of the boy.

He had a small, sensitive, frightened face. Frightened, Roger wondered. Why did he get that impression? It was the face of a child who lacked confidence; yet it was impossible to say why Roger was so sure of this, unless he had been influenced by Lissa’s strictures on the mother. The expression was one he had never seen on Martin-called-Scoopy’s face, or Richard’s. He had seen it on the faces of boys who had been in trouble; urchins from the street, puffed up with a braggadocio which usually collapsed when they reached the threshold of the Juvenile Court. He had seen it on the face of a neighbour’s son, and learned afterwards that the couple had quarrelled day in, day out; divorce had brought the child a kind of peace.

Sensitive, then, and frightened — or lost? Yet the son of wealthy parents, with everything life could offer.