After breakfast there was the usual Sunday confusion as to what should be done before the pubs opened at twelve. I was feeling the need of fresh air myself and decided to go for a...

I said: ‘Don’t imagine things, Livia. It isn’t like that. It’s no more than a weakness in Piers’s sexual make-up that makes him incapable of retaining an interest in any woman for long. In that...

We walked for a few minutes in silence, our hands clasped lightly, the air grey and breathless about us to the cold, shadowy heights of the sky. A fat old man and a young girl...

‘Rupert dropped in to see you. He’s had no chance to have a chat with you since you arrived.’ Britton said, over his shoulder: ‘No, that’s right. We both seem to have been too busy...

I glanced beyond him to where Rupert was resting his long body against the wall. He looked more melancholy than ever, although I should have known him better than to form generalizations based on his...

‘Good old Rupert. Nothing’s lost on you, is it? All grist to the sacred mill. But what comes out of all that grist? What makes the mill-wheel turn? And who’s the miller?’ ‘Comes out?’ Rupert...

‘Joe! Ready to come up and tackle the spooks? Piers told me to fetch you.’ She flicked her head sideways. ‘And you, of course, Tenn.’ My earlier resentment was not completely gone. There was no...

Piers, I observed, greeted us both with the same smile, an incongruous glance of friendship from those deep, withdrawn eyes of his. He said to Britton: ‘Lend Lulu a hand with the table, Joe, will...

I went over to the table with him while Piers fixed the radiogram. Lulu, Britton and I took our chairs, Lulu sitting between us so that she faced Piers’s empty chair. Britton gazed round at...