“Lingering over a romance? Trying it on with the local lovelies?” Joe wondered.

“That too. The local lads as well sometimes come out, nip down Laundress Lane and hire a canoe from the Anchor boatyard, bent on reclaiming the river once the straw boaters and college scarves have cleared off.” The policeman in him added, “There’s always a nasty couple of days when they clash. Dunkings and de-baggings and other low-grade mayhem. Town and Gown have never been easy neighbours and we always put our strongest swimmers and liveliest lads on beat duty down here in June.”

They watched as a punt drifted by, both men enviously amused to see the lithe young scholar poised at his punting-pole entertaining with his chatter three girls in white dresses who lounged like decorative sofa dolls along the cushions in the centre of the flat boat, fluting and chirrupping and sipping from champagne glasses.

The girls caught sight of the two men watching them in silent admiration and, from the safety of their mid-river station, raised their glasses and shouted saucy invitations to come aboard and even up their numbers. Joe chortled, returned the salute and called back his acceptance. Would they pull over and pick up or should he swim out? He handed his glass to Hunnyton, strode to the edge and began to take off his jacket, miming eager intent. With shrieks of tipsy laughter from its cargo, the punt gave an elegant swish of its tail and swept off downstream.

Joe stared after it, sighing in mock disappointment.

Hunnyton handed him back his glass, commenting starchily, “You look like Mr. Toad when he caught sight of his first motorcar. Sitting dazed in the middle of the road murmuring ‘Poop, poop!’ as it disappeared in a puff of smoke. I must say, I can never see the attraction of a punt.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard not to look heroic, playing captain and crew at the same time. Towering over your girls, poised on the stern, chin raised, teeth to the wind, muscles cracking.”

“River water running down into your armpit.” Hunnyton grinned. “You may manage to look like Odysseus resisting the call of the Sirens but you can never leave go of that bloody nine-foot-high pole! Nowhere to park it. You’re lumbered. Both hands fully occupied for the duration of the whole chilly uncomfortable event. All you can do to impress from back there on the platform is look noble and spout Homer. If you really want to make some serious progress with your girl, you’d get further in the one and ninepenny double-seaters on the back row at the Alhambra. The city lads all know that much. For them, a punt is some old fenland boat you ferry the cows across the river in.”

“Don’t spoil it! I was just considering bringing my girl up here to stage a romantic moment,” Joe said.

“She’s not a stranger to East Anglia, then?” Hunnyton suggested tentatively.

“I had thought so, but you, I’m willing to wager, know better,” Joe said drily. “Shall we stop pussyfooting about and put the few cards we have between us on the table?”

Hunnyton laughed, shrugged and plunged in. “Miss Dorcas Joliffe I understand to be known to you in some way or other. Mind telling me in what capacity exactly?”

“I’d love to tell you exactly but there’s no exactitude about our situation at all. Wish there were.” Joe gave him the few unadorned facts about his relationship with Dorcas. It occurred to him, in his dry account, that he’d never once discussed the matter with a male friend or relation. It came surprisingly easily when face to face with this bluff, unquestioning, apparently all-knowing fellow copper.

“So, after a seven-year absence, so to speak, this girl comes back into your life and lays claim to you? She’d sort of marked you down as a subject of interest when she was still a whippersnapper?”

“Dorcas was never that. She’s what some would call, fancifully, an Old Soul. Experienced beyond her years, uncertain in some things, over-confident in others … But you’ve got it just about right. She attached herself to me when she was fourteen—looking about ten at the time so I didn’t see the dangers. Terrible family background. Mother absconded when she was a baby. Father never bothered to marry any one of the succession of mistresses who flowed through his life. His children, of whom Dorcas is the eldest, ran wild, occasionally whipped into some sort of order by their fearsome grandmother, who disowned the whole brood.”

“Lord! How’d you get involved with that mob? Couldn’t you have cut and run?”

“Hardly. I was firmly in the middle of a murder enquiry to which Miss Dorcas held the key. A pest, a burden at times, but never less than entertaining, is what she was for me.” Not much liking the incredulity blended with pity on the superintendent’s face, he tried to explain further: “Look, Hunnyton, some people find themselves claimed by stray cats and before they know it their lives are taken over.”

At last Hunnyton grunted his understanding. “Can’t abide cats but I’ve got a dog. I rescued it from a gang of tormenting kids when I was on the beat. It loves me and I can’t persuade it otherwise. Funny thing—I never picked him but I’d go through hell and high water for Tommy and he knows it, curse him!”

“Tommy?”

“He reminded me of us lads in the trenches. Us Tommies. Mongrel. No value to him but he was fighting for his life. Giving as good as he got and going down snarling.”

Joe laughed. “Well, imagine the potency of Tommy’s desperate situation and engaging characteristics wrapped in the allure of a very pretty girl and you appreciate my situation. No!” He caught himself in an easy throw-away response and applied a correction. “I’m being ungracious and unfair. In a strange way, Dorcas anchored me. I’ve been pretty footloose ever since the war and never been the sort who sent home postcards. Until she declared herself as the one person in my life who expected to have them. She was right. She’s always been the first one I think of when I fetch up in a strange place. Would Dorcas like it here, is what I ask myself. I shall send her a card tomorrow morning. Who do you send the first postcard to, Hunnyton, when you’re away?” he asked lightly.

Joe looked with curiosity at the clear blue Saxon eyes squinting at him over the rim of his glass. Eyes that missed nothing but gave little away. So—the man had a dog called Tommy. Joe realised that he knew very little else of Hunnyton’s circumstances. “How are you fixed?” he persisted. “Have you a wife? A fiancée? Sweetheart?”

“None of those. I have a landlady.”

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

“Why? You shouldn’t be. She’s the best cook in Cambridge. But you’ve sussed me out! I’m totally unqualified to offer marital advice. Though that’s not going to stop me. I think you’d do best to take it slowly. Make a new beginning. Probably you don’t need to hear this, especially from a stranger. But from where I stand, I’d say—treat it as though she’s just a few weeks ago come drifting into your life as a fresh possibility. Assume you know nothing about her yet.”

The old-fashioned look the superintendent gave Joe told him that this was a politely veiled warning. Joe had no doubt that areas of Dorcas’s life were unknown territory for him and it was perfectly possible that this man had greater knowledge of some of them through his investigations. An uncomfortable situation. Joe had never been content to stick a plaster over a festering wound. He decided to hand Hunnyton a scalpel and brace himself for the ensuing unpleasantness.

He took a breath and asked, “Are you able to tell me what the girl I love was doing on the guest list at Melsett the night Lady Truelove died? The list I’m sure you’ve noted in the file you sent down?”

“It’s a puzzle. Where she fitted in … A lady turning up by herself like that—it’s always a bit of a bother for the servants. It unsettles them. It was an evenly balanced party, you’ll have noticed.”