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aloneness of being behind screens, could really believe that speech and sound were protected in any way.
    Or could they?
    Mrs Margaret Sloan, no ugly duckling herself in her day, reckoned that she knew what a kiss sounded like as well as the next woman.
    â€˜No, Roger,’ she heard Briony protest, ‘not here!’
    â€˜Why not?’ mumbled Roger Elspin indistinctly.
    â€˜Roger, mind my cap …’
    Mrs Sloan was even more sure of the sound the second time she heard it. The partition was, after all, only an aid to dignity – the patient’s dignity.
    â€˜Roger, stop it! Sister might come in.’
    â€˜And she might not,’ said the obstetrics registrar promptly. ‘Then look what I’d have missed.’
    â€˜Roger, be serious for a minute.’
    â€˜I am serious,’ retorted the young man.
    â€˜Roger, you mustn’t …’
    â€˜Give me another kiss and I’ll prove it.’
    â€˜Darling,’ the timbre of her voice changed noticeably.
    â€˜You know very well,’ said Roger Elspin gruffly, ‘that I am serious.’
    â€˜And you realize what this means?’ said Briony urgently.
    â€˜Your Aunt Beatrice dying?’
    â€˜Yes.’ Briony Petforth let out a sigh that Mrs Margaret Sloan heard quite clearly. ‘It means that now there is nothing in the whole world stopping us getting married.’

CHAPTER IV
    I give fair warning you may search for ever;
    A golden future lures one on to sever
    Oneself from all one ever had, and trust
    An art for which one cannot lose the lust.
    â€˜How is it, Crosby,’ repeated Detective-Inspector Sloan evenly, ‘that you happen to know Miss Wansdyke?’
    Constable Crosby did not – in any sense – live anywhere near Ridley Road.
    â€˜She’s the lady who lost her little dog,’ said the detective-constable. ‘Very upset about it at the time, sir, she was.’
    â€˜And what time would that have been exactly?’ asked Sloan. Someone down at the police station had been detailed to teach Crosby about the more precise reporting of fact but they evidently hadn’t got very far yet.
    â€˜Saturday, sir.’ He turned back the pages of his notebook. ‘Saturday morning. Miss Wansdyke asked if anyone had brought her dog in to us.’
    â€˜And had they?’
    â€˜No, sir. I looked in the book and all we had that day was a budgerigar, two umbrellas, a slide rule, four scarves and a stone of plain flour.’
    â€˜But no dog?’ The esoteric wonder of lost property had palled on Sloan long before he had left the beat.
    â€˜No, sir. No dog.’
    â€˜What sort of dog?’
    â€˜A lady dog, sir.’
    Sloan took a deep breath and then said very gently. ‘What kind of dog, Crosby?’
    â€˜She said it answered to the name of Isolde, sir.’ He sounded doubtful.
    â€˜What happy breed?’ enquired the pathologist helpfully. He was engaged in poring over some wicked-looking instruments.
    â€˜An Airedale, Doctor.’
    â€˜Ah, short hair and long legs.’ Dr Dabbe picked out something slender in stainless steel from those arrayed on a tray. ‘Could have upset the diabetes, of course.’
    â€˜What could?’ said Sloan.
    â€˜Losing her dog. Anxiety and distress – worry – too much of that sort of thing can throw a diabetic quite off balance.’ He indicated Bums who was busily putting specimens from the post mortem into labelled jars. ‘We’ll be doing the blood sugar level anyway. That’ll be a good guide.’
    â€˜When did she lose her dog?’ asked Sloan.
    The detective-constable turned back his notebook. ‘It wasn’t there when she got home from school the day before she came in to us.’
    â€˜Friday afternoon?’
    â€˜That’s right, sir. She thought it must have got out of the house somehow while she was at school but that it would come back all right for the