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had liked about him she might not even have noticed, much less felt obliged to warn him that she had. But after he was gone her mind began to nag at the curious implications of their conversation. Surely everything he had learned from her about autumn, 1955, Maggie already knew at least as well, and he must have known she would need no help in recalling details, supposing that she was serious about this book. No, that probe had been for his own satisfaction. And granted he had his own unhappy reason for wanting to talk about Maggie rather than her teacher, why just that incident, and why with so much controlled intensity? Why dwell so insistently on Robin Aylwin, who was of no significance whatever? Why want a photograph of him? The more she thought of it, the more it seemed to her that their conversation had gathered and fixed upon that enigmatic young man with quite unjustified interest.
    She had not been asked to treat the interview as confidential. So she told George about it over tea, as she did about most things that stirred or puzzled her. George, who had had a fairly boring day, listened to her with pleasure and affection, but with only one ear, until a single harmless word unexpectedly caused all his senses to prick into life together. He came erect out of a faint blue cloud of cigarette smoke.
    ‘
Scheidenau
?’ he repeated sharply.
    ‘Scheidenau,’ agreed Bunty, opening her eyes wide. ‘Why? Ring a bell, or something? I must have mentioned it
ad nauseam
at the time, but of course it’s a long time ago. Anyway, it’s only a tiny little resort, nothing special about it. What made you sit up and take notice suddenly?’
    ‘Who did you say this fellow was? The one who came to see you?’
    ‘Name of Francis Killian, a sort of private enquiry agent from Comerbourne. I told you, he’s working for Maggie Tressider, collating all this stuff about Freddy, she’s thinking of doing a book about him.’
    ‘Oh, Killian, yes, I know the name. Never met him, but as far as I know he’s all right. But how did you get on to Scheidenau? I’d clean forgotten you’d ever been near the place.’
    ‘So had I, until I got the records out to show him. Was that just a jab from your subconscious, when you sat up and barked Scheidenau?’
    ‘That’s it,’ agreed George amiably, blinking at her through dissolving smoke. ‘It reminds me of a recurrent nightmare—Dom eight years old and in temper tantrums, and you twenty-nine and as pretty as new paint, shaking a loose leg in the Vorarlberg. I had the horrors all the time you were away.’
    ‘There wasn’t a soul around you need have worried about,’ Bunty assured him scornfully, ‘even if I hadn’t been up to the neck in bills and transport arrangements. Just Freddy, and all those callow young men years younger than me. Not to mention the competition! Only three girls, but two of them were presentable, and the third was a beauty. Still is,’ she said, abruptly recalled to the serious consideration of her afternoon’s entertainment. ‘He’s in love with her.’
    ‘Killian? With Maggie Tressider? How do you know?’
    ‘Killian. With Maggie Tressider. And I know, all right. Oh, he wasn’t obvious in any way, but there it was. I liked him,’ said Bunty, who always knew her own mind, and added, relevantly enough: ‘Poor boy!’ That he was her own age, within a year one way or the other, did not invalidate the sentiment. ‘I knew you weren’t listening,’ she said, ‘I told you all this.’
    ‘I’m listening now. Tell me again.’
    She told him, well aware that this was not a game. She had touched some recollection which had nothing at all to do with her own stay in that remote Austrian village.
    ‘And he never showed up again, this Aylwin chap?’ said George, when she had reached the end of the story.
    ‘You know, I never once thought of it in those terms. He wasn’t any greenhorn, he spoke three languages, he knew his way around. I would bet he made his