“Secretly engaged,” said Caroline, with immense enjoyment. “Old Ackroyd won’t

hear of it, and they have to meet this way.”

 

I saw a good many flaws in Caroline’s theory, but I forbore to point them out to

her. An innocent remark about our new neighbor created a diversion.

 

The house next door, The Larches, has recently been taken by a stranger. To

Caroline’s extreme annoyance, she has not been able to find out anything about

him, except that he is a foreigner. The Intelligence Corps has proved a broken

reed. Presumably the man has milk and vegetables and joints of meat and

occasional whitings just like everybody else, but none of the people who make it

their business to supply these things seem to have acquired any information. His

name, apparently, is Mr. Porrott—a name which conveys an odd feeling of

unreality. The one thing we do know about him is that he is interested in the

growing of vegetable marrows.

 

But that is certainly not the sort of information that Caroline is after. She

wants to know where he comes from, what he does, whether he is married, what his

wife was, or is, like, whether he has children, what his mother’s maiden name

was—and so on. Somebody very like Caroline must have invented the questions on

passports, I think.

 

“My dear Caroline,” I said. “There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s

profession has been. He’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that mustache of his.”