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‘And after All Souls’ Day and cemeteries,’ went on Mrs Oliver, lowering her bulk on to the arm of a settee, ‘you have All Saints’ Day. I think I’m right?’

Nobody responded to this question. Mrs Drake, a handsome middle-aged woman who was giving the party, made a pronouncement.

‘I’m not calling this a Hallowe’en party, although of course it is one really. I’m calling it the Eleven Plus party. It’s that sort of age group. Mostly people who are leaving the Elms and going on to other schools.’

‘But that’s not very accurate, Rowena, is it?’ said Miss Whittaker, resetting her pince-nez on her nose disapprovingly.

Miss Whittaker as a local school-teacher was always firm on accuracy.

‘Because we’ve abolished the eleven-plus some time ago.’

Mrs Oliver rose from the settee apologetically. ‘I haven’t been making myself useful. I’ve just been sitting here saying silly things about pumpkins and vegetable marrows’—And resting my feet, she thought, with a slight pang of conscience, but without sufficient feeling of guilt to say it aloud.

‘Now what can I do next?’ she asked, and added, ‘What lovely apples!’

Someone had just brought a large bowl of apples into the room. Mrs Oliver was partial to apples.

‘Lovely red ones,’ she added.

‘They’re not really very good,’ said Rowena Drake. ‘But they look nice and partified. That’s for bobbing for apples. They’re rather soft apples, so people will be able to get their teeth into them better. Take them into the library, will you, Beatrice? Bobbing for apples always makes a mess with the water slopping over, but that doesn’t matter with the library carpet, it’s so old. Oh! Thank you, Joyce.’

Joyce, a sturdy thirteen-year-old, seized the bowl of apples. Two rolled off it and stopped, as though arrested by a witch’s wand, at Mrs Oliver’s feet.

‘You like apples, don’t you,’ said Joyce. ‘I read you did, or perhaps I heard it on the telly. You’re the one who writes murder stories, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘We ought to have made you do something connected with murders. Have a murder at the party tonight and make people solve it.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Never again.’

‘What do you mean, never again?’

‘Well, I did once, and it didn’t turn out much of a success,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘But you’ve written lots of books,’ said Joyce, ‘you make a lot of money out of them, don’t you?’

‘In a way,’ said Mrs Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland Revenue.

‘And you’ve got a detective who’s a Finn.’

Mrs Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy not yet, Mrs Oliver would have thought, arrived at the seniority of the eleven-plus, said sternly, ‘Why a Finn?’

‘I’ve often wondered,’ said Mrs Oliver truthfully.

Mrs Hargreaves, the organist’s wife, came into the room breathing heavily, and bearing a large green plastic pail.

‘What about this,’ she said, ‘for the apple bobbing? Kind of gay, I thought.’

Miss Lee, the doctor’s dispenser, said, ‘Galvanized bucket’s better. Won’t tip over so easily. Where are you going to have it, Mrs Drake?’