S omething about the mention of Clovis Fearing had caused Flynne to abruptly change the subject. She’d taken him out on the veranda, placed him on the love seat between Tacoma Raeburn and the man Flynne had introduced as her cousin Leon, and gone out to stand beneath the largest tree, having a conversation on her phone. Netherton had panned from Tacoma, whom he found attractive in an obliquely threatening way, to Leon, who wore a strange elasticated headscarf, its fabric abstractly patterned in shades Netherton associated with the droppings of birds, before cleaners tidied them away. He had pale, bushy eyebrows and the start of an equally pale beard.