Mr Cadmus. Peter Ackroyd

      The three cottages stood in a row at the eastern end of Little Camborne. They had once been owned by three families who worked the land of the local squire, but the badly dressed stone of the eighteenth century had been restored and replastered. They were now painted white, and the thatch had given way to tiles.

      The first of them – 1, The Coppice – was owned by Maud Finch. At the age of fifty-five Miss Finch still held herself erect; she had firm opinions and a firm manner of expressing them. She wore rather severe clothes and from a distance might have been mistaken for either sex. Millicent Swallow lived at 3, The Coppice. Miss Swallow was a mild and complaisant woman; she was younger than Miss Finch, and was described by her neighbour as ‘a little vague around the edges’. She had wispy hair and her eyes watered in the wind; she favoured silk blouses and cashmere scarves, but she always looked as if her clothes had been put on in a hurry. In this respect she was perfectly unlike her neighbour, who dressed with what she believed to be finesse. How they had struck so firm a friendship was one of the small mysteries of Little Camborne.

      The cottage that stood between them had been vacant for over three months. Its previous occupant had been a retired schoolmaster, Mr Herrick, who had soon become something of an irritant to both ladies. He played Chopin too loudly on the gramophone, and the offensive smoke from his pipe drifted over their garden fences. So the ladies were not displeased when he died suddenly of heart failure. Now they contemplated the fate of the empty cottage. ‘I hope it’s not people from London,’ Miss Swallow remarked nervously on the day after the funeral.

      ‘Or a family.’

      ‘Surely it’s not big enough for a family?’

      ‘You never know. Some of them live like pigs.’

      A few prospective purchasers had visited the cottage, in the company of the agent, and one or other of the ladies managed to busy herself in her front garden as they left. ‘It is a lovely little property,’ the agent would say. ‘Quite bijou.’

      ‘What does that mean?’ Miss Swallow asked Miss Finch on the first occasion she heard it.

      ‘It is French.’ That seemed to satisfy both of them. The likely purchasers were, in Miss Finch’s opinion, all ‘ghastly’. A retired couple from Barnes were considered to be common, while two young men arriving in a smart sports-car were treated with great suspicion. ‘Don’t say anything,’ Miss Finch told her.

      ‘But you see them on television all the time.’

      ‘That doesn’t make it right.’

      When the agent brought with him a single man, in his early forties, Miss Swallow was greatly relieved. ‘I know a gentleman when I see one,’ she said to her neighbour. ‘Very much of the old school.’

      ‘Too good to be true. The estate agent tells me that he is working for a foreign client.’

      ‘A foreign client? Oh my goodness.’

      It was with some trepidation, therefore, that, two weeks later, they watched a large removal van draw up before the cottages. Both of them looked out of their windows at the same moment, but nothing happened. A few minutes later a small yellow car appeared around the bend of the dusty road, and came to a halt behind the van. Out of it jumped a man wearing green trousers and a scarlet sweater, with a plaid scarf tied loosely around his neck. ‘This,’ Miss Finch said to herself, ‘is the foreigner.’

      Two men in green overalls now alighted from the van as the foreign gentleman opened the gate to the middle cottage and scampered up the path of the front garden. ‘Oh, this is excellent. Too excellent for words.’ He turned to the two men. ‘Well, my friends, what do you think of my lovely English cottage? Is it not enchanting?’ He put his hands to his lips, and blew it a kiss. ‘You are irresistible. Highly irresistible.’

      Miss Finch noted that he had a slightly swarthy complexion, with a pencil-thin moustache. He was perhaps in his late fifties, of middle height, and seemed to her to resemble a mature Douglas Fairbanks. Miss Swallow, on the other hand, saw in him a likeness to William Holden, whom she had watched in The Towering Inferno some years before.

      He caught sight of her before she had time to move away from her window, and he put out his arms. ‘Oh, my good English neighbour! I hope you will make me welcome!’ She did not know quite what to do, but she waved her hand in a timid greeting. To her acute embarrassment he blew a kiss to her. Miss Finch, half-hidden by a large vase of lilies on her window ledge, drew in her breath. She could not see what Miss Swallow was doing, but she hoped that she was not encouraging him. She now stepped out so that she was in full view, and he noticed the movement. ‘Oh, I am blessed,’ he said. ‘Two lovely ladies on my doorstep!’ He did not blow her a kiss, but put his hand upon his heart; or at least upon the relevant part of his scarlet jumper.

      The two removal men had opened the back of the van, and with a flourish of his keys the new neighbour hastened into the cottage. The two ladies now pressed more eagerly against their windows. A small piano came out, followed by a wooden chest and a sideboard of polished mahogany. A single bed then emerged, as well as a divan and a dining-room table. Rolled carpets, lamps, and what looked suspiciously like tapestries, were carried into the cottage. Miss Finch could hear him singing what she took to be a Italian medley in a strong baritone voice. And what was this? A large and empty parrot cage. Several suitcases were then taken inside together with stools, chairs and leather pouffes. Some ornate candelabra were the last to leave the van.

      Miss Swallow felt quite exhausted by all the activity. She sat down in her favourite armchair, covered in faded green silk. She did not think she had the strength to make herself a cup of tea. She dared not leave the house, in case he should emerge, but she desperately wanted to consult with Miss Finch. So she called her on the telephone.

      ‘Maud, what an extraordinary way to behave!’

      ‘Did you see his car? It is so yellow.’

      ‘But all that kissing and screaming—’

      ‘I don’t think he screamed, dear,’ Maud told her. ‘But he was loud.’

      ‘What are we to make of him?’

      ‘We will have to wait and see. He was singing Italian songs, by the way.’

      ‘Is that where he’s from?’

      ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. Even before he opened his mouth, I knew he was foreign.’

      ‘Oh dear. I hope he doesn’t have any habits.’

      ‘Such as what?’

      ‘You know. Food and so forth. And late hours.’

      ‘I saw a parrot cage but no parrot.’

      ‘It will be in quarantine. Birds carry the most terrifying diseases.’

      ‘If it squawks, I shall complain. And what about that piano? Sound carries a long way out here.’

      ‘I really don’t know what to do.’ Miss Swallow was now thoroughly alarmed at vistas of parrots and pianos.

      ‘We