They had been talking, but as they saw me at the door there was a hush. Winslow said: ‘Good evening to you. I hear you’ve been holding your adoption meeting, Eliot?’ Nightingale asked: ‘Did you all get the reception you wanted?’ ‘It was very pleasant. I’m sorry you weren’t there,’ I said. It was from him, of course, that they had heard the news. There was constraint in the air, and I knew that Francis Getliffe was angry. He had returned from Switzerland that day, deeply sunburned; his strong fine-drawn face – I thought all of a sudden, seeing him stand there unsmiling – became more El Greco-like as the years passed. ‘Aren’t you even going to see your candidate?’ I asked Winslow. ‘Do you prefer to do it all by correspondence?’ Sometimes he liked to be teased, and he knew I was not frightened of him. He gave an indulgent grin. ‘Any candidate I approved of would be fairly succinct on paper,’ he said. ‘Your candidate, if I may say so, would not be so satisfactory in that respect.’ ‘We are appointing a Master, you know, not a clerk,’ I said.
