I woke the next morning to an overcast sky and a faint drizzle. Feluda and Lalmohan Babu put on their macintoshes and I wore my waterproof jacket when we left the hotel soon after breakfast. ‘Mr Jatayu,’ said Feluda, ‘this is the normal weather in England. The bright sunshine you saw yesterday was really the exception, not the rule.’ ‘But I bet roads here don’t get waterlogged!’ Lalmohan Babu commented. ‘No; but then, a really heavy downpour—so common in Calcutta—is something of a rarity here. A steady, soft drizzle is what the English are used to.’ Passengers on the underground seemed in as much of a hurry as the people in Oxford Street. ‘This speed is infectious, isn’t it?’ Lalmohan Babu said, walking as fast as he could. ‘Look, even we are walking far more quickly than we’d do back home.’ We reached Richmond at eleven o’clock. Dr Sen had told Feluda how long it would take us to get there from Piccadilly. We found him waiting outside the station. He was a good-looking man in his early sixties. ‘Welcome to Richmond!’ he said, smiling at Feluda. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still grey. Feluda returned his greeting and introduced us. ‘You are a writer?’ Dr Sen asked Lalmohan Babu. ‘I can’t remember when I last read something written by an Indian writer.’ ‘Why, don’t you go back home from time to time?’ ‘The last time I went was in 1973. There’s no reason for me to go back, really. My whole family is here in Britain. I have two sons and two daughters who have all grown up and left home. They are married with children and live in different parts of the country. My wife and I live here in Richmond.’ His car was parked little way away. ‘It’s not so bad here,’ he said, unlocking the doors, ‘but in London the parking problem is quite a serious one. If you went to see a film somewhere in central London, you might well have to park half a mile away from the cinema.’ We got into the car. Feluda sat in the front and fastened his seat belt. Lalmohan Babu looked at me enquiringly. ‘It’s the law in this country,’ I explained quickly. ‘Front seat passengers, and of course the driver, are required to have their seat belts on.’ Dr Sen’s house was a little more than a mile from the underground station. On our way there, I saw a few branches of some of the shops in Oxford Street. Richmond was clearly not a small area. His house was in a quiet spot, surrounded by trees. Their large, green leaves had patches of yellow and brown. There was a small, immaculate front garden, behind which stood a beautiful two-storey house, like something out of a picture postcard. We were shown into the living room. A fire burnt in the fireplace, for which I was glad since it was cold and damp outside. A middle-aged