“Do you know if Mr. Littleton saw any other women while he was married to your daughter?” George asked, still looking at the magnificent view, wondering if the island had worked its magic twice for Peter. Was it here that he had first fallen in love with Sally, as well as with Barbara? Because, despite the lack of proof, he was convinced that Peter and Sally had been in love. He knew that Peter was Barnaby’s father.

“Him?” Ted Baxter almost spat with disgust. “ He wouldn’t have had it in him. Who would have wanted another woman when he could have had my daughter? I tell you. You don’t know these birdwatchers. They don’t care about anything else except their birds.”

“So there were never any rumours about Mr. Littleton and another woman?”

“Rumours. There may have been rumours. There are always rumours in a place like this. There have been rumours enough about Barbara and none of them are true. Not one of them. She was a good wife to him.”

The back door leading to the farmyard opened then, and a young woman walked in. She was wearing jeans and leather boots and a loose jersey. She had been riding. She was beautiful, in the conventional way that a model is beautiful. Her tan was too deep, her lashes too long to be natural. Her hair was windswept, but when she shook it, it settled back into its ordained shape. She raised her eyebrows at their visitor with an attempt at sophisticated curiosity, but when she spoke, the simple, friendly girl described by Charlotte Cavanagh showed through.

“Who’s our visitor, Dad? Is there any tea in the pot, Mum?”

George saw no sign of the strain described by Ted Baxter, the dependence on tranquillizers. She looked healthy; pampered. In middle age she would grow fat.

“This is Mr. Palmer-Jones, my love,” said her father, as if he were talking to an invalid. “ He’s come to ask some questions about that husband of yours. You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to. We don’t want you to upset yourself.”

“He’s my ex-husband, Dad,” she said. “And I don’t care at all about answering any questions. What’s he done? Been in trouble with the police again, has he?”

The last question seemed to be a malicious attempt to bring her father to anger. She shot a defiant look at him as she spoke. But Baxter misunderstood her, and thought that she was accusing him of telling the police about Peter’s final fling on the island. He answered defensively.

“Why are you talking about the police? I promised that I wouldn’t go to the police and I never did. And I paid off Mary at the post office so she wouldn’t make a fuss. He’s never been in trouble with the police. Not because of me at any rate.”

“I didn’t say because of you, Dad,” she said with another failed attempt at sophistication. “ He’d been in court before he came to the island that first summer.”