“Tell me what happened,” she said. “Did you find out what you wanted?”

“Breakfast is ready.” he said. “I’ll tell you in the kitchen.”

He bent down and kissed her. She watched him go with relief, knowing that whatever had happened on Scilly, he was more at ease. She washed and dressed quickly, then followed him down. He had already eaten, but poured out coffee for them both.

“Did you find anything useful?” she demanded.

“I’ll tell you in a moment, but first have you had any news from Ella or Mrs. Black? Has Terry been found? Have Rob and the others arrived back from Scotland?”

“No to all the questions. I phoned Ella yesterday afternoon. The police seem to be doing a house-to-house search for Terry in Rushy and Fenquay and they’re moving on to Skeffingham today, but they’ve told Mrs. Black that they’ve no warrant for his arrest. They just want to talk to him, Ella hasn’t heard from Pete, Rob or Adam at all. She’s quite hurt. She’s got the impression that they’re phoning someone else for any information about birds.”

Molly looked at him over her gold-rimmed National Health spectacles.

“Well,” she said impatiently. “It’s your turn now. What did you find out?”

“That Sally Johnson has been lying to us. She left Tresco a year ago last September, apparently because she was pregnant, although there may have been other reasons. She left in a hurry. The day before she went she was at a party given by a birdwatcher who sounds very like Tom French. Later the police came to the hotel to look for her, because she had been a witness in a drugs case.”

“So Tom was Barnaby’s father after all, and that was why he was so keen for Sally to marry him and move to Bristol with him.”

“I don’t think so. According to Charlotte Cavanagh, who seems to have known Peter very well, Peter was in love at that time, not with his wife, but with a stranger. Do you remember that, when we first met Peter at the greenish warbler, he mentioned in quite an off-hand way that he only became completely disillusioned with his wife when he met someone else? I think that he was talking about Sally. Charlotte said, too, that someone else was interested in the girl. Someone called Tom.”

“But Sally had no legal ties with Tom. If she’d wanted to live with Peter she could have done. Why didn’t she? Did Peter know that she was in Norfolk?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it all means. Perhaps now that I know this much, Sally will tell me the rest. There’s another complication. According to Barbara, Peter’s ex-wife, Peter used drugs. Not often, but quite regularly. He even had a conviction for cannabis abuse.”

“Is that significant? It isn’t so unusual.”

“It’s just another coincidence, isn’t it? Tom, known never to touch drugs, got charged with possession of cannabis. I’m sure that Peter was at that party, but he got away. And talking about coincidences, I want to talk to Bernard Cranshaw about those letters, and about who told him that Tom French had been to court.”