The man looked at him in astonishment, but he did not question George Palmer-Jones’s right to ask. The shock of the question seemed to calm him.

“I didn’t kill him,” Cranshaw said. “ I treated him like a son when he first came to stay here. I’m not married, and he never got on very well with his family. He came to see me at my house, and asked if I could show him around the marsh. He asked if there was anything he could do to help. I was pleased. No one here has ever shared my interest. Not really. No one that I could get on with. All my friends have moved away to find work. I made an effort to include him in everything I did. Most evenings he came on to the marsh with me. I thought that he cared about it. But he brought all the others, all those twitchers who came here and laughed at me. He spoiled it for me. I hated him. But I didn’t kill him.”

“You wrote a letter about him, didn’t you, to some of the parents in the village?”

“It was my duty.”

“In the letter you said that Tom French was a drug addict. How did you know?”

“I know things about him that you would never believe.”

“What sort of things do you know about Tom French?”

But the man was silent and empty now, staring out of bleak, fearless eyes over the marsh. The sky was grey and overcast and the wind from the sea blew into the hide. It was quite cold.

“My mother will be expecting me,” he said. “I must go now.”

“I’d like to talk to you again,” George said quickly. “Where do you live?”

“In the lane behind the Anchor,” said Cranshaw automatically. “Anyone will tell you.”

George Palmer-Jones watched him walk away through the marsh. In places he was hidden by the tall reeds, so that all which could be seen was the heavy brass telescope which he carried over his shoulder.

George sat for a long time in the hide. No one disturbed him. There was no sun and no sunset, but the light seeped out of the marsh until he realized that he was staring at birds he could no longer see. Bernard Cranshaw’s vulnerability had shocked him. He knew that later he would analyze the conversation, make use of the incident, but now he felt vulnerable too, as though he had been contaminated by the other man’s weakness. He longed for Molly. The sounds of the marsh were unfriendly and disturbing. It was an effort to leave the hide.

As soon as he had clambered down the short wooden ladder to the boardwalk he heard voices. He thought that there were just two people, men, talking quite quietly. It seemed to him that the men had come from the small hide, nearer the road, and that now they were walking ahead of him towards the village. They were other birdwatchers perhaps, dedicated birdwatchers who had waited until there was too little light to see.