These words which he had allowed to eddy around his mind in drunken anticipation suddenly shocked him. He had always considered his obsession for birds to be relatively harmless, but now his own experience showed that it could alter mood, sense, even personality, like a drug. Did it also have the power to make a person mad enough to commit murder? Twitching was a desire for possession and that was always dangerous. Was it possible, as Clive Anderson suggested, that for one individual at least the overwhelming passion for rare birds had become so addictive that in comparison human life became unimportant?

He looked around him at the crowd which now had the atmosphere of a picnic or a carnival. Rob Earl and Pete were clowning still to entertain a group of small children. With their jeans rolled up to their knees they were paddling in the shallow water, pretending to splash each other and the children. Pete Littleton lifted a little boy on to his shoulders, and yelled in simulated agony as the boy caught hold of his hair in an attempt to hold on. The intensity, the fanaticism in the faces had disappeared. Cameras were pointed at wives, girlfriends, the sea, as often as at birds. Adam Anderson had set aside his binoculars with some reluctance, and had been persuaded to join in a game of football. Tina was playing too, for the opposite team, and was more skillful and quick-footed than he was. She tackled him, they tripped and fell laughing together on to the sand. The fantasy of a sinister, mad birdwatcher, so obsessed with the need to see rare birds that he became a dangerous killer, dissolved with the laughter and the sunshine and the teasing children’s voices. Palmer-Jones realized that the image was ridiculous.

There was, after all, no connection between any of the birdwatchers and Tom’s murder, nothing that could be considered a motive. It seemed that twitchers had felt nothing but admiration and friendship for Tom French. If his attitude to the younger birders had been a little arrogant, perhaps that was only to be expected from a man of so much experience, who resented having little time to spend in the field. Nor could Rob Earl’s anger that a job he had wanted had been given to Tom be considered sufficient motive to kill. In any event he only had Sally’s opinion of these facts, and she herself was under graver suspicion.

Perhaps Anderson had been quite mistaken, and it had been an area of Tom’s life which had nothing to do with twitchers or twitching that had led to his death. Although he had always claimed his innocence, he had been convicted of a drug offence. It seemed probable that Dennis smoked cannabis; he had certainly successfully prevented Terry from giving away his story of the morning of Tom’s death. But could Terry be relied upon to give accurate information, and if he had seen Tom that morning why had he not spoken to anyone else? Then there was Bernard Cranshaw. Was it really sensible to suppose that he had killed Tom French, just because the younger man was considered the better birdwatcher? At least George felt that away from Rushy he had some sense of perspective.