“Did you see anyone on the marsh?”

“No one at all. I didn’t even see Ella. I just presumed that she was there.”

There was a short silence and then Tina started to speak. She talked abruptly, defensively, and Molly thought that she was blushing.

“If you must know, I was looking for Adam. We’d been talking at Scarsea. He asked me to look out for a copy of the Handbook for him. Someone at the university bird club has one for sale. I wanted to let him know.”

“What made you think that he would be at Rushy today?”

She shrugged. “He always seems to be here. And I thought he might be at the film.”

“Where did you look for him?”

“I went past the Windmill on to the shingle bank. I didn’t see him or anyone else. If he’d been on the marsh I would have seen him from there. Then I went to look at that patch of cover between the Windmill and the coastguards. We’ve been thinking of building a Heligoland trap over it and I wanted to work out how much wood and wire netting we’d need.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went back to Peter’s cottage to get ready for the party. I got back soon after five, I should think.”

Rob repeated his movements of the afternoon.

“So you walked straight along the beach towards Skeffingham. Did you see anyone?”

“A few fishermen and bait diggers.”

“Which way did you come home?”

“I walked straight back along the track past the Windmill.”

“What time did you get back?”

“About six o’clock.”

“Have we got any idea what Adam was doing earlier in the day?” Peter asked.

George looked with a question at Molly. She shook her head.

“He left home quite early, just after the postman had been, his father says. But no one knows where he went. That’s not unusual apparently, but his father says that he hadn’t gone birdwatching—he’d left his binoculars and telescope at home.”

“No,” Rob said definitely. “That can’t be right. He wouldn’t have come to Rushy without his optical gear. If his father’s telling the truth, he can’t have planned to come to Rushy.”

“If he left home soon after the postman had called at the house, could he have had a letter,” Tina asked tentatively, “ arranging to meet him?”

“That wouldn’t have stopped him bringing his binoculars.”

There was no more tea and they were starting to feel cold. George drove them all back to the cottage. There Peter gave up his room for George and Molly, and placed his sleeping bag next to Rob and Tina on the living-room floor. George did not go to bed, and was astonished that Molly could lie in the big, shapeless bed in an undisturbed slumber. The sense that the person who had inspired such terror in Adam and in Sally was beyond logic, beyond reason, remained with him. The routine of arranging the details of time and place seemed futile, irrelevant. He felt that he was hiding his weakness behind a pretence of efficiency. But still he was compelled to do it, to ignore his urge for some kind of unspecific, irrational action. He could not sleep.