‘Then, two years ago his sister committed suicide and they say he never got over it. He was very close to her, apparently. The people on the estate knew her quite well – she used to go and stay with him for weekends and holidays. Very attractive, she was, according to the old keeper. A dark-eyed beauty, he called her. After her death it seems Craven went to pieces. There were long drinking bouts and he became unreliable at work. He seemed, they said, to be in a world of his own, always angry. He blamed some man for leading her on, a married man. It was an obsession. His colleagues were sympathetic at first but the head keeper was pleased when he got a job up here. It saved the boss from having to sack him.’

‘Are you saying that the married man was Grenville?’ George asked slowly.

‘I don’t know,’ Benwell said. ‘But it might fit. There was certainly a previous connection between them. The Cravens were brought up here in Crowford. Their father worked for Grenville.’

‘What else have you found out about Craven’s sister?’ Molly asked. She was intrigued and moved by the story.

Benwell continued as if there had been no interruption: ‘The sister’s name was Kathryn. Known as Kate. She left home at eighteen and got a place in a business school in London. Became a sort of super secretary. We know she worked for a while as personal assistant to an editor in a publishing house. The keeper my friend talked to thought she’d changed jobs several times but he couldn’t give any details.’

‘You’ll have checked if Kate Craven ever worked for Marcus Grenville,’ George said.

‘Of course,’ Benwell smiled wryly. ‘He’s had the same secretary for years. She’s sixty-two and about to retire.’

‘But Kate might have met him socially,’ George said thoughtfully, ‘or through work in another context. Have you traced exactly where she did work?’

‘Not yet. We’ll find out eventually, of course, through the social security system, but by the time I got the information from Somerset all the civil servants had gone home. I’ve set someone to look into it first thing in the morning. There is a quicker way of finding out, though – I’ve traced her mother. Apparently the father died a while ago but the mother lives in one of those old people’s bungalows on the edge of Appleworth. The warden knows we’re coming but we’ll have to be quick. They go to bed early.’

‘You want me to come too?’ George was pleased but hesitant.

‘Why not? It’s only an informal inquiry. You might pick up something I miss.’

George thought that Benwell would miss very little but he stood up and went to fetch his coat. At the door he hesitated and turned to Molly: ‘Will you be all right on your own?’