‘Was there a lot of gossip at the time?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It all happened in London. We buried her here, of course, but no one knew the details. I let folks think it was an accident.’

‘Did they believe that?’

‘They could believe what they liked,’ she said. George could imagine her at the graveside, uncompromising and friendless. Had she been as hard in her attitude to Kate and Danny when they were children? Was that why they had both left home as soon as they could?

‘Why did Kathryn kill herself, Mrs Craven?’ Benwell asked gently.

The old woman turned her head away from them and for the first time there was a sense of pain and vulnerability.

‘She got herself into trouble,’ she said. She spoke so quietly that they could hardly hear her, then she turned back to face them and she was as loud and fierce as before. ‘ She should have come home!’ she cried. ‘If I’d known I’d have helped her, whatever she decided to do with the baby. Why didn’t she come home?’

Was it, George thought, because Marcus Grenville was here?

‘We need a list of the jobs she had after leaving the business school,’ Benwell said. ‘Would you be able to help us with that?’

She took a handkerchief from under a cushion on her chair and blew her nose.

‘When she came out of college Kate started with a publisher,’ Mrs Craven said. ‘She was happy there. Then it was taken over by a big American firm and her boss left and she didn’t fancy it any more.’

‘Where did she work then?’

‘A bank,’ she said. ‘Some sort of bank. In the City.’

‘A merchant bank?’ George suggested.

The old lady nodded. ‘She didn’t stay there long. Only a few months. She was always a restless sort of girl. She thought it would be more exciting, I suppose, to work in the House of Commons.’

There was a brief silence but no other indication that she had said anything of significance.

‘Is that where she was working when she died?’ Benwell asked calmly.

‘Yes. She was personal secretary to Geoffrey Lomax. She loved it, she said. I don’t understand what came over her.’ Mrs Craven pulled out the handkerchief again and began to dab at her eyes.

George looked at Benwell. Geoffrey Lomax was a Conservative Member of Parliament. Benwell appeared to change the subject.

‘Did Kate have a regular boyfriend?’ Benwell asked. ‘ Or do you think the pregnancy was the result of a casual affair?’