‘It’ll do to be going on with,’ Benwell said. ‘ It gives us enough to get him to the police station for questioning. Do you want to come?’

‘No,’ George said. ‘That’s a police matter, isn’t it?’ He wanted to talk to Molly, felt even that an apology was in order. But when he got back to the farm the house was empty and there was a note on the table telling him that she was at the Cadver.

At nine o’clock Molly left the house and walked briskly down the track. The day was heavy, still, unnaturally mild for the end of March. As she approached the road, Vic Liddle passed her in the estate Land Rover and she remembered that he had said something about burning a strip of heather on the hill. She stepped off the track to allow him to pass, and waved, but he did not stop.

At the Old School House she looked to see if Simon Barton’s car was parked in the yard. She had no wish to see him. At this point, she felt, he would only get in the way. The yard was empty so she opened the gate that had stopped generations of Crowford children from running out into the road at the end of class and went to the front door of the house. She rang the bell. There was no reply. She looked in through the downstairs windows but saw nothing unusual. The bedroom curtains were still drawn but perhaps that only meant that the Bartons had left in a hurry. She left the house and crossed the yard to the pottery. The door was locked and she could see nothing through the small dusty windows. Joanna was not at work.

Molly knew that there were any number of possible reasons for Joanna’s absence – she had gone shopping, to see friends, to visit one of the galleries that sold her work – but the locked and empty pottery made her uneasy and troubled her for the rest of the morning. She took a scrap of paper from her pocket and wrote:

Joanna. Come to tea. I’ll be in all afternoon.

Then she was unsure where she should leave the note. Was Joanna more likely to go to the house or the pottery when she came home? Finally she folded it and pushed it through the letterbox of the house.

When Molly arrived at the Cadver she refused to be intimidated by its magnificence. She overcame any lack of confidence by manufacturing a sense of moral outrage. What had Olivia ever done with her life? she thought. Nothing, except for tending the house and brooding on the changes that had taken place in the valley. It was common knowledge that she seldom crossed the boundary of the estate into the real world. So, fortified by indignation, Molly climbed the stone steps and rang the bell.