They started the fire with a flame thrower. The heather caught easily and soon there was the crackle of flame and charred vegetation and the smell of charcoal. They walked on each side of the strip to be burned, flattening the flames with beaters, preventing the fire spreading to the new growth. It seemed a terribly risky business to George to set the hill alight. As the fire spread birds flew out of the heather with raucous alarm calls. Behind them the black stalks and bare earth smouldered.

‘It’s a bit of a mess now,’ Vic shouted, ‘but it’s got to be done. Overgrown heather’s good for nothing. Not even for wildlife. If you don’t manage the moor it dies.’

Danny Craven allowed the fire to spread deliberately. They realised that afterwards. George thought he should have guessed that the temptation to cause more embarrassment to Marcus Grenville was too much for him to resist. A big hill fire would scar the moor for years. The first George realised that something was wrong was when Vic Liddle shouted and they saw Craven, through the smoke, standing with the beater above his head, the flames seeming to lick around his feet.

‘For God’s sake, man, what are you playing at?’ Liddle shouted. ‘You’ll have the whole hill alight.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ Craven shouted back. But he swung the spade-shaped beater over his head with full force and the flames leapt as if blown by a bellows and spread into the green shoots of the new heather.

Later Vic was to say that if it hadn’t been a cold damp spring they might have lost the whole hill. As it was, the damage was contained. He gave George a beater and they ran behind Craven, stamping on the flames with their boots, stifling them with the spades. Craven stood apart, watching them, and George could not tell if he was disappointed or relieved when they had the fire under control. It was only when the crisis was over and they stood, choking and reeking of smoke, that George realised that Jeremy Grenville had gone.

Olivia Grenville let Molly into the Cadver. She said nothing but stood aside to let her in. Upstairs, far away, there was the whine of a vacuum cleaner and as Olivia led her down the corridor to the drawing room Molly heard Marcus behind a closed door saying heartily into the telephone that it was a storm in a teacup and would all blow over. But the house was so big that when they sat together in the drawing room they felt quite alone.

‘Well,’ Olivia said unpleasantly. ‘You’re becoming quite a regular visitor.’

‘I know what happened on Friday night,’ Molly said.

‘You might think you know,’ Olivia said calmly. ‘But you can have no proof.’

‘There was a witness.’