‘Mother talked to me while you were getting ready to leave,’ he said. ‘She explained what an embarrassment it would cause to the family if Ursula’s allegations were made public. She said I was the only one to stop her.’

‘Of course,’ Eve said again, bitterly. ‘ It was your duty.’

‘Yes!’ he said, apparently surprised by her perception. ‘That’s right. So you understand.’

‘Did your mother tell you to kill Ursula Ottway?’ Eve asked. If I keep him talking, she thought, Mrs Palmer-Jones will return. Someone will come.

He considered the question seriously. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said in the end. ‘Probably not in so many words.’

‘What happened, then?’ she said. ‘Tell me about it. I want to know.’

‘Do you?’ he said. ‘But perhaps I shouldn’t tell.’

‘All right, then,’ she said hurriedly. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whatever you think.’

‘No,’ he said, stroking her hair again. ‘I think I’ll tell you. You need to understand…’

He sat like a boy, clasping his knees to his chin. ‘ Where shall I start?’

‘At the beginning,’ she said. ‘ You went to Back Rigg to stop Ursula making a fuss about the buzzard. What did she say?’

‘Too much,’ he said crossly. ‘She was drunk, you know, and she said too much. When I arrived she was on the phone and I waited for her in the kitchen. But as soon as she came in she started.’

‘What did she say?’

‘That my mother was a wicked woman. It was something about the Liddles. I didn’t understand.’

‘But your mother is a wicked woman,’ Eve said, forgetting for a moment to be careful.

‘No!’ he said angrily. ‘No, she isn’t. She just does what she thinks is best.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Eve said. ‘Of course. Go on.’

‘Ursula had been to Keeper’s Cottage,’ Jeremy said. She’d found a jar of poison in Vic’s outhouse. She waved it under my nose. Forensic science was so sophisticated these days, she said, that they’d be able to compare the chemical in the buzzard with the actual solution in the jar. There’d be no doubt then that the poison had been put down by someone on the estate. She said she would go to the police and the press.’

‘Would that have been so terrible?’ Eve cried. ‘Was that a reason to kill her?’

‘Of course,’ he said seriously. ‘It would have been a disaster.’

‘For the family,’ she said.

‘Yes. For the family.’

‘What happened next?’ she asked.

‘She started to lecture me,’ he said. ‘She told me that I should leave the estate and get a job somewhere else. If I stayed in the valley I might end up like my sister. Then she fell asleep. Almost in the middle of a sentence. I told you she was drunk.’ He spoke in an irritated way as if Eve had not been paying proper attention.