‘Yes,’ Eve said. ‘ You told me she was drunk. What did you do then?’

‘I poured some phosdrin into her glass of whisky. That gave her a chance, you see, of survival. It meant that I wasn’t wholly responsible. If she carried on sleeping without drinking more whisky she wouldn’t die. I left it to fate.’ He stared blankly ahead of him. ‘She shouldn’t have been so greedy,’ he said. ‘If she hadn’t wanted more to drink she’d still be alive now. When you think about it, it was all her fault.’

‘What did you do then?’ Eve asked. ‘Did you go straight home?’ Why doesn’t somebody come? she thought. Where is everyone?

‘No,’ he said. ‘ Of course not. Do you think I’m a fool?’

‘No,’ she said carefully. ‘I know you’re not a fool.’

‘I was wearing gloves,’ he said, ‘so there would be no fingerprints. I put the poison in a plastic bag in my pocket. Then I knew I’d have to find the buzzard and the cats.’

He paused and looked at her, expecting her to take an interest, wanting her to ask a question.

‘Did you find the buzzard?’ she asked.

‘Yeah!’ he said. ‘No problem. It was in the freezer. I knew it would be there.’

‘And the cats?’ she asked. ‘ Did you find them?’

‘No,’ he said. It was an admission of failure and he did not like it. ‘They weren’t anywhere in the house so I reckoned Ursula must have buried them. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing me in the garden so I left it. I thought if she’d buried them no one else would find them either.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘I had to keep my nerve. It wasn’t much fun walking back to Keeper’s Cottage with a half-frozen buzzard corpse under my jacket.’

She thought he might be attempting a joke and looked at him carefully to see what response was expected but his face was still serious.

‘Why Keeper’s Cottage?’ she said. ‘Why did you go there?’

‘Because I didn’t know what else to do with it,’ he said. ‘I wanted to replace the poison bottle and it seemed a good place to hide the bird. I knew if Vic Liddle found it, it would be in his interest to keep it secret. But his shed’s such a tip I didn’t think it would come to light for years. I wasn’t to know that my father would ask Palmer-Jones to start snooping around.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’

‘Now,’ he said. ‘I’ve only got one problem left.’

‘What’s that?’ She turned to face him.