When the kettle had boiled Molly went out into the garden to look up at the hills, expecting to see Ursula’s tall ungainly figure loping down towards the house, but there was only a youngish man whom she supposed must be a keeper. He was dressed in a khaki camouflage jacket and carrying a gun. Why do they all want to pretend to be soldiers? she thought. The sight of the figure, somehow sinister in his military outfit, added to her unease about Ursula. She left the garden and began to search the rest of the house.

The curtains of the drawing room were closed and the room was quite dark. She wondered why she had not noticed the drawn curtains when she came into the house. Perhaps the windows were so grimy outside that it was impossible to tell. She groped for a light switch just inside the door but could not find it and went instead to draw back the curtains. She walked slowly across the room and stumbled over a stool or low table, swearing under her breath at the pain to her ankle. The curtains were heavy velvet and lined and she had to tug at them to get enough light into the room to see.

Ursula was lying on a worn leather Chesterfield. She was dressed in her work clothes and still had her boots on. There was an open bottle of whisky on the mantelpiece but no glass. Her head had fallen so that it touched the floor. She looked like a child, Molly thought, who found it impossible to sit still, in the middle of some sort of gymnastic exercise. But Ursula Ottway was quite still. Her face was purple where the blood had drained to her head and her body was already stiff with rigor mortis.

George did not hear about Ursula’s death until late afternoon. Molly, at Back Rigg, had been busy with the bureaucracy that follows sudden death, even the sudden death of an elderly lady. Besides, she had seen no need to interrupt George at the Cadver. She had no suspicions.

The conference proceeded much as he expected. There was a lot of rhetoric but few real assurances and no discussion about who would provide the money to pay for the policy changes they all decided were needed. George had learnt as a civil servant that without a firm budget any project was doomed. Some of the papers were worth hearing – the speaker on the EEC agricultural directive was especially interesting – and Marcus Grenville chaired the event with skill, though his introductions were too sycophantic for George’s taste.