But still he would not leave the subject of Ursula Ottway’s visit to Keeper’s Cottage alone.

‘How long was she here?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. An hour, perhaps.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘Talking,’ Marie said. ‘We had a drink together and we talked. Then I gave her one of the pies I’d baked to take away.’

‘But what did you talk about?’ he demanded.

‘All sorts of things. Not just about the estate …’

This is it, she thought. I should tell him now. Why did she find it so easy to talk to Ursula when it was hard to confide in him?

But he washed his hands under the tap at the sink and sat at the table waiting to be served so the moment was lost. She ladled stew into bowls, leaving Cassie’s on the windowsill so it would be cool when she was ready to feed her. Vic ate the meal in silence and went out again without a word. Marie did not think that there had ever before been such bad feeling between them.

She sat on the arm of Cassie’s chair and fed the girl with a spoon. They said at the school that she could feed herself and usually Marie let her have a go. But today Marie needed the comfort of feeling she was needed, the closeness. She made soft, reassuring noises.

‘What a good girl!’ she said. ‘Aren’t you Mummy’s good girl?’

Cassie ate the food without any of her usual fuss.

One of the estate worker’s wives phoned Marie to tell her that Ursula Ottway was dead. She had no reason for phoning other than for the pleasure of passing on interesting news. There was the excitement of the gossip in her voice.

‘One of her relatives found her this morning. Apparently she’d been dead all night. It was just as well the niece had arranged to visit, or she might have been there for days without anyone realising. Marie? Are you there? Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes,’ Marie said. ‘I heard.’

She replaced the phone while the woman was still in mid-sentence and began to cry. Ursula had been her last hope. Now there was no one to help her.

Marcus Grenville offered George a lift from the Cadver to Back Rigg but George said that he preferred to walk. He had accepted Grenville’s offer of work because he was curious and because he found the indiscriminate use of poison detestable, but he had no sympathy for the man. He did not have to pretend to a friendship that did not exist.

When he arrived at Back Rigg the house was quiet and for a moment he thought it was empty. Molly was in the larder looking for something to turn into a meal and when she emerged into the kitchen, dusty and cobwebbed, he could tell immediately that something was wrong. She had been crying.