‘Where’s Ursula?’ he asked.

In a muddled, disjointed way she told him what had happened.

‘You should have phoned,’ he said. ‘I would have come.’ But Molly had never needed him as he needed her.

‘I can’t help thinking that I could have done something,’ she said, ‘if we’d come last night as she’d wanted. Perhaps she wasn’t feeling well then. I feel that we are, in a way, responsible.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ George said, but he shared her unease.

‘I’ll have to stay on for a few days,’ Molly said. ‘ There’s no one else …’

‘I thought there was a daughter.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sally.’ She had spent most of the day trying to track down Sally. In the end the conversation had been held over the crackling line of a car phone. The woman had expressed little grief and had been remarkably unhelpful.

‘Will you come up?’ Molly had asked.

‘Of course. Just let me know when the funeral is.’

‘But I thought you’d want to come and make the funeral arrangements.’

‘Oh no!’ Sally was more shocked by that than she had been by the news of her mother’s death. ‘I can’t possibly spare the time. I’m due in Rome this afternoon. I’ll leave all that to you.’

Molly described the conversation to George. He made no comment.

‘Why did Ursula die?’ he asked. ‘Had she been ill?’

‘I don’t know. She never said anything to me, but then she wouldn’t have done. The doctor talked about tests, a post-mortem.’

‘Did they give you a time of death?’

‘Not an accurate one. Some time in the early hours of the morning, the doctor said.’

‘Was he sure?’ George spoke sharply. ‘It couldn’t have been later?’

‘No,’ Molly said. ‘ Soon after midnight, the doctor said. It was half past ten in the morning when I found her and she’d been dead for hours then.’

Molly stood at the kitchen table, opening the tins of soup she had found in the larder. The kettle on the range boiled and she made tea.

George described his conversation with Grenville.

‘He wants to hire us to find out if poisoned bait was used on the estate,’ he said. ‘But perhaps in the circumstances you’d prefer us to leave it alone.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I told you. I feel responsible. We should try to find out what happened.’

‘Ursula claimed that the poison had killed a buzzard and her cats. Grenville had implied that she was deranged, senile, or making the whole thing up out of malice. You knew her better than me. Was that possible?’

‘Not the malice,’ Molly said. ‘She was often aggressive but never mean. It would never have occurred to her to go to such elaborate lengths to hurt an enemy.’

‘Was Grenville an enemy?’