‘You don’t understand,’ she said. He had never seen her so upset. He stroked the hair away from her face as if she were a child, and was relieved that he felt none of the old desire. ‘Ursula Ottway’s dead.’

‘So?’ he said. ‘ I know you were fond of her, but she was an old lady. She was fit enough on Friday night so she must have gone quickly. She would have preferred it that way. To go out fighting.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said again. ‘ There were things she knew … things I never told anyone else …’ She turned her head so she was looking directly into his eyes. ‘I think my mother murdered her.’

‘Where’s Jo?’ Jeremy asked.

‘She’s not very well. I sent her to lie down but she insisted on working. She’s in the pottery.’

Jeremy did not know what to say. His sister’s health had always been a matter of some curiosity to him and still he did not understand exactly what was wrong with her. As children there had been too great an age gap between them for them to have been close. He had been vaguely aware of his parents’concern for her, the suggestion that she was ill. He had been away at school during most of the times of crisis but had still picked up the fact that his sister was not suffering from a real illness like appendicitis. There was an element of moral judgement in his mother’s attitude to Joanna. She had done something wrong. When he had suggested during one holiday that he might visit Jo in the nursing home his mother had refused immediately. It was not the place, she said, for an impressionable young boy. He felt that Joanna’s frailty increased the pressure on him. Olivia implied that he was the family’s last chance. If he messed things up too there would be no one to carry on her work. In one way he envied his sister. Olivia had given up on her and left her alone. But he saw that Joanna was unhappy and he treated her carefully, afraid that there might be some recurrence of the old trouble.

‘Is something the matter?’ he asked.

Simon began to peel the papery skin from a clove of garlic and paused before answering.

‘The death of the old lady at Back Rigg seems to have upset her. She’s got hold of some idea that she was murdered.’

‘That ridiculous,’ Jeremy said. ‘No one’s suggested that to me.’

Simon shrugged. ‘Of course it’s ridiculous, but you know what Jo’s like …’

Again, Jeremy, who had never known what Jo was like, kept quiet.

‘Perhaps you should have a word with her,’ Simon went on. ‘Explain that she can’t go round making accusations like that. It might be very awkward. Especially for your father. She might listen to you.’