‘Why would she want shot of you?’

Jane hesitated a moment. She found it hard to be bitchy about a woman who’d recently been murdered. It was a matter of manners, etiquette. It seemed rather common to be unpleasant in these circumstances.

‘Angela liked to be in charge, the centre of attention. She was accustomed to admiration.’

‘And you didn’t admire her?’

‘I’m sure she was a very good scientist.’

‘But?’

‘I didn’t like her as a person. She was capricious, wilful, determined to get her own way. I probably gave her less deference than she was used to. I’m sure that irritated her. After all, I’m only the domestic help. When the chair of trustees mentioned the possibility of finding a job here for his goddaughter, she’d have seen it as a good way of finding someone more biddable to take my place. Someone who owed her a favour.’

‘I didn’t really know her,’ Perez said, ‘though I’ve seen her on television, of course.’

‘How did you think she came across?’ Jane realized she was very interested in the inspector’s opinion. He was a man whose judgement she’d trust.

He thought for a moment and it seemed as if he would refuse to commit himself. ‘As very charming,’ he said at last. ‘But only while the camera was running. I was never really convinced by it. She always seemed rather miserable to me.’

It was the last thing she would have expected.

During lunch she was aware of his absence, imagined him in the bird room. How would Angela look now? Just the same as when Ben Catchpole had found her? How soon did a corpse begin to decay, to look not entirely human? Jane had seen the body when Ben had called out to her, and the feathers woven into the hair had seemed to her grotesque, a bizarre show.

Before she began to serve the meal Fran Hunter arrived, blown in it seemed from another world, a reminder that life was continuing outside the solid field centre walls. She had a camera round her neck and a small rucksack on her back. She had arrived in Leogh Willy’s truck and immediately joined Perez. Jane supposed that he’d summoned her to bring what he needed to record the crime scene and take Angela’s body away.

In the dining room conversation was desultory. Again Maurice and Poppy stayed away, though Ben ate with them. Jane thought that all the people there wanted to talk about the murder, to enjoy the drama, share scraps of gossip about the dead woman, but no one could bring himself to start the discussion for fear of appearing callous. Jane wanted to give them permission to do it: Come on. We all knew she was no saint. But she was as frightened as the others of seeming unfeeling.

Later she knocked at the door of Maurice’s flat. He came to open it. He was dressed now, but he still hadn’t shaved and looked as he had when he’d had a bad bout of flu earlier in the year. Jane had looked after him then too. Angela had been far too busy with the seabird ringing. She’d never even had a cold in all the time Jane had known her and had no sympathy for people who were ill.