There was a good deal of clearing up to be done in the kitchen. Oliver had got brown stains on two tablecloths and James had to wash the knives and forks. Rosamund (typically, he thought) had vanished. Back to her art project, presumably, making some sort of collage with dried flowers. He put all the saucepans back and tidied up the drawers so that they looked much as they had done before Oliver’s onslaught. Then he thought he had better go back and see how Oliver was getting on.

The living room was empty. James could soon see why. The serial had come to an end and the bright moving figures and voices and music had been replaced by an old man with glasses talking about molecular physics. Oliver wasn’t anywhere downstairs. James hadn’t really imagined he could climb stairs, but of course he could. He was a big strong boy who had been walking for months and months now.

He went up, calling Oliver’s name. It was only a quarter past three and his mother wouldn’t be back from the village hall until four-thirty at the earliest. The rain was coming down harder now, making the house rather dark. James realized for the first time that he had left his bedroom door open. He had left it open – because Palmerston was inside – when he went downstairs to phone Timothy Gordon about the mouse cage, and then Mirabel had come. It all seemed hours ago but it was only about forty minutes.

Oliver was in James’s bedroom. He was sitting on the floor with the empty datura bottle clutched in his hands, and from the side of the mouth trickled a dribble of brown fluid.

James had read in books about people being rooted to the spot and that was exactly what happened at that moment. He seemed anchored where he stood. He stared at Oliver. In his inside there seemed to swell up and throb a large hard lump. It was his own heart beating so heavily that it hurt.

He forced himself to move. He took the bottle away from Oliver and automatically, he didn’t know why, rinsed it out at the washbasin. Oliver looked at him in silence. James went down the passage and banged on Rosamund’s door.

‘Could you come, please? Oliver’s drunk a bottle of poison. About half a pint.’

‘What?’

She came out. She looked at him, her mouth open. He explained to her swiftly, shortly, in two sentences.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Phone for an ambulance.’

She stood in the bedroom doorway, watching Oliver. He had put his fists in his eyes, he was rubbing his eyes and making fretful little sounds.

‘D’you think we ought to try and make him sick?’

‘No. I’ll go and phone. It’s my fault. I must have been out of my tree making the stuff, let alone keeping it. If he dies . . . Oh, God, Roz, we can’t phone! The phone’s out of order. I was trying to phone Tim Gordon but it was dead and I was going to go down to the call box and report it.’