The house was a dull and ugly mansion, now used as a children’s home. The superintendent (quite reasonably, Hugh thought) refused to let them tour the interior, but he had no objection to their walking round the grounds. It was bitterly cold for the time of year, but not cold enough to keep the children indoors. They tagged around behind Arnold Cottle and the Branksomes, making unfriendly or impertinent remarks. One of them, a boy with red curly hair and a cast in his eye, threw an apple core at Cecily and when reproved, used a word which, though familiar, is still unexpected on the lips of a five-year-old.

They had lunch, and throughout the meal Cecily read aloud extracts from the trial of Rupert Moore. The medical evidence was so unpleasant that Hugh was unable to finish his steak au poivre. Cottle drank nearly a whole bottle of Nuits St Georges and had a double brandy with his coffee. Hugh thought about men who had murdered their wives, and how much easier it must have been when you could get wasp killer made out of cyanide and weed killer made of arsenic. But even if he could have got those things, or have pushed Cecily downstairs, or fixed it for the electric wall heater to fall into the bath while she also was in it, he knew he never would. Even if he got away with it, as poor Rupert Moore had done, he would have the shame and the fear and the guilt for the rest of his life, again as had been the case with Rupert Moore.

Not that he had lived for long. ‘He died of some kidney disease just twelve months after they let him out,’ said Cecily, ‘and by then he’d been hounded out of this place. He had Sarafin make that seat and that was about the last thing he ever did in Northwold.’ She scanned through the last chapter of her book. ‘There doesn’t seem to have been any real motive for the murder, Arnold.’

‘I suppose he wanted to marry someone else,’ said Cottle, swigging brandy. ‘I remember my father saying there were rumours he’d had a girlfriend but nobody seemed to know her name and she wasn’t mentioned at the trial.’

‘She certainly wasn’t,’ said Cecily, flicking back in her book so rapidly that she nearly knocked Hugh’s coffee cup over. ‘You mean there was no clue as to who she was? How did the rumours start, then?’

‘Dear Cecily, how do rumours ever start? In point of fact, Moore was known often to have been absent from home in the evenings. There was gossip he’d been seen in Clacton with a girl.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Cecily. ‘I shall spend the rest of the day thoroughly studying all this literature. You and Hugh must amuse yourselves on your own.’

After a dreadful afternoon spent listening to Cottle’s troubles, how enemies had prevented him making a success at any career, how his two attempts at getting married had been scotched by his mother, and how his neighbours had a vendetta against him, Hugh finally escaped. Though not before he had lent Cottle ten pounds, this being the lowest of the sums his guest had suggested as appropriate. Cecily had a wonderful time, making herself conversant with the Moore case and now she was in the bath. Hugh wondered if a mighty thump on the bedroom side of the bathroom wall would dislodge the heater and make it fall into the water, but this was merely academic speculation.