When they returned to the observatory John and Elizabeth were in the middle of a violent row. George had expected to see John in the ringing room. He had wanted to ask if his suggestions for the seabird paper had been helpful. But John was not in the ringing room or the library.

“We’ll walk through to the kitchen,” he said. “It must be nearly supper time.”

They could hear John when they were still in the dark, dusty corridor which led from the dining room. He was shouting.

“Something’s going on,” he said. “I must know what it is. You must tell me, Lizzie.”

“Of course something’s going on.” Her voice was bitter, scornful. “Two people have been killed. One of our friends has been arrested for murder.”

“Not that,” he said, as if that did not much matter. “ Not that. It’s you. You lied to me. Last week you told me that you’d been to the ante-natal clinic, but there wasn’t a clinic. Not on that Friday. I looked at your card. Please Elizabeth, don’t shut yourself off from me. Not now. I must know.”

“What bloody right do you have to be checking up on me?” She was beside herself. “ I don’t belong to you. I’m not even your bloody wife.”

“Is there someone else?” He was making a great effort at self-control. He spoke gently “You’re right. You don’t belong to me. I wouldn’t want to restrict you in any way. I just want to know what’s going on. You owe me that.”

“Oh, stop talking in clichés,” she said. “You’re making yourself ridiculous.”

They heard a door slam. George presumed that she had gone to the flat. When they got to the kitchen, it was empty.

They prepared their own supper that night. John explained that Elizabeth was ill, and asked if they would mind getting their own. Molly enjoyed it. She liked cooking. They invited John to join them, but he refused. He went to the flat without starting the generator, and they sat in the kitchen, discussing the case and eating their meal by the light of a tilly.

“We don’t seem to have moved forward very far today,” George said. “We know that Charlie needed money, but I’d gathered that anyway.”

“I don’t understand why he needed money. He must have had oodles of it. At one time you saw the characters from his stories in every comic and on everything from pencil cases to fizzy drinks.”

“I think he just spent it all. He doesn’t seem to have been very organized about finance.”

“So that would have given him a motive for blackmail.”

“That, and the kind of moral blackmail he seems to have gone in for. He wouldn’t have thought of it as blackmail. As I see it, he found out that perhaps the family hadn’t been quite open in its business dealings, told them that he knew about their misdemeanours, then suggested, for example, that they gave a donation to the Canal Theatre Company.”