Molly savoured the place. She forgot for a moment the urgency of the mission. Then she went to investigate. It was an office. A tasteful brass plate on the wall was inscribed Thompson, Lessing and Marshall, Solicitors. Next door there was a second-hand bookshop, and Molly waited there. The shelves near the window contained cookery books. Molly browsed through them happily while she watched the churchyard outside. The elderly shopkeeper took her for a connoisseur as her interest did not move to the other books in the shop, and they had a pleasant conversation about English food for more than half an hour. Molly was just beginning to think that she should move, should explore the church perhaps, when Elizabeth appeared. The girl stood still in the sunshine. Her long hair had been pinned back from her face by wooden slides. Deftly she pulled out the slides, put them in her bag, and shook her hair loose. It was a curious gesture of freedom.

Elizabeth walked immediately back to the Land Rover, then drove away. Molly did not follow her. She felt that the purpose of the visit had been achieved.

George went to the police station. He asked to speak to Connibear, but was told that it was Connibear’s day off. There was no message for him. He did not ask to speak to Savage, afraid that the superintendent’s tact and gratitude had reached their limit. It was an anticlimax.

He had arranged to meet Molly in the Italian café near the station, and as he waited he grew more irritable. When she arrived he was drinking coffee from a tiny cup. It was thick and strong as medicine, but she wanted food, and George had to wait while she went to the counter, exchanged greetings with the proprietor, found out how many children he had, how long he had been in Gillicombe, how business was. When she returned she began to describe the churchyard, the almshouses, her enchantment at having found it, and he had to interrupt to ask where Elizabeth had been going.

“To a solicitor’s office.”

“What were the names of the solicitors?”

“Thompson, Lessing and Marshall.”

“William Marshall, the solicitor, was Pamela’s husband.”

She was quiet for a moment, considering the implications of this, then: “ I don’t know that she saw him. It’s surely unlikely that he’s at work again so soon after his wife’s death.”

“It depends, I suppose, how distressed he was by it.”

“She could have been there on business.”

“What business would Elizabeth have, with a solicitor?”

She did not answer.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “ how it all fits together—Elizabeth’s visit to the Todds’ office on the same day as Charlie, the week before his death, and now this. What does she have to do with the Todds?”

“Perhaps,” Molly answered facetiously, “Charlie went in to blackmail Ernest and Laurence. They knew that John and Elizabeth were hard up, so they hired Elizabeth to kill Charlie. Pamela heard her on the way back from setting fire to the Wendy House, so Elizabeth had to finish her off too. Today, she’s been in to the Todds’ solicitors (I presume that they are the Todds’ solicitors) to collect the money.”