It was all over even before the window frame was alight, although the varnish on the frame and the panelling around the window were charred and blistered, and there was an unpleasant smell. John put the extinguisher on the floor and Elizabeth folded the rug. Only then did Charlie stand up. It was as if he were standing to applaud the end of an outstanding play.

“Wonderful,” he said. “Most efficient. Now I feel like a drink. You must have one too. I insist. Do sit down.”

He poured drinks. Elizabeth guiltily and John gratefully accepted.

“Well, Charlie,” John said. “ How did you manage it?”

“What do you mean?” He was enjoying his role of host. He had turned up the Calor-Gas fire and was looking to see if he could offer them anything to eat.

“How did you manage to knock over the tilly?”

“Oh no,” he said. “I didn’t knock it over. I was sitting here, you see, in front of the fire. Even if I had moved in my sleep I couldn’t have reached the lamp. It was on that table.”

“I can see that. Something must have knocked it over.”

“Perhaps it was the wind. Or it might have been Tomo.”

Tomo was the island cat. He was supposed to live in the observatory out-buildings and keep down the mice, but Charlie had adopted him.

“I suppose it might have been, although it doesn’t seem very likely. Tomo’s only a kitten and the tilly is quite heavy.”

“All the same,” said Charlie, looking at John with strangely blank, blue eyes, “I think that it must have been Tomo. There’s no other explanation, you know. And really there’s no harm done.”

When John and Elizabeth returned to the observatory, in the common room Jasmine Carson was pouring cocoa from a jug, and everyone was there. Cocoa at ten o’clock was an observatory tradition, served usually by Elizabeth. When it had not arrived Paul Derbyshire had become petulant, and had gone to look for her. When he could not find her it had not occurred to him to make the drink. Mark and Nick had returned. Their woollen socks were hanging on the fire guard to dry. They had found the brooding atmosphere in the common room oppressive. Pamela and Jerry were silent, the doctor was muttering trivial complaints and Jasmine had returned to the log, treating the entries with as much scorn as if she were marking a mediocre exam paper. So they had offered to make the cocoa, and on their return with it everyone made some attempt at ordinary, polite conversation.

When John and Elizabeth came in and told them about the fire in the Wendy House, nobody was very surprised. Charlie was appallingly absentminded. Things like that were always happening to him.