Elizabeth, George thought. Why should Elizabeth want to speak to Ernest?

George went down the stairs without speaking. The secretary watched him go, then composed herself behind her desk, crossed her legs at the ankles and returned to her typing. Just as he was reaching the bottom of the stairs, the door which led out into the street opened. Mark Taylor peered at George through a wild and unmanageable fringe.

“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to be here. You’re staying on at the obs, aren’t you?” He was friendly. There was no indication of his previous anger.

“Yes, I decided to stay on for a few days. Molly, my wife, is joining me.”

The boy did not seem disconcerted to see George. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, making no move to go up to the office.

“What are you doing here?” George asked.

“I live in Gillicombe. I don’t go back to college until the end of the month.”

“Here. In the Todds’ office.”

“Oh, I’ve come to see Charlie’s brother, Laurence. His son, Jonathan, is one of my mates. I’d lent him a load of records and I wanted to ask when I could go to the house to collect them.”

“Couldn’t you ask Jonathan?”

“No. He’s at college in London, and he went back suddenly without telling me that he was going. His mum says it’s to do some work, but I know that he gets fed up very quickly at home. I expect that he had to escape.”

“Laurence Todd has just gone out. Didn’t you see him?”

“No.”

Mark looked at his watch. “The pubs are open,” he said. “Come on. I know all about civil servants’ index-linked pensions. You can buy me a drink.”

Mark took him to a tiny, decaying pub in a road behind the High Street. The bar was like the parlour of a small terraced house. There were family pictures on the walls, and two fireside chairs with threadbare upholstery and crocheted runners faced an unlit electric fire. Only the high stools in the corner turned it into a public house. The landlady, who sat behind the bar drinking stout, was small too. She had a cockney accent and bright, acquisitive eyes. She acknowledged Mark as a friend. George Palmer-Jones felt a sense of unreality. All the protagonists were linked by more than their membership of the Observatory Trust. There was a web of relationships, and he felt that he was in danger of being trapped in it. He was afraid of being stuck with the tangle of small emotions and of losing the true perspective of the case. But how could he tell what was the true perspective if he did not explore the relationships? He settled, with his drink, in one of the chairs.

“Did you know that Jonathan benefited from Charlie’s will?”

“Did he?” Mark was hardly interested. “He’ll be pleased. He’s got a very expensive taste in girlfriends.”

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, very respectable. A chip off the old block. Ambitious in his own quiet way. But independent too. He wants to make his own way, without the help of the family.”