He must have been sitting, Ramsay thought, just by the light of the fire, but now he switched on a small lamp that revealed the tension in his face. His cheeks were drawn and behind his glasses his eyelids seemed grey and heavy.

“Inspector,” he said. “It was good of you to come. Sit by the fire. You’ll be cold.”

Ramsay sat and waited for an explanation, but the words when they came still surprised him.

“Inspector,” Kerr said. “My conscience has been troubling me. There’s something you should know …”

Ramsay said nothing but waited for the man to speak again.

Kerr stared into the fire. “ I have a temper,” he said. “A terrible temper. Since I was a child it’s got me into trouble.”

Still Ramsay remained silent. The man needed to talk. Interruption would only distract him.

“Even when Charlie and Maggie were children I found it hard to like him,” Tom Kerr said. “I was not sorry when Maggie broke off that first engagement. I found Charlie moody, unstable. I thought such an attachment was unnatural at that age. They shouldn’t have been taking things so seriously.”

He paused, apparently in deep thought, perhaps remembering his daughter when she was a girl.

“It wasn’t any easier when he left the army and came back. I told myself that Margaret was partly responsible and the the boy had been genuinely misled about the way she felt, but it was hard to find any sympathy for him. Perhaps that’s why I took him on in the garage. I thought that if I could not find any charity for him in my heart, I could at least go some way to meet his practical needs. It was a mistake, a form of pride. I suppose I wanted the village to see that I was not lacking in duty. Even though he was a reasonable worker, he annoyed me. I dreaded going to work. Then things came to a head and there was a fight in the street. I lost my temper. If I’d had the chance, I would have killed him.”

“Mr. Kerr,” Ramsay said. “ Is this why you wanted to talk to me? To tell me about the fight? I had already heard about it. It really shouldn’t cause you any anxiety. There’s no question that the police would prosecute after all this time.” He felt a sense of anticlimax.

“No!” Tom Kerr cried. “I’m trying to explain. That’s how it all started. But the real wickedness came later.”

“I think,” Ramsay said, “you should tell me all about it.”

The man started speaking, bending towards Ramsay across the fire in an attempt to explain his actions, pleading indirectly for understanding. When Ramsay stood up half an hour later to drive into Otterbridge, he thought he knew why Alice Parry had been murdered. He left Tom Kerr still sitting by the fire. The confession seemed to have brought him little relief and Ramsay was not sure if it was wise to leave him alone.