Hunter shook his head again. “ Not until it was all over,” he said, “and then he gave a donation to the village playgroup. Jane Massie runs that, too.”

Then Ramsay lost patience. He had been waiting long enough. He wanted to talk to Henshaw again, to confront him with his wife’s statement that he had left the house on Saturday night after Alice Parry’s visit. He felt that the builder was mocking him.

“Stay here,” he said to Hunter. “I’m expecting someone from the village to make an approach. Be gentle with them. I don’t want them frightened off.”

He slammed the door behind him and walked quickly across the green to the Otterbridge Road. Perhaps it was because he was so angry and preoccupied that he made the same mistake as he had on the night after Alice Parry’s murder and walked into the Greys’ farmyard instead of the Henshaws’ drive. The place was quiet. He felt rather ridiculous, standing in the muddy farmyard looking round him absentmindedly, and the embarrassment of his previous mistake returned. He imagined Celia Grey looking down on him from one of the upstairs windows, sneering at his indecision. It would be impossible now to turn round and go away. Charlie Elliot’s body had been found on Grey’s land, so he had a perfectly good excuse for being there. So, still imagining that he was being watched, trying to present an air of purpose, he walked towards the back door. If it had not been for his pride, he would never have seen Henshaw’s Rover tucked into one of the machinery sheds. Only the bumper was showing.

The back door was slightly open and the kitchen was empty. He knocked and called, but no-one answered. He waited, still thinking that his approach had been seen, then pushed open the door and went inside. The farmyard had been full of late-afternoon sunshine and long, warm shadows. When he entered the shadow of the kitchen, he shivered. He put his hand on the top of the range, but it was cold. The kitchen was much tidier than it had been on his previous visit, the sink and draining board empty, the work surfaces clear except for a bowl of rather mucky, recently collected eggs. The tile floor had been washed and in one corner it was still damp. He moved on through the door that led into the rest of the house, into the entrance hall where he had stood with Celia Grey on his last visit, trying to persuade her to allow him to talk to her son. The sun came in from an upstairs window and lit the specks of dust in the stairwell. There were two other doors leading from the hall. Both were huge and heavy and must have blocked out all sound. Both were shut tight. He called out and his voice echoed over the stone flags: