‘I daresay you’ll tell me if you want to,’ Jenifer replied. ‘Are you wondering what I’m doing here,’ she could only manage a slight lift of one weak hand, ‘in this grand house in Marazion? It’s a far cry from the life I was used to in Perranbarvah. This nightgown I’m wearing is made from the finest Irish linen, it cost more money than I’ve had to spend on my family in all my married life. What do you think about me living here as the lady of the house, Sir Oliver? How did you know I was here? Or, have you, as I suspect, been keeping an eye on my welfare too?’

Oliver smiled in submission. He would not play verbal games with the dying woman. What he had come to tell her she knew already, she had been with him every step of the way.

‘You and my Sam had two things in common,’ Jenifer said, ‘both satisfied to have only one woman in your life, and like you Sam liked to think he could get one over on another person.’

‘Go on, Jenifer Drannock, say it.’

A faint smile softened the deathly hue of Jenifer’s face.

‘Very well, welcome home to Cornwall… Obadiah Drannock of Portsmouth. Welcome home to Cornwall and back from the dead.’

Oliver couldn’t help smiling. ‘How did you know?’

She looked at him with wisdom in her fading eyes. ‘Kerensa has visited me often since you left, she hasn’t told me anything about your personal life but I think I’ve a reasonably good idea of what’s been going on. Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn but I believe there’s a huge rift in your perfect marriage. And what other reason could there be for that but the truth of Samuel’s parentage coming to light? Samuel and I should never have asked and held Kerensa to that promise. It is never right for a man and wife to keep secrets from each other. It was because of our selfishness that you and Kerensa and your lovely young family have suffered so much.

‘Then, of course, once you knew the truth, there was the problem of what to do with your half-brother’s family. You could not, of course, allow us to go on living in poverty. I knew at once you were behind this sudden inheritance of Bartholomew’s. Samuel had no distant relatives. There have been Drannocks in Newlyn for as long as there have been Pengarrons as lords of the manor. Samuel and I knew his father Caleb’s family very well. There was never an Uncle Obadiah, in Portsmouth or elsewhere.’

As she talked Jenifer had grown weaker. Oliver rose and poured her a glass of barley water, holding the bottom of the glass as she sipped.