Mrs Gilliatt was still busy. Very much the housewife, he thought, making perhaps rather more of a fuss than she need of domesticity. Continually offering people cakes, taking their cups away and replenishing them, handing things round. Somehow, he thought, it would be more pleasant and more informal if she let people help themselves. He wished she was not so busy a hostess.

He looked up to the place where Tom Addison lay stretched out in his chair. Tom Addison was also watching Beryl Gilliatt. Mr Satterthwaite thought to himself: ‘He doesn’t like her. No. Tom doesn’t like her. Well, perhaps that’s to be expected.’ After all, Beryl had taken the place of his own daughter, of Simon Gilliatt’s first wife, Lily. ‘My beautiful Lily,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite again, and wondered why for some reason he felt that although he could not see anyone like her, yet Lily in some strange way was here. She was here at this tea party.

‘I suppose one begins to imagine these things as one gets old,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘After all, why shouldn’t Lily be here to see her son.’

He looked affectionately at Timothy and then suddenly realized that he was not looking at Lily’s son. Roland was Lily’s son. Timothy was Beryl’s son.

‘I believe Lily knows I’m here. I believe she’d like to speak to me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I mustn’t start imagining foolish things.’

For some reason he looked again at the scarecrow. It didn’t look like a scarecrow now. It looked like Mr Harley Quin. Some tricks of the light, of the sunset, were providing it with colour, and there was a black dog like Hermes chasing the birds.

‘Colour,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and looked again at the table and the tea set and the people having tea. ‘Why am I here?’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘Why am I here and what ought I to be doing? There’s a reason…’

Now he knew, he felt, there was something, some crisis, something affecting–affecting all these people or only some of them? Beryl Gilliatt, Mrs Gilliatt. She was nervous about something. On edge. Tom? Nothing wrong with Tom. He wasn’t affected. A lucky man to own this beauty, to own Doverton and to have a grandson so that when he died all this would come to Roland. All this would be Roland’s. Was Tom hoping that Roland would marry Inez? Or would he have a fear of first cousins marrying? Though throughout history, Mr Satterthwaite thought, brothers had married sisters with no ill result. ‘Nothing must happen,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘nothing must happen. I must prevent it.’