Just before six, Lindsay left the main trunk road she’d been following through Wales and turned north up a terrifying single-track road with a series of hairpin bends and sheer drops down the mountainside. Lindsay was only glad it was twilight and she couldn’t see the extent of the precipitous slopes. Eventually the road climbed to a tiny village consisting of a post office, a pub, a chapel, and a handful of cottages. Other houses straggled up the hillside. Lindsay pulled up and took another look at the scrap of paper with Barrington’s address. Plas Glyndwr, Llanagar. No wonder the Welsh got fed up with the English and their weekend cottages, thought Lindsay. The invaders even pinched the best Welsh names.

She set off slowly, trying without success to find the house. Carrying on up the road, however, as she came round a particularly awkward blind bend, she found Plas Glyndwr. Lindsay braked sharply. This was no weekend cottage. It was a four-square, large family house, set behind banks of rhododendrons with a fair-sized lawn and big kitchen garden to one side. A dark blue Daimler was parked in front of the house and an elderly Ford Cortina sat outside the side door. “Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” she muttered to herself as she reversed the MG up the drive.

She got out and rang the bell by the front door. A full minute passed before it was opened by a woman in her fifties wearing a voluminous wrap-round apron. She had flour on her hands and smudges on one cheek. She looked surprised to see Lindsay.

“Can I help you?” she inquired, her Welsh accent evident even in those few words.

“I’d like to see Mr. Barrington, if he’s at home,” said Lindsay.

“And who shall I say is calling?”

“My name is Lindsay Gordon,” she replied. “He won’t recognize the name, but I know his daughter Caroline. I won’t take up much of his time.”

“Wait here a moment,” she said and disappeared, shutting the door firmly behind her. She was back within thirty seconds. “Come in,” she said, leading Lindsay in.

As they walked through the hall, Lindsay noticed that the only distraction came from framed Ordnance Survey maps of the region hanging on the walls. The woman showed Lindsay into an airy sitting-room, furnished unpretentiously with large chairs upholstered in well-worn William Morris Liberty prints. Anthony Barrington was sitting at a big roll-top desk by the window, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. He looked remarkably like the photograph in Caroline’s room. He was wearing a baggy Aran sweater, old corduroy breeches, thick socks, and sheepskin slippers. His eyebrows were raised quizzically as he rose to greet Lindsay.