The conservatory was probably so warm because it was full of plants – fuchsia, tree ferns, bougainvillea. In the kitchen, Fry had noticed cacti and tradescantia, and a wooden herb wheel on the window sill. She might be ignorant of what grew in the countryside, but she was familiar with house plants. During a spell with a foster family who’d run a small-scale plant nursery in Halesowen, her job had been to write out the labels for the pots – and God help her if she got one wrong through not recognizing a species.

There would be spiders and small insects crawling among these plants, too. She’d tried to sit in the middle of the two-seater cane settee to keep away from the jungle, forcing Murfin to take one of the chairs.

‘How did Brian describe what had happened?’

‘Describe it? Well, he said he’d arrived home and found the house on fire. I gather he’d been out for the evening. Brian was very distressed, you know – understandably. And he’d suffered some injuries trying to get into the house. In the circumstances I’m surprised he had the presence of mind to call us at all. But I’m glad he did. I don’t know how we’d have heard about the fire otherwise.’

‘Well, we’d have found your details somehow, and a police officer would have called on you.’

‘That would have been worse, I think,’ said Lowther. ‘If anything could be worse than this.’

Mr Lowther was officially described in the forms as a managing director. In Fry’s experience, most managing directors looked as though they’d eaten too many corporate lunches and Rotary Club dinners. But Lowther didn’t. He was a big man, but had kept his leanness. Regular squash, or business not so good?

For a moment, Mr Lowther was distracted by the fronds of a tree fern that hung near his chair. He reached out to tear a bit off the plant, with the air of someone who had no idea what he was doing. When he leaned over, Fry noticed that Mr Lowther’s shirt buttons weren’t fastened properly. One hole was empty, and its button had been fastened too low, so that part of his shirt hung untidily over his waistband.

‘That was all Brian could tell me, really. He said that the house was on fire. And that he thought Lindsay and the children were still in there.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We went up there, of course – to Darwin Street. But the fire was all over by the time we arrived. They wouldn’t let us go into the house. So then we went to the hospital, but Brian was sedated. We sat around for hours before someone came and told us that Lindsay and the boys hadn’t survived. It was horrible. It seemed as though we were almost the last to know.’