Jane Pym walked up, as cool and composed as if she were appearing in court. The police had given them permission to leave Porthkennan for an hour, she said. She quite fancied a drink, so why didn’t they drive into Heanor and go to that place where they had spent so much of their honeymoon? Roger agreed immediately and was almost gallant.

They walked away, but Molly remained where she was. She hoped that Rose would want to talk to her, too. Her curiosity had been aroused by the overheard conversation. She had tantalising glimpses of the woman in the kitchen, peeling vegetables in preparation for supper. Molly wondered if she should call in and offer to help, but it seemed that Rose preferred to be alone while she mixed a crumble in a large brown bowl.

Duncan James had walked back to his position in the lower garden by the stream. As dusk approached, his claustrophobia returned, and he paced backwards and forwards trying to fight it off.

Chapter Eight

George left Porthkennan early on Sunday morning and arrived in Bristol to quiet streets and the sound of church bells. The new development around the docks was empty. The wealthy young people who lived there would still be sleeping off the parties of the night before. There was an occasional jogger stumbling over the fancy cobbles on the path along the river. George considered parking there, finding somewhere for coffee. And still in the back of his mind was the wonder of the red-footed petrel, which seemed to grow larger and more vivid in his imagination, so he thought, too, of looking up the curator of vertebrate biology at the museum, who was an old friend of his. But he knew these were delaying tactics. Before he did anything, he would have to see the Franks.

He drove through the town centre and out to the suburbs beyond. There was a cemetery lined by dusty trees, and the only colour was on a flower stall outside the gates. It was a bank holiday weekend, and respectable citizens would be decorating, cleaning the car, or in caravans on the Welsh coast. The pavements and the roads were still almost empty, although the sun was shining and it was hotter than ever.

Muriel Franks opened the door to him. She was wearing a candlewick dressing gown and fluffy blue slippers. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face was grey. For a moment she seemed not to recognize him; then she considered him with a flat, expressionless stare.

“It’s you,” she said, and he could not tell what she thought about his appearing on the doorstep. “I thought it would be the police again. You’d better come in.”