‘Tomorrow might be my last day here. I need to get home – something’s going on there that I don’t understand. I should never have come. The whole thing was a stupid idea from the start.’

‘Was it yours? The idea, I mean.’

‘Actually no – that was all thanks to Gladwin. She meant well – and she couldn’t have known how preoccupied she was going to be. We thought she’d be able to drop in once or twice, and we could go exploring or something.’

‘And now she’s under so much pressure, she’s forgotten all about you.’

‘I don’t expect she has. She’s really nice, you know. I liked her from the start. That was ages ago now – I was doing a house-sit in Temple Guiting. I think. They tend to blur after a while.’314

‘That’s a very smart piano,’ he remarked, peering into the living room on the way out. ‘Must be worth a bit.’

‘She’s a professional pianist. I suppose she has to have a good one. It’s part of my job this week to keep guard over it. Not that much was likely to happen to it.’

‘Other than fire or flood – and I don’t expect you can prevent anything like that.’

‘No.’

They hovered on the doorstep, acutely aware that nothing had actually been solved, despite their best efforts. ‘I’ll give you my number, in case something happens,’ he said. ‘And what’s yours?’

She handed him her phone. ‘Put yours in.’ Then she recited her own number, which had taken her about three years to memorise.

‘Good,’ said Ben.

‘Where do they live?’ she asked, as he began to walk away.

‘Who?’

‘Dick Jackson and his wife. The ones you’re staying with.’

‘Oh – right here in the village. Just the other side of the big hotel. Five minutes away, at most.’

She let him go then. Perhaps she was projecting her own feelings onto him, but he did seem to droop as he walked away. There was so much she didn’t know about him, things she wanted to discover. A sharp pang of anxiety shot through her: what if she never saw him again? What if he suffered the same fate as Grace/Karen? What if somebody murdered this remarkable 315youth, afraid that he was getting too close to the truth? His own relatives were not above suspicion. He was there, under their roof, impossibly vulnerable to attack during the night. Then common sense took charge. Ben Harkness was clearly no fool. He would ensure his own safety in all sorts of clever ways. It was probably more sensible to worry about her own well-being. Not only was she alone in a large house, but she was in a very unstable mood. Frustrated, guilty, anxious – all the same feelings that had been lurking for days were coming to a painful climax.

When in doubt make something happen, she told herself again. It had been her motto for several of her dramatic house-sitting experiences. Force things along, call someone’s bluff, ask the searching questions. There were several options open to her. Firstly, she could drive to Cirencester and make sure her report on all the discoveries of the day had reached somebody in authority. Or she could go out and knock on doors, just for the sake of it. Or she could have a go at continuing Ben’s researches on her laptop, while she considered the coming evening. The last was the easiest and the most appealing. But Ben had swept through so many references and websites and archives on his phone that she had not managed to catch a proper sight of anything. She might know a bit of the theory, but in practice she didn’t think she could even manage to successfully log in to anything useful. So she gave it up, and went back into the kitchen for another mug of tea. What she really wanted was wine, and a nice steak or freshly caught 316trout. And a congenial companion to chat to. And a dog who worshipped her.