‘Mrs Lancaster, why did you come here this weekend?’ For the first time, she didn’t hold his eye, and Josephine wondered if Archie already knew the answer to his question. ‘Does either of you have a connection to anyone else here, guest or resident?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that – at least …’ She left the sentence 200unfinished, and Archie looked questioningly at her. ‘It was something Gerry said yesterday, as we were crossing the causeway. He told us that he came here as a child with his grandmother – you remember that, don’t you?’ She turned to Marta and Josephine, and Marta nodded. ‘That was the first I’d heard of it. Gerry doesn’t usually mention his family.’

‘So I came here as a boy – what of it? Lots of people do.’

‘Did you have any connection to Reverend Hartley before you met him yesterday?’ Archie asked. ‘He would have been living here in Cornwall when you were a child, so your paths might well have crossed. And I would advise you to think very carefully before you answer. There’s a lot at stake.’

Lancaster began to look genuinely frightened now, as the pattern of the questioning became clear to him. ‘I’ve never set eyes on the man,’ he said, a note of panic creeping into his voice. ‘Honest to God, I haven’t.’

‘Or anyone else here?’

‘No.’

‘So why did you come? I know it had nothing to do with giving to a worthy cause.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to be one of them for a change,’ Lancaster said, jabbing with his finger at the coat of arms above the fireplace. ‘Maybe I’m sick of bowing and scraping to people all year round. I saw the advertisement in the paper, and I remembered how deferential my grandparents used to be.’

‘Deferential to whom?’

Lancaster hesitated. ‘To the St Aubyn family. My grandfather was a fisherman here years ago, and my grandmother worked as a housemaid at the castle. They lived in one of those houses behind the harbour – until he retired, 201that is, and they had to give the house up and move back to the mainland.’

‘And they resented that?’

He scoffed. ‘No, not at all. They wouldn’t have a bad word said about the family – that was just the way things were, according to my grandmother. There was no sentiment about it, and they were loyal to the day they died – but I resented it. I loved it here as a kid. Those holidays were the only happy times I knew, and suddenly we couldn’t come anymore. We didn’t belong. So when I saw the paper, I jumped at the chance to come back here and be what my grandparents could never have dreamed of being, even for a couple of days.’

‘It’s a funny sort of tribute – to con your way into a home that your grandparents had such respect for, and cheat the family they served so devotedly. I can’t see them being proud of that, can you? Did you really know nothing about this, Mrs Lancaster?’