‘It’s quite hopeless. I’ve tried threats and persuasions, but she is determined. I have told her that you are away and you must be away. Presently I shall drive you to Wandford, and you must go down to Stella Mott-Tyler. If the worst comes to the worst, she will swear that you have been there for a week.’

Isabel had shown no alarm, no concern. She had given way to his insistence on condition that he let Phoebe Rigby know about Miss Mayfield’s plans. ‘That is the kind of thing which Phoebe takes care of supremely well,’ she had said.

Phoebe had, presumably, done the work; he had attended to the camouflage. Then, on that thunder-darkened evening, Miss Mayfield, whom he had thought disposed of for good – and he had taken pleasure in seeing to it that she was most comfortably disposed of – had come back. Isabel had remained unconcerned.

‘She knows on which side her bread is buttered; she’ll never put a foot wrong again. It’s best she should be here where we can keep an eye on her.’

He’d had a feeling that at that moment an invisible turning point had been passed. But he put that away among all the other never-to-be-considered things.

When the bell rang out, it was not of fire or flood that he thought; it was of Isabel, and the little schoolteacher who should be spending half-term in London.

As he ran across the garden, he noticed that although the body of the church was in darkness, there was light in the tower; the arrow slits in its upper portion gleamed yellow. He touched the switch by the door as he entered, and the place was filled with light. He had no notion of what he expected to see – that was one of the things he never thought about – but nothing could have surprised him more than to see the empty, orderly church, looking just as usual.

Miss Thorby had allowed her company a moment or two for their expression of hatred and frustration in the wolf howl and the futile assault on the door; then she had given the sign to disband. Like all underground movements, the witches of Walwyk were skilled in the rapid removal of all evidence of their existence. The candlesticks, the bowl, Miss Thorby’s headdress and silver belt had been taken away by preappointed hands. The crowd had dispersed, and in the church only the members of the inner circle of all, the ‘necessary seven’, remained.

To them Miss Thorby had issued her orders which had resulted in the kindling of the fire. One day, she was sure, she would by faith and devotion attain the power to be free of such dependence upon material things; there would come a day when she could say, ‘Let there be fire!’ and there it would be.