‘Thass what my dad said. He laughed at my mum, and she was mad. She don’t often get mad, but that time, she was.’

Miss Mayfield looked at him. He always appeared to be an unusually clean little boy, but the one or two tears which had brimmed over his lids had left muddy smudges about his eyes.

‘You’d better have a little wash before you go home,’ she said. ‘And look, Sydney, don’t worry about this any more. Try not to think about it. You’ve done what you thought right, and now you can leave it to me.’

He took two steps backwards and there stood looking at her with a curiously adult air, as though he were measuring her up.

‘She’ll tell you a packet of lies, Miss. You should get the Cruelty man. Even if she did tell him lies, just seeing him might make her lay off Ethel.’

It was a very shrewd remark.

‘I think I should find out a little more first. The NSPCC inspectors are very busy people, unfortunately. I think I must have a little more to go on before I bother the Society.’

‘She’ll pitch you a yarn,’ he said, in that same adult way. ‘But I ain’t a liar. My dad walloped me out of telling lies a long time ago.’

‘I’m quite sure of that, Sydney.’

Not lying, mistaken. Please, God, let it be a mistake. Not here, in lovely Walwyk, should this ugly, thing rear its head.

Berta Creek had set the tea-tray, and beside it, under an upturned basin, was a freshly made cherry cake. Miss Mayfield drank two cups of tea but left the cake untouched, and when, at about half-past five, she set out to visit Ethel, she carried it with her, neatly wrapped.

She was not yet familiar enough with the village to know in which cottage the Rigbys lived, so she stopped at the little general shop-cum-Post Office and asked her way. The Postmistress, a friendly plump woman, came out and pointed.

‘There, look, between the pink house and the allotments, thass Curlew Lane; that run right down to the river. Rigbys’ is the first you come to, stand all alone with a holly bush in front. You can’t miss it.’

It was another of the picture-postcard cottages, with a long front garden in which flowers and vegetables grew side by side. She might almost have been expected, for she had hardly tapped on the door before it opened to reveal a little old woman who exactly matched the cottage; neat in her old-fashioned black alpaca dress, her shining white hair parted in the centre and drawn into a bun at the back, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed, Mrs Rigby stood there smiling.

‘Miss Mayfield,’ she said, ‘do please step in.’