"She doesn't tell me anything about her life in London," said Diana with regret. "I assume she gets taken out but I don't know and I don't ask."

"Is that because you don't want to know or you think she wouldn't tell you?"

"Oh, because she wouldn't tell me, of course," she said. "She knows I don't want her to repeat my mistake and marry too young. If she is serious about someone, I'll be the last one to know, and by then it'll be too late for me to urge caution. My own fault entirely," she said. "I quite see that."

Phoebe came back and tossed an opened packet of cigarettes at Diana. "Would you believe they've left that child on guard in Anne's room? PC Williams, the one Molly's taken a shine to. He's had orders to stay there until further notice. Insisted on taking every one of these fags out to have a look at it." She crossed to the telephone and replaced the receiver. "I must have been out of my mind," she went on. "Jane's due in at Winchester some time this afternoon or evening. I told her to ring when she got there. We'll just have to put up with nuisance calls until we hear from her."

With a grimace, Jonathan opened the French windows and stepped out on to the terrace. "I'm going to take the dogs for a walk. I think I'll try and find Lizzie. See you later." He put his fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle before setting off down the garden.

Just then the telephone rang. Phoebe picked it up and listened for a moment. "No comment," she said, replacing the receiver. A few seconds later it began to ring again.

Benson and Hedges cavorted around him, waggling their bottoms and barking, as if a walk was a rarity. He struck out towards the woodland between the Grange and Grange Farm, flinging a stick every now and then to please the scampering dogs. His direction took him past the ice house and he watched with distaste as they made a beeline for it, only to whine and scratch with frustration outside the sealed door. He went on, pausing regularly to turn and scan the way he had come, whistling to the dogs to keep up.

When he reached the two-hundred-year-old oak, standing majestically in its clearing in the middle of the wood, he took off his jacket and sat down, relaxing his back into a natural concave in the wrinkled bark. He remained there for half an hour, listening, watching, until he was satisfied that the only witnesses to what he was about to do were dogs and wild creatures.

He stood up, removed the envelope from inside his folded jacket and popped it through a narrow slit into a hollow in the oak's great trunk where a branch had died and been discarded in infancy. Only Jane, who had swarmed with him through the leafy panoply when they were children, knew the secrets of the hidey-hole.

He whistled up the straying dogs and went back to the house.

"Can I talk to you, darling?"

Elizabeth, halfway up the stairs to her bedroom, looked reluctantly at her mother. "I suppose so." She had just got back from the Lodge and was tired and irritable. Molly's unspoken distress over the police search had upset her.

"We'll leave it if it's riot a good time."

Elizabeth came slowly down the stairs. "What's the matter?"

"Everything." Diana gave a hollow laugh. "What isn't the matter? I could answer that more easily."

Elizabeth followed her into their sitting-room. It was a room like Anne's, but with a very different character, less startling, more conventional, with a gold carpet and classic floral prints in tones of russet and gold at the windows and on the chairs. A dwindling sun fingered the colours with a mellow glow.

"Tell me," said Elizabeth as she watched Jonathan cross the terrace with Benson and Hedges and disappear through Phoebe's French windows.

Diana told her and, as the shadows lengthened, Elizabeth 's distress grew.

Inspector Walsh glanced at his watch and, with an inward sigh, shouldered open the door of Interview Room Number Two. It was nine fifteen. He looked sourly from Anne to her solicitor.

Bill Stanley was a great bear of a man with ungroomed ginger hair sprouting everywhere, even on his knuckles, and an air of shabbiness. From his card he was with a top London firm, no doubt earning a packet, so the black pinstriped suit, crumpled and frayed at the cuffs, was presumably some sort of statement-equality with the huddled masses, perhaps-although why he chose to wear it over a yellowed string vest, Walsh couldn't imagine. He made a mental note to check up on him. In thirty years of rubbing shoulders with the legal profession, he had never seen the like of B.R. Stanley, LLB. The card was probably a forgery.

"You can go home now, Miss Cattrell. There's a car waiting for you."

She gathered her bits and pieces together and stuffed them carelessly into her handbag. "And my other things?" she asked him.

"They will be returned to you tomorrow."

Bill unfolded himself from his chair, stretched his huge hands to the ceiling and yawned. "I can take you home, if you'd prefer it, Anne."

"No, it's late. You get back to Polly and the children."

He straightened his shoulders and the snap as the bones locked into place was loud in the small room. "This is going to cost you an arm and a leg, my girl-it's goodbye to fifty quid every time I draw breath, remember-so what do you say? Shall we sue? I'm game." He beamed. "We're embarrassed for choice really. Harassment, abuse of police powers, damage to your professional reputation, loss of self-esteem, loss of earnings. I always enjoy litigation cases when I've had a chance to see both teams in action."

Her eyes gleamed. "Would I win?"

"Good lord, yes. I've hit the opposition for six off far stickier wickets."

Walsh, who had found Bill's wisecracks increasingly irritating, spluttered angrily. "The law is not a joke, Mr. Stanley. I regret any inconvenience Miss Cattrell may have suffered, but in the circumstances I don't see that we could have acted any differently. It was her choice to have you present while she answered questions and, frankly, had it not taken you three hours to get here, this could all have been dealt with very much more quickly."

"Couldn't make it any sooner, old man," said Bill, poking a finger through his string vest and scratching his bear-hairy chest. "My day for child-minding. Can't abandon the brood to their own devices. They'd slaughter each other the minute I was out of the house. Mind you, you might have a point. Don't relish accusations of sloppiness floating around in open court." He gave Anne's shoulder a friendly squeeze with his great paw. "I'll give you a discount. It's less fun but probably more sensible."

Walsh gobbled furiously. "I've a damn good mind to charge you both with wasting police time."

Laughter shook the solicitor's huge frame as he opened the door for Anne and ushered her out. "No, no, Inspector. I do the charging. Indecent, isn't it? I win whichever way you look at it." He escorted her to the front door where a police car was waiting, took her face in his hands and bent to whisper in her ear. "That little farce is going to cost you fifty smackers to one of the AIDS charities, plus an explanation."

She patted his cheek. "I needed someone to hold my hand," she told him.

He grunted his amusement. "Bollocks! I'd have been angry if I hadn't wanted to find out what the hell was going on and if I hadn't been waiting for a chance to meet that bastard Walsh." The smile faded from his voice. "Give me a ring tomorrow and I'll come down and talk to the three of you. Murder is a dangerous game. Anne, even for the spectators. It's too easy to get dragged in. Phoebe knows that better than anyone." He put his hand on her bottom and propelled her towards the car. "Give her my love, and Diana too." He waved goodbye, then walked to his own car and set off back to London and his weekly night-shift in a shelter for the homeless.