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ask for anyone to pop in and look after the house, or anything?’
    â€˜No, a clean break. No forwarding address. She was going into a retirement home, I gather. They didn’t allow pets, so she had the Cats Protection League come in to take her two. Vera said she’d have liked one of them, but I don’t know what happened – maybe she came to an arrangement with the cat people.
    â€˜I only remember about the cats because I thought we might have a mouse here at the office, and Vera said Mrs Pryce was getting rid of hers. A something and a nothing, as you might say. I’m so sorry about Rose. I hope she gets better soon.’
    Like Ellie, they knew that when older people had a fall, it could be the beginning of the end. Luckily Rose hadn’t broken anything, but the shock might start off any number of problems: pneumonia being the one which occurred most frequently, often proving fatal.
    â€˜Thank you,’ said Ellie, and she put the phone down.
    She tried to collect her wits, which seemed to have gone gathering wool round the Wrekin, or wherever it was they went when they left her. How could she have been so stupid as not to remember the cleaners were due that day? How could she have been so criminally careless as to let the Pryce boy into the house and not keep an eye on him? How was she going to deal with Diana’s challenge . . . for challenge it was?
    Ellie heard herself groan.
    Dear Lord, I suppose you want me to find the money for Diana somehow or other. We have to do this for our children, don’t we? Please, tell me how?
    She got to her feet, restless. What would the other trustees of her charitable trust say if she asked them to bail Diana out? They’d refuse. They must refuse. Their responsibility was to look after the money, and to disburse it to needy people.
    She must talk to Thomas about it instead. Now.
    Tuesday noon
    In the garden of Pryce House.
    The gardener parked his van by the garage, tucked away under the overgrown hedge. He unloaded his tools and the wheelbarrow, trundling the lot through the door into the yard, and from there on through the far door into the back garden. As he made for his vegetable patch he was thinking there ought to be just one more picking from the broad beans, after which he’d cut them to the ground. Quite often they’d spring up new growth, and he might get another crop later on. Blackfly was the big problem with broad beans; with runner beans as well. He’d brought his spray gun, just in case.
    One of these days he must put a new washer on the outside tap, as it tended to drip. Not that it mattered, as he didn’t have to pay the water rates, did he?
    He stooped to unload his tools and stared. There was the fresh imprint of a woman’s shoe in the damp patch under the tap. It hadn’t been there yesterday, and it was smaller than that made by the shoe of the girl living in the house.
    He swung around. The breeze swayed a tendril from a rambler rose, which caught on his shirt. He shook it off. The breeze died away. The windows of the house looked blindly down at him. He looked back. He moved his shoulders uneasily.
    â€˜Is anyone there?’
    The garden seemed to be listening to him. The girl was nowhere to be seen. She knew his times, wouldn’t come down to the garden while he was around.
    He looked at his watch. He was between jobs, had an hour on which to work his patch. He’d better get on with it. His wife would be wanting the beans for supper. Every little helped.
    He scuffed out the telltale footprint. He wasn’t going to panic; not he! After all, he had a better right to be in the garden than anyone else, didn’t he?

FIVE
    Tuesday noon
    E llie hurried along the corridor and tapped on the door of her husband’s study. Too late she remembered that Thomas had a visitor . . . who turned out to be a bishop, no less. ‘Sorry to interrupt. I was