Behind her, their odd-job man touched a finger to the greasy cap in which he seemed to have been born. Richard wondered if he even wore it to bed.

‘Got all the stuff on the list, Miss Angela – and I saw some nice-looking sausages in Emery’s shop, so I brought you half a pound.’

Jenkins was a broad, powerful man with a short neck and long arms. The fanciful Richard wondered if he had a touch of gorilla in him, after seeing his hairy arms and chest when he was clearing some of the neglected area behind the house. Jimmy, who appeared to be about fifty, had a wide, weather-beaten face with a broken nose and a permanent grin, which exposed irregular teeth yellowed by years of smoking Woodbines. On the rare occasions when he lifted his cap to scratch his head, he revealed stubbly grey hair that stuck up like a scrubbing brush.

‘Goin’ to rain tonight, no doubt about it,’ declared Jimmy. ‘So I’ll get out and trim that hedge down by the front gate while it’s still dry.’

Unless Richard gave him some definite task, he seemed to decide for himself what jobs he would do, but in spite of earlier misgivings, his employer had to admit that Jimmy seemed a good worker.

Angela took Sian into the laboratory to carry on sorting out the new equipment, while Richard walked down the corridor from the hall to the room at the back of the house which he had earmarked for his own. His medical books and journals were piled on the floor and he began stacking them on the bookcases that lined one wall. It had been a library-cum-smoking room in the distant days when Uncle Arthur had been alive.

Angela’s room was the former drawing room in the front of the house. Like the lab, it had a magnificent view across the valley, with the River Wye meandering at the bottom and steep tree-covered slopes opposite. The large bay window matched the one across in the laboratory, and only Pryor’s sense of chivalry prevented him being a little envious of Angela’s domain.