4. Obsession

Powyss gets ever more obsessed by Hannah. It's the constant gossip on the estate.

Powyss has put in a listening tube so that he can monitor Warlow's movement.

It is less effective than Powyss hoped for, but it will come back to haunt him.

Herbert Powyss lives on an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman’s fashionable investigation into botanical experimentation. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science – something consequential enough to present to The Royal Society in London.

Influenced by something he’s read, he decides to conduct a radical investigation into the Resilience of the Human Mind Without Society. He places an ad for a suitable guinea pig.

Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job - a semi-literate, angry abuser.

What could possibly go wrong?

Written by Alix Nathan and abridged by Jeremy Osborne.

Read by Robert Glenister.

Producer: Karen Rose

A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in July 2017.