Getting the first computer upstairs had not been quite as unproblematic as they had imagined. There were curves and corners and narrow spaces and odd bits where it was hard for both of them to reach. But they succeeded, and decided at that stage not to push their luck too far, but to enjoy their freedom and see how they got on. 'Let's give the adults time to settle down,' they said, displaying that sound grasp of human psychology which is instinctively present in the young and gradually removed by education and the example of their parents, who, poor loves, have totally internalised educational doctrines (even if they're not teachers) and believe them to be the truth and not simply a set of devices for subjugating children to the wills of their elders.

They had just concluded that a second computer was going to be necessary, because the noise-level of their disputes over the single one was likely to give them away, when they heard the sound of their mother being helped up to bed.

Instantly, they behaved like all heroes in the best children's books. They flung a spare blanket over the computer that was in use, covered it in addition with discarded underwear and other clothing, so it looked just like a normal part of a child's bedroom, and hopped into bed. Just in case they were inspected, they lay down, closed their eyes, tossed the regulation three times, muttered in their feigned sleep and began to breathe deeply. After ten minutes, they sprang up, bright-eyed, and went about their business, delighted to have deceived the woolly senses of the adults. Well, this was almost true. Nigel had sprung up, but Jeremy was not particularly used to red wine, and his snores had been the genuine article, and had in fact contributed to saving Nigel from a fate worse than insomnia. Anyway, safely escaped from the land of Nod, they set about carrying out the second part of their plan and in next to no time had both computers up and working.

At this point, it became evident that whilst the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. Jeremy, who had drunk considerably more than Nigel, had to go for a pee. Nigel's suggestion that he should do it out of the window was not well received. Instead, there was to be a concerted expedition, braving ghosties, ghoulies and long-leggitty beasties. In the course of this, and fortunately on the return journey, a floor-board gave way. Naturally, Nigel's first reaction was to go back to their bedroom and conceal all evidence of computers under a cloak of invisibility made up of Mickey Mouse and Dennis the Menace T-shirts, which done, he went for help.

'You destructive little monkeys!' said Charles. 'You weren't playing about, were you?'

'No!' said Nigel, with righteous indignation born of the rare conviction that he was, for once, speaking the truth. 'We'd just gone to the loo, and were on our way back when it happened.'

'Go to the loo in pairs, do you?' said Charles, sternly.

'In houses like this, yes. You never know what you might meet. Headless ghosts!' said Nigel, standing up for himself because he could sense that Charles was just playing a game.

'More likely to be legless in this place,' muttered Jessica, as the rescue party moved off. Jeremy in fact looked legless when they found him, sitting up to his waist in the floor, with a considerable amount of wood-dust all about him.

'It's like that Beckett play, with the woman up to her neck in a heap of sand!' said Charles, trying not to laugh. 'National Youth Theatre production of Happy Days! How did you get into this?'

'Don't ask him stupid questions, Charles,' said Jessica, 'otherwise, the minute he gets out he'll show you how he got in by stamping on another worm-eaten floorboard and doing it again.'

Richard, meanwhile, was doing his comforting-the-injured-victim-while- the-fire-brigade-cut-him-free bit. He'd found an aged sweet in his pocket and was picking the fluff off before he gave it to his son. However, his son refused it - politely - partly because he didn't actually like the flavour, and partly because, by the time it had been de-fluffed, he had been released from captivity. He hadn't really been caught at all - he'd just not had anything to put his feet on except the plaster of the ceiling below, and he didn't think it would make a good impression if he put his feet through it while attempting to get out. Charles congratulated him on his good sense, after he had pulled him free, and complained to his father that his offspring were really rather too well-fed.

'I'll speak to my wife about it,' said Richard with mock-sternness. 'In fact, come to think of it, as we're up here and making a noise anyway, I'll look in and make sure she's all right.'

He went off to do so, while Jessica shooshed both the boys back to their room (she mercifully stayed outside) and Charles examined the damage.

Anne was still asleep, breathing heavily, her face a little pinched and drawn, as if she were thinking heavy thoughts. He stood and looked at her and remembered other times that he had watched her sleeping, and the emotions he had felt. Desire - very often. More often than he had done anything about it. After all, they had both been so very busy, and there was only time for so much in the day - Anne said so herself, very often. Perhaps he should have taken less notice of her. Protectiveness - yes, he had often felt that, when she slept and he was awake. But when he tried to put it into practice, she called it an attempt at domination, or thoughtlessness about her wishes, and he could see what she meant, but only afterwards, only ever afterwards. Love? Pride? Had he felt those? Funny, he knew he had felt those when he stood over the beds of his children, especially when they had been small, and still his, before they became their own people, when they were still dependent on him, when they were still lost in the big world of noise and light. He had been proud of having produced them - well, having helped - and proud of his deep and instinctive emotions about them. He had been proud of the tears that came to his eyes when he looked at them. If that wasn't love, then what was it? He carried on looking at Anne, waiting for the tears to come to his eyes. They didn't. Then he went out and closed the door very quietly, and only then did he start to cry, just a few drops. He knew that those tears were for him, and for his marriage. He rubbed them away with his fingers, and sniffed a little. Then he went downstairs.

Jessica was alone in the kitchen. Richard was suddenly reminded of those parties of his youth, where the evening dissolved into a kaleidoscope of experiences, and it was vitally important to be alone with X, so that you could make a rendezvous with her, which you didn't dare to do in anyone else's hearing, in case she turned you down, or in case they invited themselves along as well, and if you didn't find yourself alone with X on that particular night, then it was the end of the world. Finding yourself alone with her was as much a matter of luck as good judgement. It depended not least on the capacity of everyone else's bladders, and on judging the queue for the loo, and noticing who'd gone out into the garden and who hadn't and who with. And even if the puzzle of ferrying the missionary and the cannibals across the river in the small canoe actually worked out, you still had to find the right words and get them out. But here was the opportunity, handed to him on a plate.

At that moment, Charles came in, took the last opportunity off the plate and ate it in one gulp.

'Look at these!' he said. 'Look at these!'

He flung a whole set of papers on the table. Clouds of dust arose - the ordinary dust of ages, and the fresher sawdust-like product of beetles, woodworm and dry rot.

'Charles,' said Jessica, 'before we even begin to investigate these insanitary objects, there is a vital question to be asked and answered.'

'Of course we're having some more coffee - but I fancy it with whisky. The Armagnac's a little too civilised for what we're likely to have before us. What's the consensus? Lagavulin, Tomintoul, Scapa Flow? The hell with it, why should we have to choose? Let's get them all out, have an impromptu whisky tasting to keep our brains and our palates alert! Jessica! The crystal tumblers!'

'To hear is to obey, o Lord and Master, from whose nether orifice the daystar sends its effulgent rays!' said Jessica, doing as he asked and giving him the two fingers as she did so.

'Charles,' said Richard, cradling the chocolatey Tomintoul, 'why don't you just tell us what's in these papers? I mean, we all acknowledge that you're a master showman, can date a fresco at forty paces and all that - you don't have to humiliate us with our ignorance. We're very curious, that's true - but I, for one, am feeling too knackered to actually keep up with what's going on unless it's spelled out to me very simply.'

'Have some espresso coffee, Richard,' urged Jessica, putting down the aluminium container beside him. 'Pure black intelligence at this time of morning.'

'The reason I can't tell you what's in these papers, Richard, is that I don't bloody know. I've just found them. Really. The fact that I've been thinking about these things for as long as I have does mean that I can probably give an interpretation faster than you - but why don't you two just leaf through the bundles and tell me what it is you find?'

'My God,' said Jessica, 'Frank Winston's been murdered!'

'What date's that clipping?'

'I don't know, Charles. Oh yes I do. There's something on the back about the Cup Final being held at Wembley for the first time. That makes it 1923. One of the books I edited was all about memorable Cup Finals. Do you want to know about the one where the goalie played with a broken neck because substitutes weren't allowed? Or the first one where substitutes were allowed? Or the first one where a player was sent off?'

'I'd rather know about Frank Winston's murder.'

'Of Street End Cottage - isn't that the name of that ruined one where you said the caretaker was camping out? - leaves a wife, Mrs Lizzie Winston, also Street End Cottage... what the hell was she doing back with him again? You told us she got shot of him because he insisted on his conjugals - well, that was your interpretation, anyway - and here she is, large as life, no longer living in the Big House, though she may well still have been working here, and there he is, small as death, with his head smashed in by person or persons unknown. Come on, Sherlock, what have you got to say for yourself?'

'Nothing at all - yet. Richard - pick a document - any document - '

'Lady Violet Fitzwarren-Beacham-Warner has much pleasure in inviting blank to a séance to be held at Fitzwarren Court on February 19th, 1924, at which the renowned American spiritualist, Dr Arthur J. Spalter, will attempt to contact the spirits of the dear departed. She'd gone doo-lally. She and her trolley had parted company. An inspection of her crockery cupboard would have revealed a grave shortage of mugs.'

'A vivid, but not a profound, comment. Sorry to be so pompous, but it's my normal reaction to extreme flippancy. Any more?'

'My God, she's doing it again, the week after! And the week after that! There's a full-scale pack of these things! You could play bridge with them!'

'I'll tell you one thing, Richard - séances don't come cheap. It's not the beer and crisps that cost - it's the medium.'

'You edited a book on it?'

'No - one of my aunties was so heavily into it, trying to get in touch with her dead husband (though Lord knows why, they'd never communicated particularly well when he was alive, so perhaps that was the reason) that her offspring had to have her certified while there was still enough money in the coffers to pay for the funeral.'

'In this case, though, there was no heir around to protect his patrimony - at least, no heir who could make himself known - and the money was certainly going fast. Here's something which even I have no trouble in interpreting despite my weakened state: A cheque drawn for a rather large sum in favour of Dr Spalter and marked "Insufficient funds. Refer to drawer." Things must have come to a pretty pass when old-established banks refuse to honour the cheques of respectable county families.'

'Don't you be so sure about that, Richard, things aren't always what they seem. A returned cheque can be a very effective way of welshing on a debt which is basically unenforceable. The recipient of the cheque is very careful not to make a public fuss about the matter, because that would deprive the family of whatever credit it might still enjoy and make it absolutely certain that the creditor won't get any of the funds owing to him. What he does is agree to take the money in instalments, without interest, and meanwhile the family books the villa in Nice for an extra month.'

'Not much question of the villa in Nice as far as Lady Violet was concerned. The financial situation seems to have got worse. Here's a letter from her to her stock-brokers asking them to liquidate her stocks and shares on the instructions of Dr Spalter and make the proceeds available to him for investment on the American stock-market.'

'And the date?'

'February 1929. Ouch.'

'Ouch indeed, Jessica. One in the crystal balls there for Dr Spalter, I feel.'

'I thought we weren't allowed to be flippant, Charles?'

'You aren't. I am. Satisfied? Jessica, what have you got there?'

'It's a private letter. Shaky handwriting. I don't want to read it. I'm scared.'

'Jessica, I think you'd really be the most suitable person. Richard or I might bring some cynicism to the expression of emotions which would be inappropriate and could even be offensive.'

'I'm sorry, Charles. It gives me goose-pimples. It's like looking into an open wound. I'm not scared of the sight of blood. It's that damply shining stuff under the skin that I can't stand - the stuff you have to wipe over repeatedly to get rid of the last traces of grit or glass, before you can close it up. I don't want to go that deep.'

Charles took the letter from her, held it nearer to the glass-cased candle, and began to read:

'My dear Marjory, The doctor has confirmed my diagnosis. There is no hope at all. However, he has assured me that if the pain increases, as it inevitably must, he will increase my dosage of morphine correspondingly, and that if the pain should become unendurable, I shall not have to endure it. In recent years I have suffered from great despair, and even doubted the existence of God, or the afterlife. This was my reaction to the cruel deception practised on me for so long. However, as I approach the divide, I have one great consolation in the knowledge that I shall soon be with my dear dead Harry again. In the past few weeks, he has come to comfort me almost every evening and has stayed with me for a while, holding my hand, often until I fell asleep. You would think that the dead remain just as they were when they died, but Harry has told me that this is not so. He himself looks a fine, healthy, well-set-up young man in his early thirties, just the way he might have been now if he had been spared. That is one of the mysteries of the spirit kingdom, to which Dr Spalter most definitely did not have the key. I am not a vengeful woman, but I cannot help seeing it as a sign of retribution on someone who swindled me out of what little remained of the Fitzwarren family fortune, that he himself has lost virtually everything. Perhaps I was gullible, but a brief vision of my dear dead Harry at that time led me to try any way I could to get in touch with him. I am grateful to my cancer, for it means that I shall be reunited with him sooner than might have been the case. I must close now, as it is nearly the time when he comes to me and I do not wish to keep him waiting.'

There was silence in the kitchen, except for the sound of Jessica's tears falling on the scrubbed deal table. Richard blew his nose noisily to conceal his emotion. Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, the way one does to give pinched flesh relief, as if he'd been wearing rather tight glasses to read the letter. But he hadn't.

'Well,' said Jessica, 'at least she saw through the deception before she died. It's a consolation for me that she wasn't permanently taken in by that charlatan.'

'It's nice to come across a humane and enlightened doctor, too,' said Richard. 'I can understand very well why that letter had to be suppressed to protect him.'

'You don't think it was suppressed just because of the hint at euthanasia, do you?' asked Charles.

'Why else? There's nothing incriminating in it. She was a poor sick old woman. The secondary cancers in her brain made her see things. But there was nothing mad or dangerous about her. She simply dreamed her dreams with her eyes open.'

'Richard, I don't know if it's more espresso coffee you need, or more Tomintoul, but you certainly need something to sharpen your wits.'

'Charles, don't be so insulting!'

'Sorry, Jessica, but as far as I'm concerned the reasoning is head-beatingly obvious.'

'Then explain it. To both of us. I'll help Richard comprehend by giving him some Lagavulin. It's lighter, smokier, clears the brain. Tomintoul can be a bit soporific.'

'As I recall, we came to the collective surmise that one of the Fitzwarren half-brothers survived the Great War, but that he was unable to resume his rightful place in society - wherever that was, above or below stairs. We further surmised that he might well have been drawn back to this house. I don't think it requires too great a conceptual leap to realise that when Lady Violet, in the exquisitely painful final stages of cancer, thought she was being consoled by the figure of her dear dead Harry she was in fact being consoled by her dear dead Harry, or, equally possibly, by Lizzie Warren's dear dead Harry, I don't think it really mattered or matters, either to her or to us. Or, probably, even to him.'

'God,' said Richard, taking sips of the Lagavulin that were a little too large to be respectful to its quality, 'just think of it! An only child with two mothers! And no father.'

'As I've said before, that's not a situation on which I am in any way competent to comment, so perhaps we could pass over it.'

'But Charles,' asked Jessica, helping herself to coffee from Richard's pot, 'if dear dead Harry, or, for the sake of argument, dear dead Hal, did, in the long run, make himself known to Lady Violet, why didn't he do so earlier? Why are we assuming that he made his first contact with Lizzie Warren?'

'Jessica, as I find it increasingly painful to repeat, I am not qualified to discuss the psychology of the mother-child relationship in any intimate way. It's possible that if it was dear dead Hal, then he would have preferred to go to his own mother, the voice of nature and so on. But even if it was dear dead Harry, he would have found it infinitely easier to get in touch with Lizzie Warren. She lived just beside the kitchen, he only needed to come tap-tap-tapping at her window. Think about the practical difficulties involved in getting a private audience with the lady of the household in her apartments on the first floor.'

'But Charles, all this history of the house began from a discussion of priest-holes and secret passages - you admitted they existed - surely there must have been other ways in?'

'I see where your boys get it from, Richard. The romanticism of caves and narrow tunnels - don't let Freud hear you. I'm sure you're right. But I can't help feeling that the emergence of a dishevelled tramp from the panelling in the best drawing room would have been more likely to lead to the summoning of the police than an emotional recognition scene. Furthermore, there were very good practical reasons why dear dead Hal or Harry would want to establish contact with Lizzie Warren: cupboard love. She was a source of food. He was sleeping rough in the barns round here and needed to eat. All Lady Violet could have managed without arousing suspicion would have been a couple of extra digestives with her cocoa on the supper tray.'

'Charles, you have such a gift for graphic description, such insight into the lives of ordinary people. But you haven't explained why, fed, watered and washed, Hal/Harry couldn't or wouldn't go and see his other mother? Would she have turned him in?'

'I don't know, Jessica. I doubt it. There may have been motives of jealousy, of course. That is to say - and at this point the reasoning gets quite complex - if Hal/Harry presented himself as Hal to Lizzie Warren, in order to gain her maternal love, sympathy and support, how could he go and present himself as Harry to Lady Violet without kicking Lizzie in the teeth?'

'Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned - that's the correct reading,' said Richard.

'Of course, when the poor love was dying it didn't matter - Lizzie Warren was obviously good-hearted enough to condone the deception, and probably thought it was a lovely thing her boy was doing.'

'You know, Jessica, I'm genuinely grateful to you for some of these emotional insights which would never have occurred to me.'

'Thank you, Charles. I always hoped I'd be able to bring something new into your life. The funny thing is, Richard, we both mean it.'

'There is also another complex of reasons why he would have chosen to make his approach to Lizzie first. Whichever one he was - and I don't think it matters - he had lost - forfeited - the right to be the heir to the family fortune and, more importantly I think, to this house. If he had had anything to do with Lady Violet, even on a fitful and surreptitious basis, he would constantly have been reminded of everything of which he was now deprived - to some degree by his own fault, at the very least by his own misfortune. Regret does not make a sleep-filled pillow, nor a tasty slice of bread, saith the psalmist. The sauce of self-reproach soon turns the stomach. Constant involvement with, or even the close proximity of, those who could or should have been his equals, but were now his superiors - and I'm assuming that some form of rehabilitation was, for various reasons, out of the question - would sour completely an existence that was already tainted with bitterness. He remained with the servants. He stuck to his own class.'

'I'm sorry, Charles, but that sounds terribly snobby.'

'I know it does, Jessica. It also sounds as though I'm assuming the survivor was Hal Warren. But I'm not. And anyway, Hal Warren had been raised in the same way as Harry. It seems to me that if you can't follow in the tradition of owning a house like this - assuming you take that tradition and your part in it seriously - then the next best thing is to serve it. If you can't command, then you obey. The commitment is absolute.'

'All this time, Charles, we've been letting Frank Winston lie around with his head smashed in by person or persons unknown - presumably not football fans on their way to the first Wembley Cup Final. Isn't it time we did something about investigating the crime?'

'Go on, then, Richard. You know my methods. It should be - '

'Elementary,' said Jessica, reaching for the Scapa Flow.

'I'd advise against it,' said Charles, 'it has strength but lacks subtlety. It was, after all, where they scuttled the German High Seas Fleet.'

'From what you say, I imagine it was what scuttled them.'

'Well,' said Richard, 'we know that in 1897 Lizzie Warren didn't want anything to do Frank Winston, but that in 1923 she was living with him in a little cottage.'

'A squalid place,' said Charles.

'What made her move in with him?'

'The charm of the older man?' suggested Jessica.

'The considerably older man,' said Charles. 'When he tried to get his nasty grubby hands on her the first time he was in his early thirties.'

'So, if it wasn't passion, what was it? What was it made Lizzie Warren move in with Frank Winston in 1923?'

'Do you run your classes in school like this, with these endless rhetorical questions? Charles - give him the Scapa Flow - he doesn't need subtlety, he needs strength.'

'I think it was blackmail,' said Richard. 'Blackmail. That's what I think.'

'God,' said Jessica, 'from the sublime to the ridiculous! First of all he beats about the bush, and then he comes out with it plop! like a flasher in an underpass.'

'Where do you get your similes, Jessica?'

'Shall I have them make some in your size, Richard?'

'I must confess, I thought they came off the peg.'

'Touchée, a hit, I do confess it, a very palpable hit. Why don't we let Charles do the elegant narration, while we kibitz?'

Charles leant forward, and looked closely at the candle in front of him.

'Shepherds,' he said, 'are up early and about late. Shepherds see things that other folk don't see. Shepherds see things that other folk aren't meant to see. Shepherds see young men come tap-tap-tapping at the windows of their lady-loves. At the windows of the shepherds' lady-loves, which didn't ought to be. Only the shepherd should come tap-tap-tapping at her window, and he hasn't done that for many a year, because he knows the answer he'll get. But that doesn't stop him coming to look at the window, perhaps. Maybe to make sure that no one else comes tap-tap-tapping. Maybe because he hopes to catch a sight of his lady-love in her slip, that he never saw enough of when he was wed to her. Why, he still is wed to her. There's no one but he has a right to come tap-tap-tapping.'

'So he waits,' said Jessica, 'to see who it is. He stands there, all quiet-like, but jealous inside, and he sees her let him in, but he still hasn't seen the face, and he doesn't know whether to interrupt them or not. Will it be the worse pain for her, to be caught out? Or for him, to see the wife he's barely known in someone else's arms? He thinks he'll shame her, and he bursts in, or perhaps he just pokes his bristly face through the window, into her painfully tiny, painfully neat room.'

'And what he sees is the young master,' said Richard, 'or one of the young masters, that was supposed to be dead or missing or runned away, it doesn't matter which. But they shouldn't be here, for all kinds of reasons. And what he sees is the rival you can never beat. The rival that's younger, stronger and better loved. From the start. The rival that's related by blood, while you're only related by marriage. The rival that really was and is one flesh. The son.'

'Thank you, Richard,' said Charles, 'I learn all the time. So Frank blackmails her into coming to live with him, in that squalid place that stinks of sheep-grease and sheep-dirts and stinks of human filth and lack of love. I think he degrades her in all kinds of ways, some of which aren't even obvious to him. I think he hurts her more than she's ever been hurt. She tries to keep it from poor dear Hal, or Harry, who, whoever he may really have been, or think he is, has by now become her son through all her sacrifices for him. But he can see the horror and the shame in her face when he comes tap-tap-tapping now at the window of Street End.'

'Would Frank let that go on?' asked Richard.

'Of course he would,' said Jessica. 'God, you don't understand men! He'd enjoy the power he had. If Harry ran away, then maybe they'd catch him or maybe they wouldn't - the Army, the police, whoever was looking for him, or whoever he thought was looking for him. Once they caught him - or once he'd run away - Frank would lose his hold over Lizzie. What could he threaten to tell? She might lose her post - but unlikely. There was a bond between her and the mistress more important than any scandal.'

'There might have been jealousy, because Lizzie had kept Harry to herself,' said Charles.

'Too subtle for Frank to think of that,' said Jessica. 'They'd have to catch him first and prove it was him. Lizzie would deny it all.'

'So Harry was hanging round the district, sleeping rough in barns and hay-lofts, and calling in for food,' said Richard. 'And when he realised the price he was paying for that food - the price his mother was paying for that food - '

'Out with the stick and thwack thwack thwack. That's the way to do it.'

'Charles, that's horrid.'

'I'm sure it was horrid, Jessica. I don't know whether they were in it together. I don't know if Lizzie led Frank on in some way and lured him out to where he met his death - I assume she must have got herself some good alibi, because I'm certain the village and the big house knew that she didn't get on with her husband, however good a face she put on it public.'

'A stick's messy,' said Richard. 'Blood. Bone-splinters. Hair.'

'But why didn't they catch him?' said Jessica. 'That kind of murder - it's the sort you'd always blame on gypsies and vagabonds, if all the members of the community with good reason had alibis. The police would have combed the countryside within hours. Harry wouldn't have stood a chance.'

'Maybe they were cannier than that, Jessica, Harry and Lizzie. Look at this. It's a document for exemption from army service in the Second World War - the kind of thing you show people so they don't think you're a deserter or that you've dodged the draft.'

'It's in the name of Harry Winston - resident at Street End - a relative of Frank's?'

'In a manner of speaking. But only by marriage.'

'My God! You mean that Lizzie got Frank to vouch for Harry, and bring him into the community as a relative of his - living under the same roof - no more tap-tap-tapping - and then they murdered him.'

'You make it sound very cold-blooded. I doubt if it was planned that way. Perhaps when he was living in the house - or, more likely, in the shed at the end of the garden - it became all the more obvious to him what was going on.'

'But Charles,' said Richard, 'wasn't it a fearful risk for Harry to get involved with the police in a murder investigation?'

'I take it that Frank had provided him with some kind of documentation, so that shouldn't have been a problem. What he needed was an alibi. Maybe he took the train somewhere on business for Frank - there used to be a line along the valley, you know - Augustus John used it regularly, to go up to London for his exhibitions, or to see one of his mistresses - Harry stayed away for a couple of days, made sure he was seen - but cycled back secretly - waited in the woods - did the deed - cycled back along footpaths - waited to be notified of his cousin's death, then returned.'

'I don't want this to sound too pat, Charles,' said Jessica, '- but there's an envelope here with rail tickets in it and a boarding-house bill. Also some other financial paper-work that I don't quite understand. Do you want to investigate it?'

'What? And spoil a good supposition by testing it against truth? No, thank you very much.'

'Charles,' said Richard, 'how do you know all these things?'

'I read a lot of Thomas Hardy when I was young. It gave me a deep insight into the grimness of the English peasant mentality. Come to think of it, the aristocracy aren't too good either.'

'That leaves the bourgeoisie like us, then.'

'I vaguely hope that wood-lice will inherit the earth. They're quiet, civilised, tidy, stupid and don't do any conspicuous damage. What do you say, Richard?'

'I was just thinking about Harry, cycling back to Salisbury or wherever, in the pitch dark - '

'There was probably a moon - they could have picked their time - but maybe you're right - better in the dark - '

'Throwing away the stick in the woods, because it would have been a fresh cut one, not anything to associate with anyone at all - taking off the clothes he'd worn in case they had blood on them, burying them there in the woods, deep woods, old woods - maybe even in the Great Yews, they'd have been on his road if he stuck to the high chalk - washing himself in one of the ponds, or maybe one of the troughs for the sheep in a field corner - putting on the town clothes that he'd hidden on the way out - and back down to his boarding-house in the town - up the drainpipe and back into bed - '

'Would he really have worried about all those clues on his clothes?'

'Oh, yes, Jessica - Inspector French books were very popular in the early 1920's. I'm sure Lizzie would have read them, from Boots' threepenny library, or Mudie's. Well, she may have read them after her mistress, but I'm sure that they were the major excitement in both of their lives - beside certain other matters.'

'Charles - how do you manage to be such a cold fish?'

'Practice, Jessica. Effort. Now - is the story over?'

'Do you think he was haunted by his crime?'

'I doubt it. He'd probably seen - and done - worse things in France, and at least this time he knew why he was killing the man. I have the impression that Harry just happened to be at the head of the queue. Any more questions?'

'What became of them all in the end?'

'I actually happen to know that.'

'Is there anything you don't happen to know?'

'Jessica, I detect a hint of sarcasm in your voice, and prescribe Lagavulin for it.'

'But how do you happen to know what happened to them all?' asked Richard. 'Another document?'

'Yes. And one that your parents must once have possessed, but probably discarded well before they began getting rid of your toys.'

'Did I tell you about that?'

'Yes. Only twenty-eight years ago. With embarrassment, because it was evident how much they still meant to you, and you were as ashamed of emotion then as you are now.'

'You can talk!'

'Yes. But I admit it. It doesn't help very much, but it does a little good.'

'So where's this document? What is it? Show us it!'

'Patience, Jessica! We've only just finished our Old Boys' Reunion.