Borrowed Time

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I phoned the Bryants that night and asked if we could meet to discuss the implications of Paul’s confession. It was his father I spoke to and he seemed quite touched that a member of the Paxton family-as my connection with Bella somehow made him regard me-should want to see them at all in the circumstances. It was also clear that any help I could offer them would be gratefully received. “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Timariot,” he said, “Dot and I have been beside ourselves with worry this past week. We just don’t know which way to turn.” I was obviously going to be greeted as a welcome visitor in Surbiton on Saturday afternoon. Though whether I’d be remembered as such was altogether less certain.

I didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry when the weekend came. By then, I’d had a bellyful of the recriminations at Timariot & Small that had followed Thursday’s board meeting. Adrian and I said nothing to each other, biding our time for our own particular reasons. But Simon and Jennifer more than compensated for that with endless dissections of a situation both confessed they couldn’t understand. “What’s Bella up to?” demanded Jennifer. “The game you’ve persuaded her to play could lose us this offer, you know.” She treated me to more of the same, in innumerable variations. While Simon veered from bemusement to paranoia. From “Adrian can’t seriously think he’s going to get anything out of Harvey McGraw,” to “You’ve cooked this up with Joan, haven’t you, to stop me buying my way out of her clutches?” But however wild his theories became, they could never match the truth. I felt I was almost doing him a favour by keeping him in the dark where that was concerned.

The Bryants lived in Skylark Avenue, a long curving road of identical pebble-dashed mock Tudor semis on the Berrylands side of Surbiton. I knew from Paul, of course, that they’d lived there all their married life. Driving along it on a mild grey Saturday afternoon of lawnmowing and car cleaning, I sensed the stultifying predictability he’d rebelled against in his teens. Yet I couldn’t help identifying with it at the same time. The scrawny youth tinkering with his rust-patched car while a football commentator lisped at him from a badly tuned radio. The overweight commuter working up a weekly sweat by trimming his hedge to geometric perfection. They were each in their own frustrated way part of the fabric of life. Which Paul had ripped to shreds in a single night.

The first sign of which was the lack of outdoor activity at number 34. The silence and stillness of mourning reigned. And Norman Bryant invited me in with the subdued politeness of the recently bereaved. What I’d called to discuss was worse than a death, though. Paul’s mere extinction wouldn’t have left his father’s shoulders bent with shame as well as sadness. It would in fact, his bearing implied, have been preferable to the blow he’d suffered. He was a thin stooped timid-looking man in his early sixties, the tie beneath his pullover a testimony to forty years of dressing for the bank. His skin and hair were grey, his clothes brown, his mind set in ways not designed to meet their present challenge. “It’ll be a relief just to be able to talk about it to somebody else,” he admitted. “Bottling this up isn’t doing Dot any good.” Nor him, I strongly suspected. “Thank God at least we’ve both retired. How I’d have faced them at the bank…” He shook his head at the unthinkability of such a prospect, then showed me into the lounge.

Mrs. Bryant was waiting there with one of her daughters. I recognized them from the wedding, doleful though the contrast was. Mrs. Bryant was a small round pink-faced woman whose dimpled smile had been my clearest memory of her. But there was no sign of that now. She was trembling and fidgeting like a startled dormouse, her eyes alternately staring and darting. And her handshake was so limp I expected her arm to drop to her side the moment I let go. “You’re… Lady Paxton’s brother?” she said, so hesitantly I hadn’t the heart to correct her. “This is… our daughter… Cheryl.”

“Hi,” said Cheryl, smiling faintly. “We met last year.” She was a tall slim fashionably casual woman of thirty or so, not quite as smart and self-confident as Paul but nearly so, with short dark hair, a direct gaze and a hint somewhere at the back of her eyes that she was on her best behaviour for her parents’ sake.

“We told Cheryl you were coming,” said Mr. Bryant. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I’m glad you did. Will your other daughter be-”

“Ally lives in Canada,” said Cheryl. “Well out of it.”

There was an edge to the remark her father seemed to feel he couldn’t ignore. “We haven’t told Allison, Mr. Timariot. There seemed no point burdening her with it. Not before we have to, anyway.”

“We’re forgetting our manners,” said Mrs. Bryant abruptly. “Please sit down, Mr. Timariot. Would you like some tea?”

“Thanks. That would be nice.”

“I’ll make it,” said Cheryl, heading for the kitchen with the eagerness of somebody glad of any excuse to leave the room.

“Use the cups and saucers,” her mother cried after her, before turning to me with a blush. “I do so hate mugs. Don’t you?”

“Well, I…”

“Mr. Timariot hasn’t come here to talk about crockery, love,” said Mr. Bryant, patting his wife’s hand. They sat on the sofa facing me, a pitiful optimism blooming in their expressions. Could I somehow, they seemed to be wondering, put matters right? Could I turn the clock back to their son’s blameless childhood and correct the fault before it was too late? “It goes without saying that we’re… very sorry… very sorry indeed… about all this…”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You wonder if it is, though,” he said, frowning down at the carpet between us. “You bring them up as best you can. You give them so many things you never had yourself. So many advantages. And then…”

“He was such a good-natured baby,” Mrs. Bryant remarked. Then, as if aware how irrelevant the observation was, she launched herself on another tangent. “Sir Keith must feel this dreadfully, he really must. My heart goes out to him.”

“It must be just as bad for you,” I said.

Mr. Bryant nodded and flexed his hands. “He came here last weekend. Paul, I mean. Sat us down and told us. From the chair you’re sitting in now. Calm as you like. Poured it all out.”

“Awful,” murmured Mrs. Bryant.

“Said he hoped we’d understand. But how can you understand that?” He sat forward and stared at me. “I’m afraid I lost my rag. I hit him, you know. For the first time in his life, I actually hit him. I was angry, you see. But he wasn’t. Even then. He was so… controlled. I hardly recognized him as my son.”

“He was never a violent boy,” said Mrs. Bryant. “Secretive. But never violent. That’s why I can’t believe it.”

Mr. Bryant gave me a confidential smile, as if to say: “That’s motherhood for you.” But fatherhood, apparently, wasn’t quite so blinkered. “He didn’t make it up, love. We’re going to have to accept it. At least he’s owned up. Better late than never.”

“Why do you think he’s owned up now?” I asked.

“He said it was because of Rowena,” answered Cheryl as she bustled into the room with the tea tray. “Said he couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“So some good’s come out of poor Rowena’s…” Mr. Bryant adjusted his glasses and looked at me as Cheryl moved between us with the cups. Suicide was the word. But he couldn’t bring himself to pronounce it. Or murder, come to that. The truth could only be approached obliquely. “At least an innocent man won’t be kept in prison much longer,” he concluded with a sigh.

“You’re sure he is innocent?” I said at once, seizing the opportunity now it had been presented to me.

“Well… aren’t you?”

“Not entirely. Bella… Lady Paxton, I mean… and I have considered the possibility that Paul might be confessing to the murders in order to punish himself for Rowena’s suicide.”

“You mean…” Mr. Bryant’s brow furrowed. He looked round at his wife and daughter. “You mean he might…”

“Not have done it?” put in Mrs. Bryant, her eyes wide with sudden hope.

But Cheryl was too realistic to be taken in. And in no hurry to let her parents be. “That’s crazy,” she said, looking straight at me.

“Not necessarily.”

“I heard him say it, Mr. Timariot. All of it. And it was all true.”

“I heard him myself. And it was convincing, certainly. But there’s a possibility-no more, I grant you-that he might be lying.”

“Because he feels responsible for Rowena’s death? Come on.”

“It’s true he’s never got over it,” said Mr. Bryant. “But I can’t believe-”

“What about the postcard?” His wife had seized her husband’s elbow and jerked forward in her chair, spilling tea into her saucer. “I told you I didn’t imagine it.”

Mr. Bryant sighed. “Not that again.” He shook his head and looked across at me. “You know Paul went round Europe by train that summer, Mr. Timariot?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, he sent us several postcards. Half a dozen all told, I should think. Just tourist stuff. The Eiffel Tower. The Acropolis. That sort of thing. I can’t remember much about them. But Dot seems to think-”

“One of them was of Mount Blank, Mr. Timariot,” his wife put in. “And that place he told his friend he was going to when they split up…”

“Chamonix?”

“Yes. It’s right underneath Mount Blank, isn’t it? I looked it up in the atlas.”

“Are you saying the card was posted in Chamonix?”

“Well… Not exactly. I don’t recall where…”

“And she’s thrown it away since,” Mr. Bryant explained.

“I thought I’d kept them,” Mrs. Bryant said stubbornly. “For the stamps. I can’t think how they came to be-”

“Dot’s a great one for clear-outs,” said her husband, with a rueful smile.

“It must have been some peak in the Austrian Alps, Mum,” said Cheryl, her tone suggesting she’d already heard enough of the topic.

But Mrs. Bryant wasn’t to be moved, even though her excruciating mispronunciation of Mont Blanc only underlined her capacity for error-as well as self-delusion. “It was Mount Blank,” she insisted.

“Maybe it was,” said Cheryl, glancing at me as she spoke. “Maybe Paul sent it specifically to make us think he’d been to Chamonix. But when and where was it posted? That’s the question.”

“I don’t know.” Her mother was becoming irritated now. “I didn’t take down the details of the postmark.”

“What does Paul say?” I asked, anxious to calm the waters.

“We haven’t asked him,” Mr. Bryant replied. “He’d gone by the time Dot thought of it.”

“And the card’s gone too,” said Cheryl. “So there’s not really much point talking about it, is there?”

“Perhaps not,” I said, still trying to sound like the embodiment of sweet reason. “But it’s the sort of thing that could be helpful. If Paul is lying, some little slip he’s made is what will find him out. I mean, if he wasn’t in Kington on the night in question, he must have been somewhere else, mustn’t he? And somebody must have seen him there.”

Cheryl sighed. “He wasn’t anywhere else.”

“But supposing he was… for the sake of argument… Then-and on those other occasions. In Cambridge and-”

“He did stay up there after the end of term,” tolled Mrs. Bryant’s mournful voice. “I remember that.”

“During the Easter vacation that year, then. Did he seem… in a strange mood?”

“He was always in a strange mood,” said Cheryl. “From birth, as far as I could tell.”

Mr. Bryant looked round sharply at her, then said: “Paul’s never been what you’d call open. It’s never been easy to know what’s going on inside his head.”

“We know now,” murmured Cheryl.

Her mother, meanwhile, had been casting her mind back to April 1990. “He seemed the same as usual, Mr. Timariot. Like Norman says, he’s always had a… private nature. Never one to make friends easily, our Paul.”

“Or at all,” Cheryl threw in.

“What about Peter Rossington?”

“We’ve never met him,” Mr. Bryant replied. “I think they were just travelling companions.”

“Paul must have some friends.”

Mr. Bryant shrugged. “Not really. The boy’s always been a bit of a lone wolf.” He seemed to wince, as if suddenly struck by the predatory connotations of the description. “That’s why we were so pleased when he and Rowena…” He tailed off into silence, realizing every word only took him in deeper.

“Somebody ought to check with that Peter Rossington,” his wife resumed. “He might know when Paul was in… what do you call it?… Chamonicks.”

“He was never in Chamonicks,” snapped Cheryl. She took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her forehead before quietly correcting herself. “Chamonix.”

“The police will check with him, love,” Mr. Bryant consoled his wife.

“I’d be happy to speak to him myself,” I said, coming rapidly to terms with the likelihood that my visit was going to leave me with no other avenue to explore. “Do you know where he can be contacted?”

“Paul said he worked for some big advertising agency in London,” Mrs. Bryant replied. “But I can’t quite…”

“Schneider Mackintosh,” said Cheryl, smiling coolly at me. “You know? The people we can thank for the result of the last election.”

“Ah yes. Of course.”

“Are you going to see him?” asked Mrs. Bryant.

“If he’ll see me, certainly.”

“Good.” She risked a sidelong glance at her husband. “I’m glad somebody’s doing something.”

“You’re wasting your time,” said Cheryl. “He’ll only confirm what Paul’s already told us.”

“Perhaps. But-”

“And do you know why? Because it’s the truth.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he’s my brother, Mr. Timariot. I’ve known him all his life. I’ve watched him grow up. But I’ve never really understood him. Until now. He’s always been hiding something before. Keeping something back. But not any more. It’s all out in the open now. I wish it wasn’t. But it is. And the sooner we face up to it, the better.”

“Cheryl’s right,” said Mr. Bryant as he walked me to my car. “We have to accept what Paul did as best we can. There’s no sense in… blocking our ears to it.”

“I just want to be sure, Mr. Bryant. Only your wife doesn’t seem to be.”

“She’s his mother. What else would you expect? She can’t bring herself to believe he could commit murder.”

“But you can?”

We reached the car and stopped. He didn’t look directly at me or answer my question specifically. But a shuffle of his feet and a droop of his chin gave me some kind of response. “It was good of you to call, Mr. Timariot. I appreciate it. But I have to think of Dot, you see. I have to help her come to terms with what’s happened. And what’s going to happen. Raising her hopes will only make her feel worse when they’re dashed.” Now he did look at me. “As you and I both know they will be.”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind on the subject. I think you should do the same.”

“Paul’s walked out on his job, you know. It was a good job too. The basis of a fine career.”

“You think that proves something?”

“I think it proves he’s preparing for the worst. That’s why we have to do the same.” He frowned. “I’d be grateful, Mr. Timariot… for Dot’s sake… if you didn’t come to see us again… in the circumstances.” Then he sighed and added: “Sorry.”

“What if I learn something useful from Peter Rossington?”

A car drove past us and Mr. Bryant waved over my shoulder to the driver, a smile coming instantly to his lips-and leaving as quickly. His eyes followed the vehicle for a moment, as if he were wondering how many neighbourly waves he’d have to do without, once Paul’s guilt became widely known. Then he looked back at me. “You won’t,” he said, without the least hint of animosity.

“I might.”

An expression of politely restrained scepticism crossed his face, such as I could imagine him having worn when a heavily overdrawn customer of the bank sought an extension of credit on the flimsiest of grounds. “Goodbye, Mr. Timariot,” he said, shaking my hand and turning dolefully back towards the house.

I phoned Schneider Mackintosh from my office first thing Monday morning. Peter Rossington proved elusive, being out of the room or on another line each time I tried and showing no inclination to return my call. Eventually, around four o’clock, I struck lucky and was rewarded with a brief conversation. He sounded young, cocksure and faintly patronizing. He also sounded distinctly suspicious when I said I wanted to talk to him about Paul Bryant. Well, I couldn’t blame him for that. But jumping to the conclusion that I was some kind of headhunter keen to check Paul’s suitability for prestigious employment was quite another matter. Since it was an idea I’d done nothing to plant in his mind, it seemed only fair to make the most of it. Especially since lunch at my expense in a restaurant of his choice was the fancy price I had to pay for whatever information he was prepared to dispense. I suggested the following day, but he pleaded pressure of other commitments and we finally settled on Thursday.

By then, Bella had been in touch, eager for news of my progress. But a description of my visit to the Bryants didn’t seem to qualify under that heading. “You didn’t get anything out of them at all?” she complained, contriving to imply the reason lay in some deficiency on my part rather than the dismal truth that there was nothing to be got. “Well, you’d better be more persistent when you meet Peter Rossington, hadn’t you?”

But I doubted if persistence-or any other kind of interrogative ingenuity-was going to reveal a flaw in Paul’s account of his activities in the summer of 1990. Cheryl Bryant had told me I was wasting my time and, as far as I could see, she was absolutely right. But Bella wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d wasted a good deal more of it.

Another difficulty weighing on my mind when I travelled up to London on Thursday morning was how to question Peter Rossington about Paul without revealing the real reason. Posing as a headhunter was only going to carry me so far. And it was a pose I knew an astute young advertising executive would see through in pretty short order.

It transpired I needn’t have worried. Not about that, anyway. Rossington was waiting for me when I reached The Square, a light, airy and punctiliously staffed establishment in the heart of St. James’s. He was a pencil-thin pasty-faced fellow with haircut and suit so abreast with the fashions that he looked even younger than I reckoned he was. More like nineteen than twenty-five. His smile was broad but cool, his eyes frankly appraising. A keen brain was apparent behind the braying voice and sneering air. I disliked him at once. And I had the distinct impression that the feeling was mutual. But neither of us was there to indulge our feelings. Though the senses were evidently a different matter, as his call for a second glass of champagne immediately revealed.

“Cards on the table, Mr. Timariot,” he said straightaway. “There was something ever so slightly fishy about your invitation. So I decided to check with Paul. One of the reasons I put off meeting you until today. I wanted time to take the temperature.” He raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice. “Turned out to be a lot hotter than I’d ever have imagined.”

“Right,” I said, my mind racing to accommodate the consequences of what he’d said. My cover was blown, of course. But worse still, Paul now knew I was digging around in his past. It was something I might have avoided if I’d been honest with Rossington from the outset. But it was too late to repair the damage. “So… You know what this is about, do you?”

“’Fraid so. Wish I didn’t, as a matter of fact. Sounds hideously messy. But that’s Paul’s problem, isn’t it? And yours, apparently.”

“Have you seen Paul?”

“Yeh. We met yesterday. He told me the lot. It was a real shaker. I mean, we were never close friends. Never friends at all, come to that. Paul wasn’t the matey type. He didn’t let you see inside his head. And now I know what was going on inside it, I can understand why. But even so…” He lit a cigarette, without troubling to offer me one. “Even so, it takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? Being acquainted with somebody capable of…” He shook his head and sent up a plume of smoke. “Bloody hell.”

I smiled awkwardly. “Sorry to have misled you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yeh. Well, so you should be. Perhaps you’d like to explain why you did. It’s the one thing Paul couldn’t enlighten me about.”

“I’m simply trying to confirm his story before the police become involved.”

“They already are, according to Paul. He warned me to expect a visit. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

“Why not?”

He frowned. “Because nobody likes being mixed up in something like this. Murder’s bad enough. Especially with a sex angle. But…” He made another effort to speak softly. Clearly, it didn’t come naturally to him. “But a miscarriage of justice makes it worse, doesn’t it? Big headlines. Mega-coverage. And my name in there somewhere. Where colleagues are bound to notice it.”

“So you’re worried about a little… professional embarrassment?”

“You bet I am. Some swine’s going to suggest I should have tumbled what Paul was up to, aren’t they?”

“And should you have?”

“Of course not. He never gave me any hint-” He broke off to order his meal. Unprepared, I ordered the same. Wine wasn’t mentioned. Something rather stiffer might have hit the mark. But that wasn’t mentioned either. “Like I told you,” Rossington resumed, “Paul was and is a closed book to me. I suggested we tag along together on the trip to Europe because I didn’t fancy going alone. Simple as that. He gave me no inkling of an ulterior motive. Well, I suppose there wasn’t one at the time. That came later, didn’t it?”

“Did you notice a change in him between fixing up the trip and setting off?”

“I’ve never noticed a change in him. He seems the same to me now as he did then. Cool, calm and collected. Absolutely his own man.”

“And you split up in Lyon?”

“That’s right. Because he wanted to spend a week in the Alps and I was keen to press on to Italy before my money ran out. I didn’t have a lot of it then. I had no idea he meant to go to Biarritz. How could I have? Paul isn’t the sort to drop clues in your lap.”

“But what would he have done if you’d agreed to divert to Chamonix?”

“How the f-” Rossington calmed his irritation with a long draw on his cigarette. “How would I know? He’d have dreamt up some other excuse, I suppose. He was always good at thinking on his feet. I actually saw him off at the station in Lyon, you know. On the train to bloody Chamonix. My train left later, you see. Do you know what he did, the cunning bastard? Got off at the next stop down the line, waited till he could be sure I’d be on my way, then doubled back to Lyon and caught the next train to Paris. Simple, really.”

“On what day did this happen?”

“Can’t remember. Paul told me yesterday it was Wednesday the eleventh of July. Well, that sounds right to me. It was certainly towards the end of the week when I hit Rome.”

“And the next time you saw Paul?”

“Was back at Cambridge in October. I’d heard about the Kington murders by then. Knew Sarah Paxton’s mother was one of the victims. Well, everybody was talking about it. Even Paul. But he played it bloody cool, I can tell you. You’d never have guessed. Not in a million years. He even set up a sort of alibi for himself with me. Boasted about some Swedish sex-bomb he’d picked up in Chamonix. Made her sound so real he had me drooling with envy. But it was all a lie. He admitted as much yesterday. A lie to stop me thinking he might have been somewhere else. Like Biarritz, for instance. Or Kington.”

Our meals arrived, leaving us to contemplate each other across the same succulent dishes neither of us had an appetite for. Rossington extinguished his cigarette and cocked his head, examining me critically.

“You do realize, don’t you, Mr. Timariot? He did it. Trying to trip him up over dates and places isn’t going to work.”

“You may be right. I just want to be sure.”

“Who are you doing this for? Paul said you had only the most tenuous connection with the case. And with the family.”

“Maybe I’m doing it for him.”

“He doesn’t seem to think so.”

“For myself, then.”

“But you already believe he’s telling the truth. You told him so, apparently.”

“I’m just double-checking, that’s all.”

“And what’s your double-checking turned up so far? Any doubts or discrepancies?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Not one.”

“There you are, then.” He picked up his knife and cut off a yielding slice of duckling. “Seems to me you’d do better following my example.”

“And what is your example, Mr. Rossington?”

“Look after number one.” A pink morsel of flesh slipped between his polished teeth. “And let Paul Bryant look after himself.”

Rossington’s advice was sound but impractical. Paul knew I was up to something and the least I owed him now was a prompt if necessarily incomplete explanation. When I left the restaurant, I hopped into a taxi and went not to Waterloo but to Paddington. From there I caught the next train to Bristol. And by four o’clock I was standing outside the chic little town house on Bathurst Wharf that Rowena had been walking towards the last time I’d ever seen her.

Paul answered the door quickly, as if he’d seen me approaching. He was looking smarter than when he’d come to Petersfield, but Sir Keith’s description of him-“like a man in a trance”-held good. His self-control had become so total, his sense of purpose so dominant, that a calmness amounting almost to blankness had descended on him. He gazed at me as a committed member of some closed religious order might gaze at a hapless stranger who’d knocked at their gate. With disdain and pity equally mingled. “Hello, Robin,” he said quietly. “Come on in.”

I followed him along a short passage past a dining-room and kitchen, brushing against a coat hanging on a hook that had surely belonged to Rowena. I glanced into the kitchen and glimpsed other traces of her presence. A casserole dish moulded and painted to look like a broody hen. A calendar above the sink illustrated with Beatrix Potter characters. I couldn’t make out which month it was, but the word was too short to be September. It could easily have been June, though-the month of her death.

The thought stayed with me as we climbed the stairs to the first-floor lounge. And there it was strengthened. The curtains and carpets, the upholstery of the sofa, the oval rug in the centre of the room, the bowl of pot-pourri, the vase of dried flowers: she’d chosen them all. And there was a scent in the air reminiscent of the delicate floral perfumes she’d worn. So reminiscent, in fact, that I was tempted to ask Paul if the pot-pourri had the same aroma. But a sudden fear that he might tell me I was imagining it got the better of me. I went to the window and looked down at the yachts moored along the wharf, at the swing-bridge across the harbour that I’d watched her cross that day in June. Craning forward, I could even make out the floating pub on the other side of St. Augustine’s Reach I’d watched her from. Everything was the same. Everything was exactly as I remembered. But no lone figure with flowing hair was approaching. Nor ever would be.

“Looking for something?” asked Paul from the other side of the room.

“No.” I turned round to meet his gaze. “Nothing.”

“Like me, then. I stand there and stare out at nothing quite a lot. It helps me think.” He slowly rounded the sofa as he spoke. Then he stopped, propped himself against its back, folded his arms and frowned at me with mild curiosity. “What’s all this about, Robin? I take it you did have lunch with Peter Rossington today.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Is he the only person you’ve been questioning about me?”

“Actually, no. I spoke to your family.”

“Did you? They haven’t mentioned it.”

“Perhaps they didn’t think there was any need to.”

“Perhaps not. Mind explaining why you went to them?”

“Not at all. It’s why I came. To explain.” I tried to smile, but only succeeded in producing a tight-lipped grimace. “I just wanted to confirm your story… to check some of the details… before the police became involved.”

“Why? Don’t you think they’ll do a thorough job?”

“It’s not that. I…”

“You don’t doubt the truth of what I told you?”

“No.” I said, happy to be able to answer honestly. “I don’t.”

“Then what are you trying to accomplish?”

I shrugged. “Absolute certainty, I suppose.”

He pushed himself upright, walked to the window where I was standing and leant against the sill. He rested his head against the glass and looked at me thoughtfully. “Who put you up to this, Robin?”

“Nobody.”

“Sir Keith?”

“I told you. Nobody.”

“Sarah, then. If so, she’s disappointed me. I should have thought a lawyer would prefer to handle such things personally.”

“Sarah has no idea what I’ve been doing.”

“It must be Bella in that case.” He raised his head from the glass and clicked his tongue. “Yes. On reflection, it has to be Bella. She’d always ask whether something was deniable before she wondered whether it was true. What does she have on you that obliges you to act as her errand-boy?” Before I could reply, he’d moved back across the room and slumped down into an armchair, his arms still firmly crossed, his brow still quizzically furrowed. “Don’t bother to answer. It’s really none of my business. Besides, I don’t mind you questioning whoever you please. I’ve nothing to hide. If you can persuade my mother to face the truth about me, or Sir Keith the truth about Louise, so much the better. They’ll have to do so eventually. As for Bella, she can do as she pleases as far as I’m concerned. So can you. The police will subject my statement to far closer and more critical scrutiny than you’ll be able to. But the result will be the same. In a few months from now, you’ll have what you claim to want. Absolute certainty.”

“Perhaps I can have it now.”

“Be my guest.”

“Your mother thinks you sent her a postcard of Mont Blanc. From Chamonix.”

“Mum remembers that, does she? Well, well, well. I did, as it happens. But not from Chamonix. I bought it in Chambéry, where I got off the train from Lyon. Posted it before getting the next train back. Thought it might help to cover my tracks. Said I was in Chamonix, of course. ‘A few lines as I sit in a cable-car being winched up Mont Blanc.’ That sort of thing. Dated it the following day. There was no chance of Mum making much sense of a blurred French postmark. I thought it might come in useful. Hasn’t she got it, then?”

“No.”

“Well, it doesn’t make much difference. It’s just another of those little details. The police will go through them all with a fine-tooth comb.”

“It can’t do any harm for me to check a few of them myself, can it?”

“None whatever.” He shook his head and looked at me intently. “But do me a favour, will you? Tell Bella it won’t work. I’ve set my course and nothing’s going to blow me off it. The sooner you and she and everyone else involved confronts what that means for them, the less painful it will be when the truth comes out. As I mean to make sure it does.”

I’d intended to set off back to Petersfield as soon as I left Bathurst Wharf. But when it came to the point, a long and solitary rail journey, with an empty house waiting at the end of it, didn’t appeal. Whereas a walk out to Clifton and an impromptu visit to Sarah did. I badly needed to discuss my difficulties with somebody and she was about the only person I could rely on being at all sympathetic.

There was another reason for seeing her, as I admitted to myself over a pint in a pub just round the corner from her flat, where I stopped off to give her time to get home from work. Sooner or later, she was going to find out what I’d been up to. Paul would probably tell her the next time they met, whenever that might be. It was even possible his parents might contact her, or she them. Either way, I couldn’t take the risk of her alerting Sir Keith to my activities on Bella’s behalf. It seemed altogether wiser to enlist her in our conspiracy of silence without delay.

I waited until I was confident she’d be back before leaving the pub. In the event, I nearly waited too long, because, when I arrived, she was clearly preparing to go out for the evening. She was looking unusually glamorous, in a short black dress adorned with discreet jewellery. And her hair had a lustre to it that suggested it had been professionally styled that very day.

“Robin! What brings you here?”

“It’s a long story. Do you have time to hear it?”

“I’m afraid not. Rodney’s picking me up in about twenty minutes.” The news that Rodney was still on the scene set my teeth on edge. “He’s taking me to a party. And since it’s being thrown in my honour, I can’t really arrive late, can I?”

“In your honour? What’s the occasion?”

I was momentarily afraid Rodney’s persistence might have lured Sarah into an engagement to marry him. So I was mightily relieved when she replied: “This is the last day of my articles. As of tomorrow, I shall be a fully fledged lawyer.”

“Really? Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“Will you be staying on at Anstey’s?”

“For the time being. Until something better turns up, anyway. If it turns up. To be honest, I can’t help wondering whether my connection with a miscarriage of justice, however remote it may be, will have some effect on my career prospects. Learning the truth from Paul was like grasping a cactus. You just can’t tell how deep some of the spines may sink.”

I smiled consolingly. “You could say that’s why I’m here.”

“I thought it probably was.” She glanced at her watch. “Look, twenty minutes is twenty minutes. Do you want a drink?”

“Thanks. I think I do.”

Perhaps the constraint on time made it easier. Obliged to be swift, I was also succinct, holding back none of the discreditable aspects of my dilemma. What would have been the point? Sarah knew Bella’s nature as well as I did. And she also knew how insoluble my problem was.

“Well,” she said when I’d finished, “I certainly won’t say anything to Daddy. But I still don’t understand what Bella’s trying to achieve. She doesn’t seriously think Paul’s lying, does she?”

“No. I don’t believe she does.”

“Then what’s she hoping you’ll turn up?”

“Grounds for legitimate doubt, I suppose.”

“But so far you’ve drawn a blank?”

“Yes. As complete as it was predictable.”

“Which leaves you in a genuine quandary. How to let Bella down without provoking her into a breach of your agreement.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s tough.” She crossed to the window and looked down into the darkening street. But there was evidently no sign of Rodney. “As a lawyer, I ought to be able to give you some good advice. I’m not sure I can, though.” She turned round and shrugged. “I’m sorry you should have been dragged into this, Robin. You don’t deserve to have been.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe not. But I’m still sorry.”

“Sounds as if you think I should just give up.”

“I suppose I do. The police will take a microscope to every detail of Paul’s story. If there’s a flaw to be found, they’ll find it.”

“But Bella’s not prepared to wait for them. Which would be her problem, except…”

“It’s yours.” Sarah shook her head and sighed. She seemed about to speak when a car drew up outside and sounded its horn. She glanced out, smiled and waved. “That’s Rodney,” she said to me over her shoulder. “I must go.”

“Of course. I’ll come out with you.”

She crossed to where I was standing, grinned awkwardly and clutched my hand, willing me, it seemed, to accept what she was about to say. “Actually, why don’t you wait till I’ve gone, then let yourself out? Rodney doesn’t know anything about this. And I don’t want to have to… Well, you understand, I’m sure.”

“Yes.” I looked at her and nodded in explicit agreement. “I understand.”

Then she frowned, as if some point had just occurred to her. “If you feel you have to go on with this…”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Then there is one angle you could try approaching it from the police may ignore. They’ll try to find witnesses who saw Paul somewhere else when he claims to have been in Kington. You could look for a witness to Mummy’s whereabouts-or Naylor’s-at the time Paul says he was spying on them at Whistler’s Cot.”

“But there aren’t any witnesses. If there were, they’d have come forward at the trial.”

The car horn sounded again, an impatient triple beep. “What about Howard Marsden? If he knew Mummy as well as we think…”

I frowned, then broke into a smile. “That’s inspired.”

“No,” she said, kissing me briskly and hurrying towards the door. “That’s legal training.” She pulled the door open, then paused on the threshold and looked back at me. “I don’t suppose you’ll get anything of value out of him. But if you do… learn something about Mummy I mean… you will tell me, won’t you?”

“Of course. It’s a promise.”

But it was a promise too quickly given. Only after I’d heard Rodney’s car accelerate away along Caledonia Place did I realize how easily it could conflict with my obligations to Bella. In the circumstances, it was to be hoped Sarah’s supposition about Howard Marsden proved to be correct. Otherwise, I might find myself trying to keep two promises-and breaking both.