Hot Money

CHAPTER FOUR

Malcolm blinked. "Which one?" he asked. "Mrs Pembroke," Norman West repeated, puzzled.

"There are nine of them," I said. "So which one?"

The detective looked uncomfortable. "I spoke to her only on the telephone. I thought… I assumed… it was the Mrs Malcolm Pembroke for whom I worked once before, long ago. She referred me to that case, and asked for present help. I looked up my records." He shrugged helplessly. "I imagined it was the same lady."

"Did you find Mr Pembroke," I asked, "when you were looking for him?"

Almost unwillingly, West nodded. "In Cambridge. Not too difficult."

"And you reported back to Mrs Pembroke?"

"I really don't think I should be discussing this any further."

"At least, tell us how you got back in touch with Mrs Pembroke to tell her of your success."

"I didn't," he said. "She rang me two or three times a day, asking for progress reports. Finally on Monday evening, I had news for her. After that, I proceeded with my next investigation, which I have now concluded. This left me free for anything Mr Pembroke might want."

"I want you to find out which Mrs Pembroke wanted to know where I was."

Norman West regretfully shook his unkempt head. "A client's trust…" he murmured.

"A client's trust, poppycock!" Malcolm exploded. "Someone who knew where to find me damn near killed me."

Our detective looked shocked but rallied quickly. "I found you, sir, by asking Mrs Pembroke for a list of places you felt at home in, as in my experience missing people often go to those places, and she gave me a list of five such possibilities, of which Cambridge was number three. I didn't even go to that city looking for you. As a preliminary, I was prepared to telephone to all the hotels in Cambridge asking for you, but I tried the larger hotels first, as being more likely to appeal to you, sir, and from only the third I got a positive response. If it was as easy as that for me to find you, it was equally easy for anyone else. And, sir, if I may say so, you made things easy by registering under your own name. People who want to stay lost shouldn't do that."

He spoke with a touching air of dignity ill-matched to his seedy appearance and for the first time I thought he might be better at his job than he looked. He must have been pretty efficient, I supposed, to have stayed in the business so long, even if catching Malcolm with his trousers off couldn't have taxed him sorely years ago.

He finished off the glass of champagne that Malcolm had given him before my arrival, and refused a refill.

"How is Mrs Pembroke paying you?" I asked.

"She said she would send a cheque."

"When it comes," I said, "you'll know which Mrs Pembroke."

"So I will."

"I don't see why you should worry about a conflict of interests," I said. "After all, you've worked pretty comprehensively for various Pembrokes. You worked for my mother, Joyce Pembroke, to catch my father with the lady who gave her grounds for divorce. You worked for my father, to try to catch his fifth wife having a similar fling. You worked for the unspecified Mrs Pembroke to trace my father's whereabouts. So now he wants you to find out where all his family were last Friday and yesterday so as to be sure it was none of his close relatives who tried to kill him, as it would make him very unhappy if it were. If you can't square that with your conscience, of course with great regret he'll have to retain the services of someone else."

Norman West eyed me with a disillusionment which again encouraged me to think him not as dim as he looked. Malcolm was glimmer-eyed with amusement.

"Pay you well, of course," he said.

"Danger money," I said, nodding.

Malcolm said, "What?"

"We don't want him to step on a rattlesnake, but in fairness he has to know he might."

Norman West looked at his short and grimy nails. He didn't seem unduly put out, nor on the other hand eager.

"Isn't this a police job?" he asked.

"Certainly," I said. "My father called them in when someone tried to kill him last Friday, and he'll tell you all about it. And you have to bear in mind that they're also enquiring into the murder of Moira Pembroke, whom you followed through blameless days. But you would be working for my father, not for the police, if you take his cash."

"Pretty decisive, aren't you, sir?" he said uneasily.

"Bossy," Malcolm agreed, "in his quiet way."

All those years, I thought, of getting things done in a racing stable, walking a tightrope between usurping the power of the head lad on one hand and the trainer himself on the other, like a lieutenant between a sergeant-major and a colonel. I'd had a lot of practice, one way and anotherat being quietly bossy.

Malcolm unemotionally told West about his abortive walk with the dogs and the brush with carbon monoxide, and after that described also the near-miss at Newmarket.

Norman West listened attentively with slowly blinking eyes and at the end said, "The car at Newmarket could have been accidental. Driver looking about for cigarettes, say. Not paying enough attention. Seeing you both at the last minute… swerving desperately."

Malcolm looked at me. "Did it seem like that to you?"

"No."

"Why not?" West asked.

"The rate of acceleration, I suppose."

"Foot on accelerator going down absent -mindedly during search for cigarettes?"

"Headlights, full beam," I said.

"A sloppy driver? Had a few drinks?"

"Maybe." I shook my head. "The real problem is that if the car had hit us – or Malcolm – there might have been witnesses. The driver might have been stopped before he could leave the sales area. The car number might have been taken."

West smiled sorrowfully. "It's been done successfully before now, in broad daylight in a crowded street."

"Are you saying," Malcolm demanded of me, "that the car wasn't trying to kill me?"

"No, only that the driver took a frightful risk."

"Did any witnesses rush to pick us up?" Malcolm asked forcefully. "Did anyone so much as pass a sympathetic remark? No, they damned well didn't. Did anyone try to stop the driver or take his number? The hell they did."

"All the same, "West said, "your son is right. Hit-and-run in a public place has its risks. If it was tried here, and sirs, I'm not saying it wasn't, the putative gain must have outweighed the risk, or, erin other words -"

"in other words," Malcolm interrupted with gloom, "Ian is right to think they'll try again."

Norman West momentarily looked infinitely weary, as if the sins of the world were simply too much to contemplate. He had seen, I supposed, as all investigators must, a lifetime's procession of sinners and victims; and, moreover, he looked roughly seventy and hadn't slept all night.

"I'll take your job," he said without enthusiasm, radiating minimum confidence, and I glanced at Malcolm to see if he really thought this was the best we could do in detectives, signs of intelligence or not. Malcolm appeared to have no doubts, howeverand spent the next five minutes discussing fees which seemed ominously moderate to me.

"And I'll need a list," West said finally, "of the people you want checked. Names and addresses and normal habits."

Malcolm showed unexpected discomfort, as if checking that amorphous entity "the family" was different from checking each individual separately, and it was I who found a piece of Savoy writing paper to draw up the list.

"OK," I said, "first of all there's Vivien, my father's first wife. Mrs Vivien Pembroke."

"Not her," Malcolm objected. "It's ridiculous."

"Everyone," I said firmly. "No exceptions. That makes it fair on everyone… because there are going to be some extremely angry relations when they all realise what's happening."

"They won't find out," Malcolm said.

Fat chance, I thought.

To West, I said, "They all telephone each other all the time, not by any means always out of friendship but quite often out of spite. They won't gang up against you because they seldom form alliances among themselves. Some of them are pretty good liars. Don't believe everything they say about each other."

"Ian!" Malcolm said protestingly.

"I'm one of them, and I know," I Said.

After Vivien's name on the list I wrote the names of her children: Donald

Lucy

Thomas

"Thomas," I said, "is married to Berenice." I added her name beside his. "He is easy to deal with, she is not."

"She's a five-star cow," Malcolm said.

West merely nodded.

"Lucy," I Said, "married a man called Edwin Bugg. She didn't like that surname, and persuaded him to change it to hers, and she is consequently herself a Mrs Pembroke."

West nodded.

"Lucy is a poet," I said. "People who know about poetry say her stuff is the real thing. She makes a big production of un worldliness which Edwin, I think, has grown to find tiresome."

"Huh," Malcolm said. "Edwin's an out-and-out materialist, always tapping me for a loan."

"Do you give them to him?" I said interestedly.

"Not often. He never pays me back."

"Short of money, are they?" West asked.

"Edwin Bugg," Malcolm said, "married Lucy years ago because he thought she was an heiress, and they've scraped along ever since on the small income she gets from a trust fund I set up for her. Edwin's never done a stake of work in his parasitic life and I can't stand the fellow."

"They have one teenage schoolboy son," I said, smiling, "who asked me the last time I saw him how to set about emigrating to Australia."

West looked at the list and said to Malcolm, "What about Donald, your eldest?"

"Donald," said his father, "married a replica of his mother, beautiful and brainless. A girl called Helen. They live an utterly boring virtuous life in Henley-on-Thames and are still billing and cooing like newlyweds although Donald must be nearly forty-five, I suppose."

No one commented. Malcolm himself, rising sixty-nine, could bill and coo with the best, and with a suppressed shiver I found myself thinking for the first time about the sixth marriage, because certainly, in the future, if Malcolm survived, there would be one. He had never in the past lived long alone. He liked rows better than solitude.

"Children?" Norman West asked into the pause.

"Three," Malcolm said. "Pompous little asses."

West glanced at me questioningly, and yawned.

"Are you too tired to take all this in?" I asked.

"No, go ahead."

"Two of Donald's children are too young to drive a car. The eldest, a girl at art school, is five foot two and fragile, and I cannot imagine her being physically capable of knocking Malcolm out and carrying his body from garden to garage and inserting him into Moira's car."

"She hasn't the courage either," Malcolm said.

"You can't say that," I disagreed. "Courage can pop up anywhere and surprise you."

West gave me a noncommittal look. "Well," he said, taking the list himself and adding to it, "this is what we have so far. Wife number one: Vivien Pembroke. Her children: Donald (44), wife Helen, three offspring. Lucy, husband Edwin (ne Bugg), school-age son. Thomas, wife Berenice…?"

"Two young daughters."

"Two young daughters," he repeated, writing.

"My grandchildren," Malcolm protested, "are all too young to have murdered anybody."

"Psychopaths start in the nursery," West said laconically. "Any sign in any of them of abnormal violent behaviour? Excessive cruelty, that sort of thing? Obsessive hatreds?"

Malcolm and I both shook our heads but with a touch of uncertainty; his maybe because of something he did know, mine because of all I didn't know, because of all the things that could be hidden.

"Does greed, too, begin in the nursery?" I said.

"I wouldn't say so, would you?" West answered.

I shook my head again. "I'd say it was nastily adult and grows with opportunity. The more there is to grab, the greedier people get."

Malcolm said, only half as a question, "My fortune corrupts… geometrically?"

"You're not alone," I said dryly. "Just think of all those multi- billionaire families where the children have already had millions settled on them and still fight like cats over the pickings when their father dies."

"Bring it down to thousands," West said unexpectedly. "Or to hundreds. I've seen shocking spite over hundreds. And the lawyers rub their hands and syphon off the cream." He sighed, half disillusionment, half weariness. "Wife number two?" he asked, and answered his own question, "Mrs Joyce Pembroke."

"Right," I said. "I'm her son. She had no other children. And I'm not married."

West methodically wrote me down.

"Last Friday evening," I said, "I was at work in a racing stable at five o'clock with about thirty people as witnesses, and last night I was certainly not driving the car that nearly ran us over."

West said stolidly, "I'll write you down as being cleared of primary involvement. That's all I can do with any of your family, Mr Pembroke." He finished the sentence looking at Malcolm who said, "Hired assassin" between his teeth, and West nodded. "If any of them hired a good professional, I doubt if I'll discover it."

"I thought good assassins used rifles," I said.

"Some do. Most don't. They pick their own way. Some use knives. Some garotte. I knew of one who used to wait at traffic lights along his victim's usual route to work. One day, the lights would be red, the victim would stop. The assassin tapped on the window, asking a question… or so it's supposed. The victim wound down the window and the assassin shot him point blank in the head. By the time the lights turned green and the cars behind started tooting their horns, the assassin had long gone."

"Did they ever catch him?" I asked.

West shook his head. "Eight prominent businessmen were killed that way within two years. Then it stopped. No one knows why. My guess is the assassin lost his nerve. It happens in every profession."

I thought of jump jockeys to whom it had happened almost overnight, and I supposed it occurred in stockbrokers also. Any profession, as he said.

"Or someone bumped him off because he knew too much," Malcolm said.

"That too is possible." West looked at the list. "After Mrs Joyce?"

Malcolm said sourly, "The lady you so artfully photographed me with at the instigation of, as you call her, Mrs Joyce."

The West eyebrows slowly rose. "Miss Alicia Sandways? With, if I remember, two little boys?"

"The little boys are now thirty-five and thirty-two," I said.

"Yes." He sighed. "As I said, I recently dug out that file. I didn't realise that… er… Well, so we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. And her children?"

Malcolm said, "The two boys, Gervase and Ferdinand. I formally adopted them when I married their motherand changed their surname to Pembroke. Then we had little Serena," his face softened, "and it was for her I put up with Alicia's tantrums the last few years we were together. Alicia was a great mistress but a rotten wife. Don't ask me why. I indulged her all the time, let her do what she liked with my house, and in the end nothing would please her." He shrugged. "I gave her a generous divorce settlement, but she was very bitter. I wanted to keep little Serena… and Alicia screamed that she supposed I didn't want the boys because they were illegitimate. She fought in the courts for Serena, and she won… She filled all her children's heads with bad feelings for me." The old hurt plainly showed. "Serena did suggest coming back to look after me when Coochie was killed, but it wasn't necessary because Moira was there. When Moira was killed, she offered again. It was kind of Serena. She's a nice girl, really, but Alicia tries to set her against me."

West, in a pause that might or might not have been sympathetic, wrote after Alicia's name:

Gervase. Illegitimate at birth, subsequently adopted

Ferdinand. The same

Serena. Legitimate

"Are they married?" he asked.

"Gervase has a wife called Ursula," I said. "I don't know her well, because when I see them they're usually together and it's always Gervase who does the talking. They too, like Thomas, have two little girls."

West wrote it down.

"Ferdinand," I said, "has married two raving beauties in rapid succession. The first, American, has gone back to the States. The second one, Deborah, known as Debs, is still in residence. So far, no children."

West wrote.

"Serena," I said, "is unmarried."

West completed that section of the list. "So we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. Her children are Gervase, wife Ursula, two small daughters. Ferdinand, current wife Debs, no children. Serena, unmarried… era fiance, perhaps? Live-in lover?"

"I don't know of one," I said, and Malcolm said he didn't know either.

"Right," West said. "Wife number four?"

There was a small silence. Then I said, "Coochie. She's dead. She had twin sons. One was killed with her in a car crash, the other is brain-damaged and lives in a nursing home."

"Oh." The sound carried definite sympathy this time. "And wife number five, Mrs Moira Pembroke, did she perhaps have any children from a previous marriage?"

"No," Malcolm said. "No previous marriage, no children."

"Right." West counted up his list. "That's three ex-wives… er, by the way, did any of them remarry?"

I answered with a faint smile, "They would lose their alimony if they did. Malcolm was pretty generous in their settlements. None of them has seen any financial sense in remarrying."

"They all should have done," Malcolm grumbled. "They wouldn't be so warped."

West said merely, "Right. Then, er, six sons, two daughters. Four current daughters-in-law, one son-in-law. Grand-children… too young. So, er, discounting the invalid son and Mr Ian here, there are fourteen adults to be checked. That will take me a week at least. Probably more."

"As fast as you can," I said.

He looked actually as if he had barely enough strength or confidence to get himself out of the door let alone embark on what was clearly an arduous task.

"Can I tell them all why I'm making these enquiries?" he asked.

"Yes, you damned well can," Malcolm said positively. "If it's one of them, and I hope to God it isn't, it might put the wind up them and frighten them off. just don't tell them where to find me."

I looked down at the list. I couldn't visualise any of them as being criminally lethal, but then greed affected otherwise rational people in irrational ways. All sorts of people… I knew of a case when two male relatives had gone into a house where an old woman had been reported newly dead, and taken the bedroom carpet off the floor, rolling it up and making off with it and leaving her lying alone in her bed above bare boards, all to seize her prize possession before the rest of the family could get there. Unbelievable, I'd thought it. The old woman's niece, who cleaned my flat every week, had been most indignant, but not on her aunt's account. "it was the only good carpet in the house," she vigorously complained. "Nearly new. The only thing worth having. It should have come to me, by rights. Now I'll never get it."

"I'll need all their addresses," West said.

Malcolm waved a hand. "Ian can tell you. Get him to write them down."

Obediently I opened my suitcase, took out my address book and wrote the whole list, with telephone numbers. Then I got out the pack of photographs and showed them to West.

"Would they help you?" I asked. "If they would, I'll lend them to you, but I want them back."

West looked through them, one by one, and I knew that he could see, if he were any detective at all, all the basic characters of the subjects. I liked taking photographs and preferred portraits, and somehow taking a camera along gave me something positive to do whenever the family met. I didn't like talking to some of them; photography gave me a convincing reason for disengagements and drifting around.

If there was one common factor in many of the faces it was discontent, which I thought was sad. Only in Ferdinand could one see real lightheartedness, and even in him, as I knew, it could come and go; and Debs, his second wife, was a stunning blonde, taller than her husband, looking out at the world quizzically as if she couldn't quite believe her eyes, not yet soured by disappointment.

I'd caught Gervase giving his best grade-one bullying down-the-nose stare, and saw no good purpose in ever showing him the reflection of his soul. Ursula merely looked indeterminate and droopy and somehow guilty, as if she thought she shouldn't even have her photo taken without Gervase's permission.

Berenice, Thomas's wife, was the exact opposite, staring disapprovingly straight into the lens, bold and sarcastic, unerringly destructive every time she uttered. And Thomas, a step behind her, looking harried and anxious. Another of Thomas alone, smiling uneasily, defeat in the sag of his shoulders, desperation in his eyes.

Vivien, Joyce and Alicia, the three witches, dissimilar in features but alike in expression, had been caught when they weren't aware of the camera, each of them watching someone else with disfavour.

Alicia, fluffy and frilly, still wore her hair brought youthfully high to a ribbon bow on the crown, from where rich brown curls tumbled in a cascade to her shoulders. Nearly sixty, she looked in essence younger than her son Gervase, and she would still have been pretty but for the pinched hardness of her mouth.

She had been a fair sort of mother to me for the seven years of her reign, seeing to my ordinary needs like food and new clothes and treating me no different from Gervase and Ferdinand, but I'd never felt like going to her for advice or comfort. She hadn't loved me, nor I he rand after the divorce we had neither felt any grief in separation. I'd detested what she'd done afterwards to Gervase, Ferdinand and Serena, twisting their minds with her own spite. I would positively have liked to have had friendly brothers and sisters as much as Malcolm would have valued friendly children. After nearly twenty years, Alicia's intense hurt still spread suffering outward in ripples.

Serena's picture showed her as she had been a year earlier, before aerobic dancing had slimmed her further to a sexless-looking leanness. The fair hair of childhood had slightly darkened, and was stylishly cut in a short becoming cap-shape which made her look young for her twenty-six years. A leggy Peter Pan, I thought, not wanting to grow up: a girl-woman with a girlish voice saying "Mummy and Daddy", and an insatiable appetite for clothes. I wondered briefly whether she were still a virgin and felt faintly surprised to find that I simply didn't know and, moreover, couldn't tell.

"These are very interesting," West said, glancing at me. "I should certainly like to borrow them." He shuffled them around and sorted them out. "Who are these? You haven't put their names on the back, like the others."

"That's Lucy and Edwin, and that's Donald and Helen."

"Thanks." He wrote the identification carefully in small neat letters.

Malcolm stretched out a hand for the photographs which West gave him. Malcolm looked through them attentively and finally gave them back.

"I don't remember seeing any of these before," he said.

"They're all less than three years old."

His mouth opened and shut again. He gave me a brooding look, as if I'd just stabbed him unfairly in the ribs.

"What do you think of them?" I asked.

"A pity children grow up."

West smiled tiredly and collected the lists and photographs together.

"Right, Mr Pembroke. I'll get started." He stood up and swayed slightly, but when I took a step forward to steady him he waved me away. "Just lack of sleep." On his feet, he looked even nearer to exhaustion, as if the outer grey ness had penetrated inwards to the core. "First thing in the morning, I'll be checking the Pembrokes."

It would have been churlish to expect him to start that afternoon, but I can't say I liked the delay. I offered him another drink and a reviving lunch, which he declined, so I took him to the hotel's front door and saw him safely into a taxi, watching him sink like a collapsing scarecrow into the seat cushions.

Returning to the suite, I found Malcolm ordering vodka and Beluga caviar from room service with the abandon to which I was becoming accustomed. That done, he smoothed out the Sporting Life and pointed to one section of it.

"It says the Arc de Triomphe race is due to be run this Sunday in Paris."

"Yes, that's right."

"Then let's go."

"All right," I said.

Malcolm laughed. "We may as well have some fun. There's a list here of the runners."

I looked where he pointed. It was a bookmaker's advertisement showing the ante-post prices on offer.

"What are the chances," Malcolm said, "of my buying one of these horses?"

"Er," I said. "Today, do you mean?"

"Of course. No good buying one after the race, is there?"

"Well…"

"No, of course not. The winner will be worth millions and the others peanuts. Before the race, that's the thing."

"I don't suppose anyone will sell," I said, "but we can try. How high do you want to go? The favourite won the Epsom Derby and is reported to be going to be syndicated for ten million pounds. You'd have to offer a good deal more than that before they'd consider selling him now."

"Hm," Malcolm said. "What do you think of him as a horse?"

I smothered a gasp or two and said with a deadpan face, "He's a very good horse but he had an exceptionally exhausting race last time out. I don't think he's had enough time to recover and I wouldn't back him this time."

"Have you backed him before?" Malcolm asked curiously.

"Yes, when he won the Derby, but he was favourite for that, too."

"What do you think will win the Arc de Triomphe, then?"

"Seriously?" I said.

"Of course seriously."

"One of the French horses, Meilleurs Voeux."

"Can we buy him?"

"Not a hope. His owner loves his horses, loves winning more than profit and is immensely rich."

"So am I," Malcolm said simply. "I can't help making money. It used to be a passion, now it's a habit. But this business about Moira jolted me, you know. It struck me that I may not have a hell of a lot of time left, not with enough health and strength to enjoy life. I've spent all these years amassing the stuff, and for what? For my goddam children to murder me for? Sod that for a sad story. You buy me a good horse in this race on Sunday and we'll go and yell it home, boy, at the top of our lungs."

It took all afternoon and early evening to get even a tinge of interest from anyone. I telephoned to the trainers of the English – or Irish – runners, asking if they thought their owners might sell. I promised each trainer that he would go on training the horse, and that my father would send him also the two-million-guinea colt he'd bought yesterday. Some of the trainers were at the Newmarket Sales and had to be tracked down to hotels, and once tracked, had to track and consult with their owners. Some simply said no, forget it.

Finally, at seven forty-five, a trainer from Newmarket rang back to say his owner would sell a half-share if his price was met. I relayed the news and the price to Malcolm.

"What do you think?" he said.

"Um… the horse is quite good, the price is on the high side, the trainer's in the top league."

"OK," Malcolm said. "Deal."

"My father accepts," I said. "And, er, the colt is still in the Sales stables. Can you fetch it tomorrow, if we clear it with the auctioneers?" Indeed he could. He sounded quite cheerful altogether. He would complete his paperwork immediately if Malcolm could transfer the money directly to his blood stock account, bank and account number supplied. I wrote the numbers to his dictation. Malcolm waved a hand and said, "No problem. First thing in the morning. He'll have it by afternoon."

"Well," I said, breathing out as I put the receiver down, "you now own half of Blue Clancy."

"Let's drink to it," Malcolm said. "Order some Bollinger."

I ordered it from room service, and while we waited for it to arrive I told him about my encounter with his gardener, Arthur Bellbrook.

"Decent chap," Malcolm said, nodding. "Damned good gardener."

I told him wryly about Moira and the prize vegetables, which he knew nothing about.

"Silly bitch," he said. "Arthur lives in a terrace house with a pocket handkerchief garden facing north. You couldn't grow prize stuff there. If she'd asked me I'd have told her that, and told her to leave him alone. Good gardeners are worth every perk they get."

"He seemed pretty philosophical," I said, "and, incidentally, pretty bright. He'd spotted that the kitchen garden wall is thicker than it should be at the corner. He'd asked old Fred, and heard about the room I built there. He wanted to know how to get in, so he could use it as an apple store."

Malcolm practically ejected from his armchair, alarm widening his eyes, his voice coming out strangled and hoarse. "My God, you didn't tell him, did you?"

"No, I didn't," I said slowly. "I told him it was empty and was bricked up twenty years ago." I paused. "What have you put in there?"

Malcolm subsided into his chair, not Altogether relieved of anxiety. "Never you mind," he said.

"You forget that I could go and look."

"I don't forget it."

He stared at me. He'd been interested, all those summers ago, when I'd designed and built the pivoting brick door. He'd come down the garden day after day to watch, and had patted me often on the shoulder and smiled at the secret. The resulting wall looked solid, felt solid, WAS solid. But at one point there was a thick vertical steel rod within it, stretching from a concrete underground foundation up into the beam supporting the roof. Before I'd put the new roof on, I'd patiently drilled round holes in bricks (breaking many) and slid them into the rod, and arranged and mortared the door in neat courses, so that the edges of it dovetailed into the fixed sections next to it.

To open the room, when I'd finished everything, one had first to remove the wedge-like. wooden sill which gave extra support to the bottom course of the door when it was closed, and then to activate the spring latch on the inner side by poking a thin wire through a tiny hole in the mortar at what had been my thirteen-year-old waist height. The design of the latch hadn't been my own, but something I'd read in a book: at any rate, when I'd installed it, it worked obligingly at once.

It had pleased me intensely to build a door that Gervase would never find. No more dead rats. No more live birds, shut in and fluttering with fright. No more invasions of my own private place.

Gervase had never found the door and nor had anyone else and, as the years passed, grass grew long in front of the wall, and nettles, and although I'd meant to give the secret to Robin and Peter some day, I hadn't done so by the time of the crash. Only Malcolm knew how to get in – and Malcolm had used the knowledge.

"What's in there?" I repeated.

He put on his airiest expression. "Just some things I didn't want Moira to get her hands on."

I remembered sharply the objects missing from his study.

"The gold dolphin, the amethyst tree, the silver candelabra… those?"

"You've been looking," he accused.

I shook my head. "I noticed they were gone." The few precious objects, all the same, hardly accounted for the severity of his first alarm. "What else is in there?" I said.

"Actually," he said, calmly now, "quite a lot of gold."