To the hilt

CHAPTER TWELVE

I reached Chief Inspector Reynolds in the morning. He hummed and hahhed and told me to phone him back in ten minutes, and when I did he told me the answers.

Norman Quorn's sister was a Mrs Audrey Newton, widow, living at 4, Minton Terrace, in the village of Bloxham, Oxfordshire. Telephone number supplied.

I thanked him wholeheartedly. Let him know, he said, if I found anything he should add to his files.

'Like, where did Norman Quorn die?' I asked.

'Exactly like that.'

I promised.

Using the portable phone, as I had for all the calls I'd made from the Park Crescent house, I tried Mrs Audrey Newton's number and found her at home. She agreed that yes, nearly a week ago she had tried to talk to Sir Ivan Westering, but he hadn't called back, and she would have quite understood if he didn't want to talk to her, but he'd been ever so kind in paying for the cremation, and she'd thought things over, and since her brother couldn't get into any more trouble, poor man, she had decided to give Sir Ivan something Norman had left with her.

'What thing?' I asked.

'A paper. A list really. Very short. But Norman thought it important.'

I cleared my throat, trying to disregard sudden breathlessness, and asked if she would give the list to me instead. After a pause she said, 'I'll give it to Lady Westering. Ever so kind, she was, that day I had to identify Norman.'

Her voice shook at the memory.

I said I would bring Lady Westering to her house, and please could she tell me how to find it.

My mother disliked the project.

'Please' I said. 'And the drive will do you good.'

I drove her north-west out of London in Ivan's car and came to a large village, almost a small town, not far from the big bustling spread of modern Banbury, where no fair lady would be allowed anywhere near the Cross on a white horse, bells on her toes notwithstanding.

Minton Terrace proved to be a row of very small cottages with thatched roofs, and at No. 4 the front door was opened by the rounded woman we'd met at the mortuary.

She invited us in. She was nervous. She had set out sherry glasses and a plate of small cakes on round white crocheted mats which smelled of cedar, for deterring moths.

Audrey Newton, plain and honest, was ashamed of the brother she had spent years admiring. It took a great deal of sherry-drinking and cake-eating to bring her, not just to give the list to my mother, but to explain how and why Norman had given it to her.

'I was over in Wantage, staying with him for a few days. I did that sometimes, there was only the two of us, you see. He never married, of course. Anyway, he was going away on holiday, he always liked to go alone, and he was going that day, and I was going to catch a bus to start on my way home.'

She paused to see if we understood. We nodded.

'He was going to go in a taxi to Didcot railway station, but someone, I think from the brewery, came to collect him first. We happened to be both standing by the window on the upstairs landing when the car drew up at the gate.' She frowned. 'Norman wasn't pleased. It's extraordinary, but looking back I might almost say he was frightened, though at the time it didn't occur to me. I mean, the brewery was his life.'

And his death, I thought.

'Norman said he'd better go,' she went on, 'but all of a sudden he took an envelope out of the inner pocket of his jacket - and I saw his passport there because he was going to Spain for his holiday, as he usually did - and he pushed the envelope into my hands and told me to keep it for him until he sent for it… and of course he never sent for it. And it wasn't until I was clearing out his house after the cremation that I remembered the envelope and wondered what was in it, so I opened it when I got home here and found this little list, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the brewery… if I should give it to Sir Ivan, as he had been so good to me, paying for everything he didn't need to, considering Norman stole all that money, which I can hardly believe, even now.'

I sorted my way through the flood of words.

I said, 'You brought the envelope home with you-'

'That's right,' she interrupted. 'Norman told me to take his taxi, which he'd ordered, when it came, and he gave me the money for it to take me all the way home - such a treat, he was so generous - and I would never get him into trouble if he was alive.'

'We do know that, Mrs Newton,' I said. 'So you only opened the envelope one day last week…?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'And you phoned Sir Ivan…'

'But I didn't get him.'

'And you still have the list.'

'Yes.' She crossed to a sideboard and took an envelope out of a drawer. 'I do hope I'm doing right,' she said, handing the envelope to my mother. 'The brewery man telephoned only about an hour ago asking if Norman had left anything with me, and I said only a small list, nothing important, but he said he would send someone over for it early this afternoon.'

I looked at my watch. It was then twelve o'clock, noon.

I asked my mother, 'Did you tell anyone we were coming here?'

'Only Lois.' She was puzzled by the question. 'I said we were going to see a lady in Bloxham and wouldn't be needing lunch.'

I looked at her and at Audrey Newton. Neither woman had the slightest understanding of the possible consequences of what they had just said.

I turned to Mrs Newton. 'The brewery told me they didn't know your name. They said they didn't know Norman Quorn had a sister.'

She said, surprised, 'But of course I'm known there. Norman sometimes used to take me to the Directors' parties. Ever so proud, he was, of being made Director of Finance.'

'Who was it at the brewery who phoned you today?'

'Desmond Finch.' She made a face. 'I've never liked him much. But he definitely knows me, even if no one else does.'

I took the envelope from my mother and removed the paper from inside which was, as Audrey Newton had said, a short list. There were two sections, one of six lines, each line a series of numbers, and another section, also of six lines, each line either a personal or corporate name. I put the list back into the envelope and held it loosely.

A silence passed, which seemed long to me, in which I did some very rapid thinking.

I said to Audrey Newton, 'I think it would be a marvellous idea if you would go away for a lovely long weekend at the seaside.' And I said to my mother, 'And it would be a marvellous idea if you would go with Mrs Newton, and get away just for a few days from the sadness of Park Crescent.'

My mother looked astonished. 'I don't want to go,' she said.

'I so seldom ask anything,' I said. 'I wouldn't ask this if it were not important.' To Audrey Newton I said, 'I'll pay for you to go to a super hotel if you would go upstairs now and pack what you would need for a few days.'

'But it's so sudden,' she objected.

'Yes, but spur-of-the-moment treats are often the best, don't you think?'

She responded almost girlishly and, with an air of growing excitement, went upstairs out of earshot.

My mother said, 'What on earth is all this about?'

'Keeping you safe,' I said flatly. 'Just do it, Ma.'

'I haven't any clothes!'

'Buy some.'

'You're truly eccentric, Alexander.'

'Just as well,' I said.

I picked up my mobile phone and pressed the numbers of the pager Chris carried always and spoke the message, 'This is Al, phone me at once.'

We waited barely thirty seconds before my mobile buzzed, 'It's Chris.'

'Where are you?'

'Outside Surtees's house.'

'Is he home?'

'I saw him five minutes ago, wandering around, looking at his horses.'

'Good. Can Young and Uttley do a chauffeur-and-nice-car job?'

'No problem.'

'Chauffeur's hat. Comfortable car for three ladies.'

'When and where?'

'Like five minutes ago. Leave Surtees's, get the chauffeur to Emily Cox's yard in Lambourn. I'll meet you there.'

'Urgent?'

'Ultra urgent.'

'I'm on my way.'

My mother fluttered her hands. 'What is ultra urgent?'

'Have you by any chance got a safety pin?'

She looked at me wildly.

'Have you? You always used to have, in a baby sewing kit.' She dug into her handbag and produced the credit-card-sized travelling sewing kit that she carried for emergencies from life-long habit, and speechlessly she opened it and gave me the small safety phi it contained.

I was as usual wearing a shirt under a sweater. I put the Quorn envelope in my shirt pocket, pinned it to the shirt to prevent its falling out, and pulled my sweater down over it.

'And paper,' I said. 'Have you anything I could draw on?'

She had a letter from a friend in her handbag. I took the envelope, opened it out flat, and on its clean inside, with my mother's ball point pen, had time to make nine small outline drawings of familiar people - Desmond Finch, Patsy, Surtees, Tobias included - before Audrey Newton came happily downstairs in holiday mood carrying a suitcase.

I showed her the page of small heads. 'The person who came to pick up your brother on the first day of his holiday… was it one of these?'

She looked carefully and, as if the request were nothing out of the ordinary, pointed firmly. 'That one,' she said.

'You're sure?'

'Positive.'

'Let's get going,' I said.

Audrey Newton having locked her house, we drove away and headed for Lambourn.

'Why Lambourn?' my mother asked.

'I want to talk to Emily.'

'What's wrong with a telephone?'

'Insects,' I said. 'Bugs.'

Friday lunchtime. If Emily had gone to the races it would have complicated things a little, but she was at home, in her office, busy at paperwork with her secretary.

Nothing I did surprised her any more, she said. She agreed easily to my making lunch and pouring wine for her unexpected guests but adamantly refused to join them in any flight from Egypt. She was not, she pointed out, Moses.

I persuaded her to go as far as her drawing-room and there explained the explosive dangers of the present situation.

'You're exaggerating,' she objected.

'Well, I hope so.'

'And anyway, I'm not afraid.'

'But I am,' I said.

She stared.

'Em,' I said, 'if someone were standing behind you now with a knife, threatening to cut your throat if I didn't shoot myself, and I believed it, then…' I hesitated.

'Then what?'

'Then,' I said matter-of-factly, 'I would shoot myself.'

After a long pause, she said, 'It won't come to that.'

'Please, Em.'

'What about my horses?'

'Your head lad must have a home number. You can phone him.'

'Where from?'

'I don't know yet,' I said. 'But wherever you are, use your portable phone.'

'It's all mad.'

'I wish I were in Scotland,' I said. 'I wish I were painting. But I'm here. I'm walking over an abyss that no one else seems to see. I want you safe.'

'Al…' She breathed out on a long, capitulating sigh. 'Why you?'

Why me?

The cry of ages.

Unanswerable.

Why did I care about right and wrong?

What made a policeman a policeman?

Emily went quickly out of the room and left me looking at the painting I had given her, that was not about an amateur game of golf in bad weather, but about the persistence of the human spirit.

After a while I unpinned the Quorn envelope from my shirt pocket. I lifted the golf picture off its hook and turned it over, and I slotted the envelope between the canvas and the frame, in the lower left-hand corner, so that it was held there securely, out of sight.

I hung the picture back on its hook and went out to see how lunch and life was passing in the kitchen.

Although not natural friends my mother and Audrey were being punctiliously civil to each other and were talking about how to pot cuttings from geraniums. I listened with the disjointed unreality-perception of an alien. At any minute the brewery might be breaking into the house in Bloxham. One should dip the slant-cut stem into fertiliser, Audrey said, and stick it into a peat container full of potting compost.

A large car rolled up the drive and stopped outside the kitchen window. The driver, a chauffeur in a dark navy blue suit, flat cap with shiny peak, and black leather gloves, climbed out and looked enquiringly at the building, and I went out to talk to him.

'Where am I going?' he said.

'Somewhere like Tor Bay. Find a good hotel with a sea view. Make them happy.'

'They?'

'My mother, my wife and the sister of the man who stole the brewery's money. Hide them.'

'Safe from Surtees?'

'And other thugs.'

'Your mother and your wife might recognise me.'

'Not without the wig, the rouge, the mascara, the high heels and the white frills.'

Chris Young grinned. 'I'll phone you when I've parked them,' he said.

'What's your name today?'

'Uttley.'

When I went back into the kitchen Emily, having made herself a sandwich, was talking to the head lad on the telephone.

'I'll be away this weekend… no, I'll phone you…' She gave her instructions about the horses. 'Severance runs at Fontwell tomorrow. I'll talk to the owners, don't forget to send the colours…'

She finished the details and hung up; not happy, not reassured.

'My dears,' I said lightly, looking at all three women, 'just have a good time.'

My mother asked, 'But why are we going? I don't really understand.'

'Um… Emily knows. It's to do with hostages. A hostage is a lever. If you hold a hostage you hold a lever. I'm afraid, if any of you were taken hostage, that I might have to do what I don't want to do, so I want you safely out of sight, and if that sounds a bit improbable and melodramatic, then it's better than being sorry. So go and enjoy yourselves… and please don't tell anyone where you are, and only use Emily's mobile phone if you have to phone someone, like Emily to her head lad, because it wouldn't be much fun to be taken hostage.'

'You might get your throat cut,' Emily said nonchalantly, munching her sandwich, and although my mother and Audrey Newton looked suitably horrified, it seemed Emily's words did the trick.

'How long are we going for?' my mother asked.

'Monday or Tuesday,' I said. Or Wednesday or Thursday. I had no idea.

I hugged my mother goodbye and kissed Emily and warmly clasped Audrey Newton's soft hand.

The chauffeur's name is Mr Uttley,' I told them.

'Call me C.Y.,' he said, and winked at me, and drove them cheerfully away.

I sat in Ivan's car in a shopping centre's car park and tried to reach Margaret Morden by phone.

She was at a meeting, her office reported, and no, they couldn't break in with an urgent message, the meeting was out of town, and she would not be available until Monday, and even then she had meetings all day.

So kind.

Tobias had said he was going to Paris: back in the office on Tuesday.

I hated weekends. Other people's weekends. In my usual life, weekends flowed indistinguishably, work continuing regardless of the day. I sat indecisively, working out what to do next, and jumped when the mobile phone rang in my hand.

It was, surprisingly, Himself.

'Where are you?' he said.

'In the car somewhere. God knows where.'

'And your mother?'

'Gone away for a long weekend with friends.'

'So, if you're alone, come for a drink.'

'Do you mean in London?'

'Of course in London.'

'I'll be an hour or so.'

I drove to Chesham Place, home of the Earl in the capital, and parked on a meter.

Himself had a single malt ready, a sign of good humour.

'A good send-off, yesterday,' he observed, pouring generously. 'Ivan would have approved.'

'Yes.'

After a long silence he said, 'What's on your mind, Al?' I didn't answer at once and he said, 'I know your silences, so what gives?'

'Well…' I said, searching for an image, something pictorial, 'it's as if there's a high wall with a path along each side of it, stretching into the distance,' I said, 'and I am on one side of the wall and Patsy and some other people are on the other side, and we are all trying to go in the same direction to find the same pot of gold at the end, and I can't see what they are doing and they can't see what I am doing. The way forward on both sides of the wall is difficult and full of pot-holes and one keeps making mistakes.'

He listened, frowning.

I went on, 'Yesterday at the wake, Mrs Connie Hall, who lives next door to Ivan, told me that, on the night he died, Ivan was very upset because he couldn't find a tissue-box that had a phone number written on the bottom of it. He couldn't find it because it had been thrown away. Mrs Hall, the neighbour, told Patsy the same thing, so there we are, Patsy and I, one on each side of the wall, starting off together.' I paused. 'My mother told me that it was she who had written the telephone number on the bottom of the box, and it was something to do with someone we met in Leicestershire. She had forgotten all about it until yesterday, because of Ivan dying. The woman we had met in Leicestershire was Norman Quorn's sister, but I didn't know her name, so I phoned the brewery and asked them for it, which was a very stupid mistake.'

'But, Al,' Himself said, 'how could it have been a mistake?'

'Because,' I said, 'it set an alarm bell somewhere jangling.'

'What alarm bell?'

'It gave rise to the question - Why did I suddenly want to know Norman Quorn's sister's name and phone number? And I think that, on Patsy's side of the wall, messages and speculations began fizzing about.'

Himself sat still, listening.

I said, 'This morning I found out Norman Quorn's sister's name and address from the police in Leicestershire, where Norman Quorn's body was found, and I took my mother to see her, because she said she had a list that her brother had given her, that she had been going to give to Ivan. She said she would give it to my mother, and she did.' I drank some whisky. 'On the other side of the wall, which I can only guess at, someone decided to ask Norman Quorn's sister if her brother had given her anything to look after before he went on his holidays, and she told them that yes he had, but it was nothing very important, only some little list.' I stopped.

Himself said, 'What little list?'

'I think it is the signpost to the pot of gold. In fact, I don't think the gold can be found without it.'

Himself stared.

'So here I am on one side of the wall and, on the other side of the wall, they will know by now I have the list. So if you want to know what's troubling me, it is how to find the treasure safely.'

'But Al…'

They know I've had a lot of practice in hiding things, starting with the Kinloch hilt.'

'I'm sorry about that. Sorry, I mean, that I talked to Ivan about it when Patsy could hear.'

'It can't be helped.'

'And you've hidden the list?'

'Sort of.'

'And - am I understanding you right - you think that list alone will lead to the brewery's lost money?'

'It's possible.'

'But surely… Patsy will want that money, won't she, to put the brewery back on its feet?'

'The problem is,' I sighed, 'that the brewery will survive without that money, partly as a result of my own efforts. The coffers will slowly fill up again, the pensioners will eventually get back to their old levels, the poor little widows will be able to stop recycling their teabags, the brewery may re-employ the workers they are having to sack and the firm will be as prosperous as it was before. There's no guarantee, really, that Patsy, or anyone else who finds the money, will use it to pay off the brewery's debts.'

Himself looked horrified.

'Theoretically,' I said, 'after a year or two of prosperity, the brewery could be plundered again.'

'Al…!'

'That would be the end of the brewery, because the creditors would not stand for it twice.'

'But you surely don't think Patsy is as dishonest as that?'

'Perhaps not Patsy, but Surtees…? People do often kill the golden goose.'

'Is Surtees bright enough?'

'He's dumb enough to think a double whammy a good idea.'

'But Patsy. I simply can't believe it.'

My uncle's goodness interfered with his perception of sin.

I said, 'Patsy has henchmen. She has people she talks to, who are entranced by her and lead her on. There are people like Desmond Finch and Oliver Grantchester and others, who scramble to please her. There's Lois who cleans at Park Crescent. Patsy gave her that job, and Lois has been faithful to her, even though yesterday I think Lois began to see the stiletto behind the smile. But she has the habit of reporting to Patsy, and I would expect that to go on, at least for a while, so I don't think I'll go back to Ivan's house just now.'

Himself said, as if baffled, 'But Patsy must know you have the good of the brewery at heart!'

I shook my head. 'She's resented me for twelve years and feared I would cut her out with Ivan, and although she now knows I didn't, I'm sure she's wide open to the suggestion that I'm trying to find the brewery's millions in order to hide them away for myself.'

'Oh no, Al.'

'Why not? She tells everyone I stole the King Alfred Gold Cup. I don't know if she really believes that. But I'm certain she can be persuaded I'm after the money.'

'But who would persuade her?'

'Anyone who's looking for it, who wants her attention and ill will fixed on me. A bit of distraction, as in conjuring tricks - watch my right hand while I vanish your wallet with my left.'

Himself said, frowning, 'Why don't you try telling her all that?'

I smiled. 'I paid her a compliment yesterday on how well she'd organised the funeral. She automatically thought I was being sarcastic. In her eyes, I'm a villain, so anything I do is suspect.' I shrugged. 'Don't worry, I'm used to it. But just now it's one big complication.'

'She's an idiot.'

'Not in her own estimation.'

He poured more whisky.

'You'll get me drunk,' I said.

'James says it's the only way he can beat you at golf.'

It wasn't golf that I was presently engaged in. I had better stay sober, I thought.

I declined my uncle's offer of a bed for the night and stayed instead in one of the hundreds of small hotels catering for London tourists. I ate a hamburger for dinner and wandered around under the bright lights among the back-packing youth of Europe. No demons. I felt old.

I took with me the portable phone and spoke to Chris while I sat beside the fountains and bronze lions in Trafalgar Square.

'I'm back home,' he said. 'My passengers have nice sea-view rooms in a hotel in Paignton, in Devon.'

'Which hotel?'

'The Redcliffe. Your mother wouldn't stay at the Imperial in Torquay because she'd been there with Sir Ivan. The Redcliffe is about three miles from there, round Tor Bay. They all seemed quite happy. They talked about shopping.'

'My mother had no suitcase.'

'So I gathered. So, anyway, what do you want done next? More Surtees-watching? That's the most unproductive job on earth, bar looking for your four thugs.'

He had had no luck with the boxing gyms. Had I any idea how many of them there were in south-east England? Sorry, I'd said.

'You can charge me double-time,' I promised, 'if you watch Surtees all weekend.'

'Right,' he said, 'you're on.'

He had assured me, laughing, that if Surtees spent all his time looking out of his front gate, which he didn't, he would seldom see the same person there. There were cyclists with baseball caps on backwards, there were council employees measuring the road, there were housewives waiting for a bus, there were aged gentlemen walking dogs; there were beer drinkers sitting on the wall outside the pub up the road, and there were people tinkering with the innards of a variety of rented cars. Surtees never saw the skinhead or the secretary-bird.

Patsy and Surtees's stud farm lay on the outskirts of a village south of Hungerford. I had never been there myself, but I felt I knew it well from Chris's reports.

I tried to phone Margaret Morden at her home, but there was no reply. I tried again in the morning, and reached her.

'It's Saturday,' she objected.

'It's always Saturday.'

'It had better be worth it.'

'How about some numbers and names that Norman Quorn gave to his sister?'

After a silent moment she said, 'Are you talking about routes and destinations?'

'I think so.'

'We can't do anything until Monday.'

Bugger weekends, I thought.

'I can't change my Monday meetings. It'll have to be Tuesday.'

'Tobias said he was going to Paris and wouldn't be back in his office until Tuesday.'

'On Monday morning,' Margaret said, 'I will liaise with Tobias's office for an appointment and I will rope in the big bank cheese. Say ten o'clock, Tuesday, at the bank? Will you bring the numbers?'

I agreed resignedly to what seemed to me an endless and endlessly dangerous delay. The weekend stretched ahead like a boring monochrome desert, so it was quite a relief when, early in the afternoon, Himself decided to give me a buzz.

'Where are you?' he said.

'Little Venice, looking at the narrow boats, and thinking about paddling.' Thinking about the mountains, thinking about paint. Ah well.

'I have been talking to Patsy,' my uncle said.

'Who phoned who?' I asked.

'She phoned me. What does it matter? She wanted to know if I knew where you were.'

'What did you say?'

'I said you could be anywhere. She sounded quite different, Al. She sounded as if she had suddenly woken up. I told her that you had been working for her all along, at the brewery, and that she had misjudged you, and you had never tried to cause trouble between her and her father, very much the opposite, and that she had been grossly unfair to you all these years.'

'What did she say?'

'She said she wanted to talk to you. Al, do talk to her, at least it's a beginning.'

'Do you mean,' I said, 'talk to her on the phone?'

'It would be a start. She said she would be at home all afternoon. Do you have her number?' He read it out to me.

'I can't believe this,' I said.

'Give her a chance,' my uncle pleaded. 'It can't do any harm just to talk to her.'

I said, 'Any olive branch is worth the grasping.' And, ten minutes later, I was talking to her.

She sounded, as Himself had said, quite different. She apologised. She said that my uncle had given her a proper ticking-off for never seeing that I was no threat to her, and she was willing, if I were, to try and sort things out between us. She asked if I would let bygones be bygones, and perhaps we could come to an understanding for the future.

'What sort of understanding?' I asked.

'Well,' she said, 'just that we don't fight all the time.'

I agreed to a truce.

Would I, she suggested diffidently, would I come for a drink?

'Where?' I asked.

'Well… here?'

'Where is here?'

'At home,' she said. She mentioned the name of the village.

'Do you really mean it?' I asked.

'Oh, Alexander, your uncle has made me see how prejudiced I have been about you. I just want to start to put things right.'

I told her I would turn up for a drink at about six thirty and then, disconnecting, I phoned Chris's pager. He called back.

I said, 'Are you outside Surtees's house?'

'You betya.'

'Is anything happening?'

'Bugger all.'

'I have been invited for a drink.'

'Belladonna? Aconite? Gin and toadstools?'

I sighed. 'But if she is genuine…'

'She is never genuine, you said.'

I was truly undecided. 'I think I'll go for the drink,' I said.

'Bad choice.'

'I'll take you with me. Have you got the "secretary" handy?'

'In the car, zipped bag number five.'

I laughed. 'What are in numbers one, two, three and four?'

"The skinhead. Various Mr Youngs, various Mr Uttleys.'

'And at present?'

'I'm in a jogging suit, in a rented car, reading a map.'

'I'll pick up the "secretary" in the road at half past six.'

'Fair enough.'

I spent a couple of hours wondering if it were possible that Patsy had undergone a sea-change. I had either to believe it or not believe it. I had either to try for peace or fear a trap.

I would go, I thought, and take Chris with me. Peace treaties had to start somewhere, after all. So, in the late afternoon, I followed the map and arrived in Patsy's village at dusk and came across a long black-legged figure thumbing a lift.

I stopped beside him and he oozed into the car, wafting billows of expensive scent and doubling up with chuckles.

'Is anything happening?' I asked.

'Half an hour ago Surtees and his missus came out of the house, got into the car, and drove down the road, and I followed them in my car and I was just about to phone you when they turned into the gates of a house about half a mile away from here. They have got fairy lights all around the garden in the trees there, and several cars outside, and it looks as if it's some sort of party. So what do you want to do, try the house where Surtees lives, or join the party?'

'The house,' I said.

I walked from the road to the front door with Chris a step behind me and rang the bell. A young woman opened it. Beside her stood Xenia, unforgiving as always, with, behind, two younger children.

'Mrs Benchmark is expecting you,' the young woman said when I introduced myself. 'She says that she is very sorry but, when she was talking to you earlier, she forgot that she and Mr Benchmark were going to a drinks party. It's through the village, past the pub, along on the right-hand side, and you can't miss it. It is all decorated with lights. Mrs Benchmark asked me just to phone when you got here, so that she can meet you when you arrive at the party.'

I thanked her, and Chris and I walked back to the car.

'What do you think?' I asked.

'A toss-up.'

I tossed up mentally, heads you win, tails you lose, and lost.