to see you’. Lætitia looked as if she knew it. She was wearing a cream silk pleated dress with a long rope of pearls; Irene was floating in chiffon of ivory and ice-cream colours; the two women matched, as if somehow they were meant to stand together and be photographed. But Irene moved away with Christopher Court while Lætitia stayed talking with her brother.
‘Come into the garden?’
‘Too cold. Damp as well. I’m not as English as you are, John. English gardens are all right to look at, but not to take a drink in.’
‘I call it quite warm tonight.’
‘Exactly what I mean.’
They were standing by a great gilt wall mirror in which all the room was reflected. The room was part library with one wall entirely covered with books. An ebony stand with a cascade of flowers filled one corner, and in another corner was a bronze head of Irene on a similar stand. Through an open door into another room he could see Mrs Brocklebank carrying a platter of food towards a table. The boy helping her and the tall young creature behind, also carrying food, must be the Pitt son and daughter.
Chris Court and Irene were standing at the door to the garden, poised as if they might walk out. Irene always looked gracefully ready for movement, like the dancer she might have been; she had a natural elegance, with her sculptured profile and creamy skin, which she had groomed and refined to a beauty it might not otherwise have possessed. Above all, she looked intelligent and alert.
They were talking softly, but audibly.
‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Three years. What I promised Edward.’
‘I kept my word. Didn’t try to see you. Although I wanted to. By God, I wanted to. Now Edward’s retired and the bargain is called in. We’re free.’
Irene did not answer. She was staring into the garden. Then she turned to Christopher. ‘Anything to tell me on that business of the student that I asked you to find out about?’
‘Not yet. There will be. I’ve put my chap on to it. I can’t see why you are worried, though.’
‘It’s because she didn’t say anything. Ever. Not to me, not to her father. That alarms me. Come into the garden.’
And in the mirror Coffin watched Edward watching them.
He turned to Lætitia with a question in his eyes. She shrugged.
‘So that’s really why you came? You’re a kind of a chaperone.’
‘I’m very fond of both Chris and Irene. Edward too, for that matter. And also,’ she added deliberately, ‘of my brother whom I came to see, and who never comes to see me.’
‘Poor coppers can’t travel the globe finding you.’
But it was an excuse, and he knew it. He had not tried hard enough. She had a right to be angry if she wanted to be. He had got stuck into his own life, his own problems, and had not looked outside them.
‘I’m coming back to this country to settle. Bought a house on Chelsea Embankment, with views across the river.’
Did it mean another marriage was unfastening itself? She did step out of relationships so easily. She was more like their mother than he cared to admit.
‘How’s Harry?’
‘He will be there too.’ She smiled. ‘You thought not, didn’t you.’
‘Wondered.’
‘There is a reason. Can’t you guess? I am going to have a child. Since I was born in this country I have kept my British passport; my child, if born here also, will have dual nationality, British and American. We thought it a good idea he should be born here.’ She was serenely sure of herself. ‘The place not to be born if you are a boy is France, then you have to do military service, whoever you are. Or keep out of the country. And that might seriously damage his career. One can’t tell.’
He was pleased. His family was growing. Now there would be three of them and a hidden fourth. ‘It is a he? You are sure?’
‘I already know. It is quite possible to know.’
Her life was so much more sure and full of certainties than his own was. That had to come from her father’s side of the family. Nothing like it seemed to exist on what he knew of his mother’s. He didn’t know much about his own father, except that he had been an unlikely chap. It had been a surprise when Lætitia had turned up in his life, so much younger, prettier and cleverer than he had dared to expect. Also a woman; he had been on the search for a brother. That brother still existed somewhere.
‘Of course, I am already a little old for a first child,’ she said calmly. ‘One can run into trouble, hence all the tests. But all is well.’
A budget of news.
When he turned back into the room, now crowded with people, he saw that Chris Court and Irene Pitt had drawn apart, the MP to talk to a man John Coffin recognized as a television personality, and Irene to supervise the laying out of the food in the other room. His sister was talking to Edward Pitt, who was giving her some wine, then going on to pour some for Court. He did it with a flourish.
Suddenly Coffin felt sorry for the man. Not much fun to lose your wife after years of marriage. If I was him, he thought, I’d feel like dropping poison in Court’s drink.
Of course you’d have to choose your poison, or someone like himself, some eager beaver policeman, would soon be on your trail.
He enjoyed the party, but left early. His sister had left even before he did. She came across to speak to him before she went.
‘Can I drive you home, Letty?’ They were, after all, well out in South London, well away from Cheyne Walk. He felt sure her new house was on Cheyne Walk, nothing less would do for Lætitia.
‘No, I have a car.’
‘Sure?’
‘I am perfectly fit,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t fuss. There’s something I want to say. You remember the advertisements we have been running in the papers asking about our missing sibling?’
‘I remember.’ He hadn’t wanted the advertisements inserted, it was making public something he still preferred to keep private, but he had deferred to her.
‘We’ve had an answer. Some woman who thinks she may know something. From Glasgow, of all places. Can one of us really have got to Glasgow?’
‘You got to New York.’
‘But I had help.’ She questioned: ‘So what do we do? Do we go to Glasgow?’
‘One of us ought to.’
‘Then I will send you the letter and all the information I have. I think you will find it interesting.’
As he followed her to her car he saw that Court was already standing by it with the door open.
‘He’s in a hurry, isn’t he?’
‘There’s
