reason.’
Irene said nothing, just pushed some more rubbish from the party into the bin.
‘There’s been a murder around here, you know.’
‘I do know. Mrs Brocklebank told me.’
‘I don’t want Nona out on her own after dark.’
‘She’s not likely to be killed.’
‘Don’t even say it.’
Then they both heard the careful, quiet closing of the front door.
Nona came into the room, then stopped in surprise. She had returned home expecting them to be in bed. She would certainly have preferred them to be. She had long had her own ways of entering and leaving No. 22 in private, she remembered them from of old. Which to her meant before New York.
‘Hello.’
She was taller than her mother, with Irene’s dancer’s grace turned to athleticism, but she was going to be just as beautiful in a more extrovert way, with a kind of flourish to her that Irene had not. She was very thin at the moment because she hated the idea of putting on weight. Muscles curved gently beneath her skin and she distrusted them also. That was not the way she wanted to go. ‘Hello. Still up?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Oh Dad! I’m allowed out, you know. Do I have to say?’ She looked from parent to parent. ‘Oh, all right. I was talking to Peter.’
Edward relaxed. ‘I don’t mind you being with him. He’s a nice boy. Not very clever, not particularly well educated, but a nice lad.’
‘You told me never to see him again before we went away last time,’ said Nona, who did not forget easily.
‘That was then. You were only a child.’
‘And this is now?’ Nona had an adult amusement in her eyes. Her mother saw it, and made her own assessment.
‘Haven’t you outgrown him?’ she asked. ‘I thought you might have done.’ She understood her daughter better than her husband did, had watched her and seen the signs.
‘I was kind of saying goodbye,’ said Nona. ‘Of course, I’ll go on knowing him, he’ll always be my friend. But, well, I’ve got a lot of work in front of me if I’m going to get to Girton or it might be Vassar, I haven’t decided. I’m not going to have the time to go around much. And then I’ve just got keen on paintings. I want to go to all the galleries, and look. The National, and the Tate and the Victoria and Albert. I don’t think Peter would want to trail around all those after me. Not his thing.’
‘No,’ said Irene. How grown-up she was, how wise and sophisticated. Aware that two worlds had grown wide apart and it was time to be off. And how much wiser than she herself had been at that age. A wise child now but still one who had to be protected. It was better if she kept away from the boy. If only she had told me, Irene thought, and not allowed me to find out from a teacher’s report. That made it important. An episode like that in a child’s life ought to have been talked about. ‘Well, be careful how you do it, that’s all. Don’t hurt his feelings.’ More than you can help; they were going to be hurt, anyway.
‘Your mother will teach you how to say goodbye gently,’ said Edward, just audibly.
Irene heard him but said nothing. Bridges were being torn down, but would have to be built again. Somehow.
Nona said, ‘Oh, I’m being slow about it. We’re going out for a walk in the park. He wants to show me the sailing ship, the Cutty Sark. That’ll be interesting. And did you know there had been a murder? A man, stabbed to death.’
She was interested but untouched. Death, violent death, was so far away from her.
Later that night, Chris Court was on the telephone to his party agent in his constituency. The vote that night had not gone well for the Government and it was likely that there would be a General Election. Chris’s seat was one which, if the swing was large, would be marginal. He had worries.
As they finished their business, Chris said carefully, ‘I think there might be a divorce coming up. I’ll be involved. Of course there’s no question of anyone being labelled a guilty party these days, but will it matter, do you think?’
‘No,’ said his agent confidently. ‘Just try and get it well over before the Election.’
‘Yes. Right.’ He would have to talk over the dates with Irene, but she would be reasonable. ‘It’s my second divorce, you know.’
‘That’s all right. A friend of mine is agent for a chap who’s just about to have his fourth. In the Labour Party, too. That’s trouble. But he’ll probably get in all the same. The voters aren’t what they were.’
He was always optimistic, a bouncy man, like a cuddly bear with hidden claws, able to override worries; he would not be a political agent otherwise.
‘By the way, that inquiry you wanted me to make for you, about the missing students. I put one of your research assistants on to it, the little Scot, Fiona Graham, and she picked up something in the local paper down there in Greenwich. Yes, there was a story about three students but nothing much to it, they weren’t really missing, soon turned up and it never made the London papers. But she did pick up the story that one of the same students was later found dead. A keen little researcher, our Fiona. Suicide, but a bit of a puzzle because they never found the poison. Or the bottle. Or something like that.’
‘Thanks, yes, that is a help. I just wanted to know what there was in the story.’
‘A something and nothing. Want Fiona to go on?’
‘No.’
‘I’d try the police if I were you. There seems to have been a feeling they knew a bit more than they were saying. They had an idea a child was involved somewhere. If it’s that important.’
‘Someone wanted to know.’
‘Otherwise I’d leave it alone. It’s always dangerous digging up old stories.’
He spoke out of a full knowledge of the world, but without expecting anyone to believe him and without any certain information to go on.
Although it was late, Chris sat by the telephone waiting for the call, and when it came he answered it quickly and quietly, as if it mattered his end as much as it did the other.
‘Irene? Yes, there was a child involved. But I don’t know any details.’ He listened. ‘Yes, love, I’ll try. And you try not to worry, I think you are fancying things.’
He really believed what he said.
Later that night, John Coffin was still up and reading, when his bell sounded. He listened on the entryphone.
‘Oh, Paul, come on up.’ He released the front door and waited. In a short while he heard feet on the stairs and opened his door. ‘You’re around late.’
Inspector Paul Lane was shorter than the ideal height for a policeman but compensated for it by a solid square frame and hard muscle that made his ability
