Chapter Four

When Colin returned there was a brief silence, then Dorothea disappeared to the kitchen to put together something for lunch. It turned out to be ham sandwiches and coffee. Afterwards Andrew felt his usual inclination to have a short nap, but Dorothea said that she was going into Rockford and wondered if Andrew would like to come with her for the drive.

“As we aren’t having Christmas dinner with the Deardens, I’d better get something for us,” she said. “I think a piece of sirloin, and perhaps some Côte du Rhone. I know the supermarket stocks that. Of course, none of us feels exactly like celebrating, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a good meal. I mean, even if it wasn’t Christmas, there’d be nothing against that, would there? In fact it might somehow be easier if it wasn’t Christmas, but of course we shan’t feel that we’re celebrating anything, we’re just going ahead normally, though we can have some of my mince pies. Or do you feel there’d be something sacrilegious about eating mince pies in the circumstances? I simply couldn’t bear just to throw them away. No, we’ll have roast beef and mince pies. I think that will be quite suitable. Will you come with me, Andrew, or would you sooner have a little sleep?”

“I’d love to come with you,” he said almost sincerely.

About two o’clock they set out together.

Rockford had once been a medium-sized market town, and it still had a centre of a marketplace, old houses, old inns and a church. There were several shops that had once been what people called really good old family businesses, but which in the last few years had gradually been taken over by chain stores; this had changed their character, occasionally to their advantage. Also the town had spread in all directions, and now had—besides acres of council houses, costly bungalows and high-rise flats—a university of its own, some factories and offices of a number of national and even international companies; it was in one of these, Brown, Bretherton, that Jonathan worked.

Parking, as it would have been in all towns of the Rockford type, was the problem most on Dorothea’s mind as she and Andrew drove into it in her Ford Escort. But she was fortunate in the main city car-park to be able to swerve sharply into a space left empty just before she reached it by someone else driving out. Someone in the car ahead of her, who might have been said to have more right to the space than she had, shouted something at her which was angry and probably obscene, but she was untroubled by it. With her shopping basket over her arm, she and Andrew set off towards one of the supermarkets at the town’s centre.

She found all that she wanted fairly easily, then thought of a number of other things which she might as well buy since she was on the spot, and the basket, which Andrew had taken from her, grew heavier. Then they started back towards the car-park, but they were only just outside the door of the store when she suddenly suggested that perhaps they might have a cup of tea.

“There’s a little place only just along here,” she said. “How do you feel about it?”

Andrew did not feel at all like a cup of tea, but as it was evident that she wanted one—whether for the sake of the tea or because, as he rather suspected, she wanted a chance to talk to him quietly where there would not be even Colin to overhear them—he said that it seemed an excellent idea. They made their way along the pavement, busy with the crowds of people who were doing their last-minute Christmas shopping, to a small café between two office blocks where there were small round tables with plastic tops, a self-service counter and a great many brightly coloured paper streamers pinned along the walls to celebrate the season. Dorothea firmly planted Andrew at one of the tables with the basket of shopping, and went off to the counter to collect their cups of tea.

That it was to talk with him rather than to drink the very pale brown liquid with which she returned was evident almost as soon as she sat down.

“Andrew, what do you think of Jonathan?” she asked.

It was said with an earnestness that suggested she wanted more than a casual answer. But the only one that he could think of for the moment was, “He seems a very nice lad.”

“Yes, yes, of course, but do you think—?” She took some time to decide how to frame her next sentence. “Is he happy?”

“You know I hardly know him,” he said. “The fact that Nell and I occasionally spent a summer holiday by the sea with you when he was about ten years old doesn’t mean I know much about him now.”

“I’m not sure that it doesn’t,” she said. “It lays a foundation of trust.” She stirred her tea vigorously with her spoon, although she had put no sugar in it. “I’m not trying to get you to tell me anything that he’s told you in confidence. I wouldn’t think of doing that.”

“He hasn’t told me anything in confidence,” Andrew said. “Truly, not a thing.”

She gave a sigh. “He seems so frank and open, doesn’t he? Yet these days he never really tells me anything about himself.” “Perhaps there isn’t much to tell,” he suggested. “Perhaps he really is what he seems.”

“And you think he’s happy?”

“Honestly I haven’t thought about it,” he said. “It’s one of the hardest things to gauge unless a person decides to tell you about it. The happiest people on earth may have terrible lines on their faces, and the unhappiest may look bland and pink. Anyway, why do you think he isn’t? That’s what interests me at the moment.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Well, no, perhaps I do. Oh, I don’t know.”

He waited silently for her to go on.

“I could be so wrong,” she said at length, “and that makes it stupid even to try to talk about it. I mean, the present-day young are so different from what even Colin and I were like when we were young, and for someone of your age, I don’t mean to say you’re old, but all the same I should say they’re an utter mystery.”

“I don’t deny that I’m old,” Andrew said, “and I don’t deny the young sometimes puzzle me, but they puzzled me even when I was young myself. Other people have always puzzled me. But how dull life would be if they didn’t. An open book, with the pages hardly worth turning. But what’s really worrying you about Jonathan, Dorothea?”

“I think he’s in love with Gwen,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see.”

“I wonder if you do,” she said. “The fact is, it’s only a feeling I’ve got. He’s never said anything. I haven’t any evidence that there’s anything in this idea of mine at all. But there’s something about the way he looks at her when we’re all together, and then the fact which probably doesn’t mean anything that they go off for long walks together—Oh, don’t I sound horrible, like a suspicious sort of Victorian mamma? But really I’m not. It’s just that I so terribly don’t want him to get badly hurt.”

“Does Colin think the same as you?” Andrew asked.

“I don’t know. We’ve never discussed it.”

“That surprises me,” he said. “I had a sort of impression that you and he discuss nearly everything.”

“So we do.”

“But not this particular worry of yours.”

“No. You see, Colin can be so full of common sense, and when I have some really fantastic idea in my head, which I sometimes have, I tend rather to keep it to myself in case he pours cold water over it. But just now I feel I’ve simply got to talk about it to someone.”

“And you think I can stand up to a bit of fantasy.”

“Does that annoy you?”

“Of course not. But tell me, what about Gwen? Do you think she reciprocates this feeling Jonathan may have for her? If what Nicholas told us is true, that she wants to go and live abroad, it doesn’t really sound like it.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But it isn’t improbable, is it, that she’s taken to him? He’s very attractive, wouldn’t you say? Or is that just maternal prejudice? And they do go off for long walks together and I’ve an idea Nicholas doesn’t much like it, though it’s true that sometimes, if Gwen doesn’t feel like it for some reason, he goes instead of her and Jonathan never shows any sign that that’s a disappointment. But he wouldn’t, would he? I mean, if this is something that he and Gwen are keeping secret, he’d do his best to hide his real feelings.”

“You know, I think there’s something about all this that you aren’t telling me, Dorothea,” he said. “What is it?”

She drew a deep breath, seemed about to speak, then stopped herself and drank a little tea. Andrew looked at his and wondered if it would hurt her feelings if he left his undrunk. But then he nerved himself to pick up his cup, and drank about half of what was in it all at once.

“It’s all because of the bomb, isn’t it?” he said. “You think Jonathan was the intended victim.”

She gave a little shiver, then met his eyes with a look imploring understanding.

“Well, don’t you think he may have been?” she said.

“The thought of course had crossed my mind,” Andrew said. “No one appears to have known that Dearden was expected home, but a lot of people knew that Jonathan would be driving along the lane only a few minutes before the time when the bomb went off. And the only person you can think of at the moment who might have had a motive for murdering Jonathan is Nicholas, if he believed there was something between Jonathan and Gwen.”

“And don’t you see, if there’s anything in all this,” she said, speaking rapidly, “he’s still in frightful danger? If Nicholas is capable of doing something so frightful and failed, he won’t leave it at that, he’ll try again.”

“But do you honestly think he’s capable of such a thing?”

“Why not?”

Andrew picked up his cup again and this time succeeded in emptying it.

“You’re one of the people who believe we’re all capable of murder,” he said.

“I’m not saying we all are,” she said. “I’m only saying Nicholas might be.”

“Of course you know him better than I do, but it isn’t how he struck me.”

“So you don’t think there’s anything in what I’ve been saying?”

He felt that in another moment he might be accused of having too much common sense.

“Let’s say I’m not entirely convinced,” he said. “This belief of yours that Jonathan and Gwen may be in love with one another—would they really need in these days to keep it so heavily concealed? There are several things they could do about it.”

“Such as?”

“They could tell Nicholas about it, she could leave him, be divorced and marry Jonathan. Or if they couldn’t bother with a divorce they could simply go away and live together. Or if she doesn’t really care as much for Jonathan as he does for her, she could go on living happily with Nicholas and keeping Jonathan on a string, which might even be a help to Nicholas as he wouldn’t have to bother about her being bored while he gets ahead with his writing. That last idea rather appeals to me.”

“I suppose it would account for the way Jonathan has insisted on going on living with us,” she said broodingly, appearing to take the suggestion seriously. “He and Gwen can see each other as often as they like without having to get in too deep. But you really think I’ve been talking nonsense, don’t you, Andrew?”

“No, I just think it may be like one of the things which the good inspector thought it was useful to talk about.”

“Rubbish, you mean, to be cleared out of the way.”

“Something like that.”

“And you honestly think Jonathan isn’t in any danger?”

Andrew suddenly found himself very unwilling to respond. To be wrong in such a matter might be almost a kind of guilt.

“Forgetting Nicholas for the moment,” he said, “has Jonathan any other enemies?”

“How can I know that? He wouldn’t tell me.” For a moment it looked as if she might burst into tears. But she controlled them, taking a few more cautious sips of her tea, then pushed her cup away. “If Jonathan wasn’t the intended victim,” she said, “if Lucas was really the target, we’re back to the old question, aren’t we—how did anyone know he’d be coming along the lane when he was? And I’ve had a thought about that. I know Lyn Goddard said that nobody phoned the Deardens yesterday, but suppose Inspector Roland’s idea was more or less right and one of them phoned Henry and got the information from him then. She wouldn’t have heard the telephone ringing, would she, if the telephoning was done from this end?”

“You’re thinking of what Roland suggested about that man Waterman,” Andrew said. “That he or someone telephoned Henry and so knew pretty precisely when Dearden would be coming along the lane. And if it was Waterman, he might not have known that Jonathan would be coming along it too and that he might even have come first and been the one to explode the bomb. But you’re really thinking again of Nicholas, aren’t you? He’s your favourite suspect, whether his motive was to murder his wife’s lover or to inherit his father’s money. What have you really got against him, Dorothea?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing at all. I like him.”

“You’re the best of friends, are you? Well, I hope the people who I think are my best friends don’t nourish the sort of secret thoughts about me that you do about Nicholas.”

She gave an uncertain laugh. “The funny thing is, I feel better for having talked to you like this, even if it’s all nonsense. Thank you for listening, Andrew.”

“And what’s the next step? Do you tell any of this to the police?”

“The next step is we go home and have a drink. Then we’ll finish the cold chicken and have some of that frozen lemon cream pie which you may have noticed me buying this afternoon. It’ll have thawed by the time we get home. And I wouldn’t dream of saying a word about all this to the police, or even to Colin either. Well, I’m not quite sure about that. I sometimes find myself meaning to keep something from him so as not to worry him, and then suddenly there I am, spilling it all. But you won’t say anything about it yourself, will you?”

“You have my promise.”

“And let’s hope we have a nice quiet evening.”

As it turned out, the evening was quiet enough, though not quite in the sense that Andrew thought Dorothea had intended. There were no sounds of bombs. There was no wailing of the sirens of police cars or ambulances, and as Jonathan had predicted, there were no carol singers. However, the doorbell rang more than once. The first time it was two very young and eager men, one of whom had a camera, who came from a Rockford newspaper and wanted to question the Cahills about the murder. Colin dealt with them, telling them that it was to the house next door that they should have gone. They said that they had been there already and had been advised to come here. He was gentle with them, partly because of their youth and inexperience, and partly because his own work was on the fringe of journalism, but he would not allow them into the house.

They took his photograph and some notes of what he said, and departed. But other representatives of the press who came later were not so easily got rid of, being aware that the story of the bomb in the lane would grow in importance. The Cahills and the Deardens played pat-ball with them, each insisting that it was really the house next door that they wanted.

The sherry had been drunk and the chicken and the lemon cream pie had been eaten when the bell rang yet once more. The Cahills and Andrew were drinking coffee in the sitting room.

Jonathan said, “For God’s sake, don’t answer it. We’ve had enough for one evening and probably it’ll be worse tomorrow, when the news will have spread around. I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s something about it on television this evening.”

The bell rang again.

“Go on, Jonathan, we’d better do something about it and I think it’s your turn by now,” Colin said. “You open it.”

“But we’ve nothing to tell them,” Jonathan grumbled.

“Never mind. Go on. There’s no point in antagonising them.”

Jonathan went out to the front door and a moment later returned, bringing in Lyn Goddard.

She was carrying a parcel roughly wrapped in brown paper. She was in the same grey dress as the day before, wore the same necklace and had the same air of composure which it seemed even a bomb could not shatter. Andrew wondered how real this composure was; whether perhaps she was one of the people who feel it an absolute necessity to conceal their feelings, having perhaps at some time encountered mockery or humiliation when they had failed to do so, but who then pay for this heavily in private. She certainly looked pale and tired, but as she held out the parcel that she was carrying to Colin her hands were steady, and when she spoke there was no sound of emotion in her soft, deep voice.

“Would you take a look at this?” she said. “Nicholas would like to know what you think of it.”

Colin undid the brown paper wrapping. Inside was a bundle of papers, closely covered in handwriting. He riffled through them, then looked at Lyn.

“It’s Lucas’s memoirs,” he said.

“It’s the original manuscript,” she said. “When he finished it he had it typed professionally, and it’s the typed copy that went off to his agent. Nicholas’s agent, of course, who agreed to do what he could for Lucas because of his connection with Nicholas. But Lucas kept this in his desk at home. Nicholas has read it, but he’d be grateful if you would too and tell him if you think it’s important in any way. You’ll see there are some things Lucas wrote in the first version which he crossed out before having it typed, but they’re still quite easy to read. I haven’t read it myself, so I can’t have any opinions about it, but Nicholas says there are a few references to Waterman, which perhaps may mean something.”

Colin looked at Andrew. “How would you like to tackle the job first?” he asked. “Then Dorothea and I can read it later and we can all discuss it.”

“You don’t mind doing it?” Lyn said to him.

“Of course not, if there’s a chance it might help,” Andrew answered. “Does Nicholas really think there’s something significant in it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think he was being rather careful not to express an opinion in case I said anything that might influence you. Anyway, I know he’ll be very grateful if you’ll go through the thing.”

“Sit down and have some coffee,” Dorothea said. “I do hope they’re managing to feed you properly over there. If it would make things easier for them and for you, you could come over here and stay with us, or at least have your meals with us. Gwen does seem rather to go to pieces in a crisis.”

Lyn smiled faintly, as if she found the word “crisis” a somewhat inadequate one for what had happened.

“She’s always been like that, as long as I’ve known her,” she said, “and that’s since we were at school together. She could get quite unbalanced at the mere thought of an exam in the near future, then she’d do very well in it, while I, who hadn’t worried at all, came out somewhere near the bottom. But she’ll recover quite quickly, you’ll find. Meanwhile I’m doing most of the cooking and we shan’t starve, though it’s very kind of you to invite me… No, thank you,” she added as Dorothea repeated her offer of coffee, “I’d better get back.”

She left, leaving Andrew with the same irritated feeling he had had before that there was something he should have asked her while he had the opportunity; but he still could not remember what it was.

It was a slightly frightening feeling, this inefficiency of his memory. He was not sure if it really was getting worse with advancing age, or if it was merely something of which he had recently become aware. Had he always been an example of that stock joke, akin to the one about mothers-in-law—the absent-minded professor? Whatever the truth about that might be, he was sure that there had been something he wanted to ask Lyn Goddard, but he could not think what it had been.

He knew that the way to deal with that sort of problem was to stop thinking about it, because once his mind was really off the subject, the answer would probably come to him all of a sudden, in the middle of something quite removed from it. But it was difficult to stop brooding about it. Accepting the bundle of manuscript from Colin, he said he would take it upstairs to his room and start reading it at once. Going upstairs, he settled down in the easy chair in his bedroom to read, then almost at once thought that he would be much more comfortable—if he had to stay up for he did not know how long, reading pages of handwriting which might well be as indecipherable as his own—if he changed into pyjamas and dressing gown.

He left his shoes—which he had kicked off when he came in from his trip into Rockford—in the middle of the carpet, but kept on his socks, which he preferred to bedroom slippers. Then, instead of returning to the chair, he lay down on the bed, switching on the bedside lamp and arranging the pillows behind his head in a comfortable position for reading.

He need not have been afraid that the script would be illegible, for Lucas Dearden’s handwriting, though small, was immaculately neat. Andrew began to feel that it was the hand-writing of a vain man, a man who took pride in his ability to produce something so unnecessarily perfect. But that might be a reaction, Andrew realised, because of his recognition of his own scrawling inadequacy.

Apart from that, he soon began to find the book incredibly dull. At least the first third of it was devoted to a detailed tracing back of three generations of Lucas Dearden’s forbears, who somehow, it appeared, had been connected with an earl. He did not appear to have been a very distinguished earl. He had taken no part in politics or the army, had not been a gambler who had lost his family’s fortune, or a notorious roué, or been in any way dramatic. He had simply been a quiet, unassuming aristocrat, who farmed his acres and once a year took his family for a holiday to Switzerland. And Lucas’s grandfather, who had been vaguely connected with this good man, had become a vicar in a country village where according to Lucas he had been deeply loved until, unfortunately for the family, he had read Herbert Spencer and had become an agnostic. “And by an agnostic,” his grandson had quoted him as saying, “I mean one who, while exploring the knowable, pauses reverently—rever-ently, mind—on the threshold of the unknowable.” He had of course had to resign his living, but soon afterwards a grand-aunt had conveniently died and he had been able to spend his years of religious doubt in comparative comfort, leaving a competence to his son; at all events, by the time that Lucas had appeared on the scene and had required an education, the family had been able to afford to send him to Winchester and Christchurch, after which he had entered on his own brilliant career.

Andrew, turning a page, gave a deep sigh. If Lucas Dearden had had the least gift for it, he could have made all this tale charming and fascinating, instead of merely a plodding exercise in name-dropping. Perhaps, Andrew thought, as he continued to read in spite of an increasing inclination to sleep, things would liven up a bit once Dearden reached the time when he had become eminent himself. But if anything it grew worse. Perhaps it was a fear of libel that made his description of the trials in which he had been involved sound drearily flat and undramatic; or perhaps the trouble was that he had made his reputation by eloquence, and eloquence does not transfer very well to paper unless the writer has remarkable literary ability or a competent ghost. Wit, which might have saved him, had never been Dearden’s strong point, and it had been beyond him to convey the gesture, the throb in his voice, the flash of his eyes, which had once moved juries. By the time Andrew came to the end of the manuscript, which he faithfully finished without much skipping, he was almost convinced that the law must be a very dull profession.

He had found a brief reference to the Waterman trial, but this was one of the parts that had mostly been crossed out. It was easily legible, however, and even if all of it had been left in the final version of the memoirs, Andrew could not see how it could have done any harm to anyone. There was nothing there that had not appeared in all the newspapers at the time of the trial, and he had a feeling that it had been deleted more because Thomas Waterman had been a man of no consequence and the evidence against him so overwhelming that there had been nothing notable about having him convicted. And anyway, how could Waterman have known that he had been even briefly mentioned in the memoirs, or indeed that Dearden was writing such a thing?

After he had laid the book aside, taken off his dressing gown (stumbling over the shoes that he had left in the middle of the carpet), got into bed and turned off the light, Andrew toyed for a little while with the idea that Waterman might somehow be in touch with Dearden’s literary agent. Dearden, after all, had had an appointment with him on the day after he had reached London, and presumably had cancelled this by telephone before starting for home. Henry Haslam, therefore, might not have been the only person who had known that Dearden was returning to Upper Cullonden. His agent most probably had known it. And he, moved by sympathy for Nicholas—who by now was a friend as well as a client—might by some means have communicated with Waterman and urged him to blow up Sir Lucas to the obvious advantage of Nicholas, and also himself and even some misguided publisher.

Andrew was half asleep before this thought formed itself hazily in his brain, confused because the words of an old Black spiritual, which had been popular when he was young, had started to weave through his thoughts.

I got shoes,

You got shoes,

All God’s children got shoes,

When I get to Heaven goin’ to kick off my shoes…

No, there was a misquotation somewhere there. It came of his bad habit of kicking off shoes and leaving them lying wherever he happened to have done so. It was all very well to do that when he was at home, but in someone else’s house he really ought to be tidier. But at least he seemed to have escaped from Scott for the moment. Only briefly, however, for, by the time that he fell asleep he was possessed by the lines:

Heap on the wood!—the wind is chill,

But let it whistle as it will,

We’ll keep our Christmas merry still…

Tomorrow was Christmas Day. No, it was today. The time was nearly two o’clock. And it had not been the heaping on of wood that had set that atrocious fire blazing in the lane, it had been a petrol tank exploding…

Sleep came as a blessed release, to be broken at last only by Jonathan appearing in his room with his breakfast tray.

“Merry Christmas,” Jonathan said in a doleful tone.

“Merry Christmas,” Andrew echoed him. “But really you shouldn’t trouble, bringing me my breakfast like this. I can’t help feeling it’s a shocking luxury.”

“It’s no trouble,” Jonathan said. “As a matter of fact, when we have people staying here Mum rather likes it if they don’t mind breakfast in bed. Then she and Dad can sit over theirs in peace, reading the newspapers—though there isn’t one this morning, of course, being Christmas—without feeling they ought to entertain anybody.” He looked at the heap of manuscript on the bedside table. “Did you really read that yesterday evening?”

“Yes,” Andrew said.

“The whole of it?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you think of it?”

“I don’t think I’m going to give any opinion till everyone else has read it.” Andrew had heaved himself up in the bed, and Jonathan placed the tray on his knees. “Are you going to read it yourself?”

“Do you think I ought to?”

“I should say if your parents read it, that ought to be adequate.”

“Perhaps I’ll read it, all the same.”

Jonathan left the room, and Andrew reached for the piece of cheese with which he had been thoughtfully supplied, before pouring out his coffee.

When he went downstairs about an hour later he took with him the presents that he had brought with him, without, however, having gone to the trouble of wrapping them up in special Christmas wrapping paper. He had brought a bottle of Glenlivet for Colin, a box of chocolates for Dorothea and a book-token for Jonathan. The book-token, Andrew felt, had been a serious failure of imagination on his part, but although he had known Jonathan since his childhood, he really knew very little about him now and had no idea what sort of gift might truly appeal to him. A book-token seemed safe.

But when he handed his presents over to Dorothea and she responded by giving him a fairly large parcel wrapped in paper of red and gold, dotted all over with Christmas trees, and he found that it contained a sweater in a very attractive shade of grey with an intricate pattern of soft blue, which she confessed that she had knitted herself, he felt that his own gifts were niggardly. Returning to his bedroom, he tried on the sweater and found that it fitted perfectly.

When he had taken his presents down with him, he had added Lucas Dearden’s manuscript to them, handing that over to Colin, who, like Jonathan, had wanted to know Andrew’s opinion of it. As before, he said that he did not want to give an opinion until at least Colin had read it; on coming downstairs again, wearing the grey sweater, feeling very good in it and prepared to tell Dorothea quite sincerely how much he liked it, Andrew found Colin already reading by the sitting-room fire.

The absence of a newspaper was irritating, but the copy of The Economist, on which Andrew had started the evening before the bomb, was still in the room. He settled down with it, doing his best not to disturb Colin. Presently a scent of cooking reached the room, and after a while Jonathan came in, saying that it was time for drinks and did everyone want sherry.

Dorothea joined them and said that if only she had known how things were going to turn out, making it impossible to go to the Deardens, she would have bought a turkey for themselves; but that anyway the sirloin looked good and would very likely be better than the frozen turkey, which was the only kind that she could have bought in the supermarket at the last moment.

Accepting sherry from Jonathan and looking at Colin, she said, “What are you making of that?”

“So far,” Colin said, “absolutely nothing at all. It’s quite extraordinarily dull.”

“Is there anything in it about Thomas Waterman?” she asked.

“I’ve come on one passage about the case,” Colin said. “There’s a mention of the fact that Waterman caught his wife in bed with a man, that the man, before bolting, gave him a beating and that Waterman then beat up his wife and killed her.” He looked at Andrew. “Is there anything more about the case later on?”

“No,” Andrew said. “I don’t think Dearden found it interesting enough to write about it.”

“The one odd thing, it seems to me,” Colin said, “is that if Waterman had given himself up and pleaded guilty, he’d probably have got a still lighter sentence than he did. There was plenty of provocation. But he put up a dogged defence, and though Lucas doesn’t mention it here, there’s the fact that he shouted threats from the dock at the judge and Lucas. So he may be sufficiently unbalanced to have planted a bomb to kill Lucas. But we still don’t know how he could have known that Lucas would be driving along the lane at the time he was. I know there’s the theory that Waterman could have been in touch with Henry and got information from him, but I don’t really believe it.”

“I wonder if the police will arrest him,” Dorothea said.

“More likely take him in for questioning,” Jonathan said, “if he hasn’t already scarpered.”

“Anyway, let’s remember it’s Christmas and try to enjoy ourselves,” Dorothea said. “More sherry, everyone?”

If they did not quite succeed in enjoying themselves with any of the Christmas spirit, they did presently enjoy an excellent meal. Dorothea had insisted that dinner should be at midday and not in the evening. There was smoked salmon, then roast beef with roast potatoes and cauliflower, followed by the mince pies which she had tried unsuccessfully the evening before to tempt people to eat. They were delicious. They drank Côte du Rhone and afterwards coffee and Cointreau. After that Jonathan and Andrew attacked the washing-up, while Colin returned to Lucas Dearden’s manuscript and Dorothea settled down with some knitting on the sitting-room sofa, her feet up as usual.

While they were doing the washing-up Andrew studied Jonathan’s profile as he bent over the sink. He was certainly a very good-looking young man, and had a good deal of charm and spirit. So could Dorothea be right, Andrew wondered, that he and Gwen were in love with one another? And could that be Jonathan’s reason for continuing to live here with his parents? Was it simply that he and Gwen could meet so easily?

Andrew did not really think that likely. He thought that Jonathan simply liked living at home. Apart from his apparent affection for his parents, he was comfortably housed, well fed, and had far fewer domestic worries than he would have if he lived by himself in a flat in Rockford. Perhaps if he had a place of his own he would have a little more opportunity to meet Gwen privately, but not really so very much. Her husband did not go out to work. He spent all day at home. If she was constantly driving into Rockford, he would soon notice and begin to wonder what she was doing there. But even if such a thing were to happen, would he take to murder—and by a manner so crude as a bomb?

Polishing a glass carefully, Andrew said, “Jonathan, have you any enemies?”

“Ah,” Jonathan said, “you’ve thought of that, have you?”

“That perhaps you were the intended victim the other night. You’d thought that of it, had you?”

“Oh yes, I thought of it almost at once.”

“Because you’ve been half-expecting something of the sort?”

“Good God, no. Only for the simple reason that no one could have known when Lucas would get here, and half the village knows when I drive along the lane.”

“You haven’t answered my question; have you any enemies?”

Jonathan was washing up plates and putting them into a rack to dry.

After a moment he said, “I expect I have. Haven’t most of us? In your academic days, didn’t you sometimes feel that there was someone in your department who wished you’d drop dead?”

“But they never did anything about it.”

“So you think that feeling wasn’t very real?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, that’s how I really feel about it too. There are people whom I’ve got across in my job. I know it and I know they wouldn’t be sorry if I quietly disappeared. But so far as I know, all they’re thinking of is how satisfactory it would be if I got a job elsewhere. But aren’t there plenty of lunatics wandering around among us whom everyone is ready to swear are the most normal and pleasant sort of people, until they get hold of a gun and suddenly start shooting up everyone in sight? I’m afraid I don’t know much about that sort of thing, and I wouldn’t be good at diagnosing anything of the kind, but in a way it does seem the simplest explanation of what’s happened, doesn’t it?”

“But there’s no special person you’re afraid of?”

“No, I can’t honestly say there is.”

“All the same, having thought of yourself as the intended victim of that bomb, aren’t you at all frightened?”

“I’m scared as hell.”

Jonathan’s voice had suddenly risen a little in pitch, and for the first time Andrew began to feel that it might be true that the young man was frightened. Yet he had tried to make what he said sound like a joke. Andrew wondered what the truth was. Was he truly scared, or did he somehow know that he had not been the intended target?

“Of course you’re going to tell this to the police,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Jonathan replied. “They’ll think of it themselves, and if they come along and question me then I can only tell them what I’ve just told you.”

“Which I believe is only about half the truth,” Andrew said.

“Half a truth is better than no truth,” Jonathan declared and laughed.

Andrew gave up at that point. He and Jonathan finished the washing-up and rejoined Colin and Dorothea in the sitting room.

Colin was just reading the last few pages of Lucas Dearden’s memoirs, and took no notice of Andrew, who went to the window and looked out at the damply colourless garden, wondering if he should go for a walk. He was not used to a heavy meal at midday, and knew that if he sat down he would soon nod off to sleep. But perhaps there would be a film worth watching on television. He was thinking of asking Dorothea what she would feel about having the television on while she knitted, when Colin spoke to him.

“Andrew, you don’t think there’s anything of any interest whatever in all this stuff, do you?”

“Is that your feeling?” Andrew asked.

“I really never realised the old man had so much dullness in him,” Colin said. “He was quite amusing to talk to, you know. Of course, fearfully vain and given to telling you the same joke over and over again as if he’d only just thought of it, but I can’t see that there’s anything here that could alarm anyone at all.”

“That was my own reaction,” Andrew said.

“Then I needn’t read it—thank the Lord for that!” Dorothea exclaimed. “There aren’t any deadly secrets that I might fathom? I’ll do a job on it if you think I ought, but I’ll be so thankful if I needn’t.”

“I can’t see why you should if you don’t want to,” Colin said. “You agree with me, don’t you, Andrew?”

“Yes,” Andrew said. “He ought to have got Nicholas to write it up for him. He’d probably have made it very readable.”

“You know, he always rather despised Nicholas,” Dorothea said. “He used to show it by saying unnecessarily sarcastic things about him. Erica was the member of the family he really cared for. Of course she’s really very lovely and I believe she looks rather like her mother, who died years ago. Is there much about Lady Dearden in the memoirs?”

“Hardly anything at all,” Colin said, “but I don’t criticize him for that. It’s all pretty impersonal. Her death is only mentioned as one of the things which drove him on in his ambition in the law. And there’s very little about Nicholas and Erica. He speaks with satisfaction of Erica’s marriage to Henry, because Henry was ambitious like himself and successful. But he seems almost embarrassed by his having a son who’s made a career out of writing spy stories. And he never mentions Gwen at all.”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll go,” Jonathan said, and went quickly out of the room.

A moment later he returned with a visitor. It was Thomas Waterman.