Donald's life had been so disrupted when Malcolm had ousted Vivien, Donald always told us, that he had never been able to decide properly on a career. It couldn't have been easy, I knew, to survive such an upheaval, but Donald had only been nine at the time, a bit early for life decisions. In any event, as an adult he had drifted from job to job in hotels, coming to harbour at length as secretary of a prestigious golf club near Henley-on-Thames, a post which I gathered had proved ultimately satisfactory in social standing, which was very important to his self-esteem.

I didn't either like or dislike Donald particularly. He was eleven years older than I was. He was there.

"Everyone insists you stop Malcolm squandering the family money," he said, predictably.

"It's HIS money, not the family's," I said.

"What?" Donald found the idea ridiculous. "What you've got to do is explain that he owes it to us to keep the family fortune intact until we inherit it. Unfortunately we know he won't listen to any of us except you, and now that you appear to have made up your quarrel with him, you are elected to be our spokesman. Joyce thinks we have to convince you first of the need to stop Malcolm, but I told her it was ridiculous. You don't need convincing, you want to be well off one day just the same as the rest of us, of course you do, it's only natural."

I was saved from both soul-searching and untrue disclaimers by the arrival of Helen, Donald's wife, who had apparently been buying a race card

"We're not staying," Donald said disapprovingly, eyeing it.

She gave him a vague smile. "You never know," she said.

Beautiful and brainless, Malcolm had said of he rand perhaps he was right. Tall and thin, she moved with natural Style and made cheap clothes look expensive: I knew they were cheap because she had a habit of saying where they'd come from and how much she'd paid for them, inviting admiration of her thriftiness. Donald always tried to shut her up.

"Do tell us where to watch the races from," she said.

"We're not here for that," Donald said.

"No, dear, we're here because we need money now that the boys have started at Eton."

"No, dear," Donald said sharply.

"But you know we can't afford…"

"Do be quiet, dear," Donald said.

" Eton costs a bomb," I said mildly, knowing that Donald's income would hardly stretch to one son there, let alone two. Donald had twin boys, which seemed to run in the family.

"Of course it does," Helen said, "but Donald puts such store by it. 'My sons are at Eton,' that sort of thing. Gives him standing with the people he deals with in the golf club."

"Helen, dear, do be quiet." Donald's embarrassment showed, but she was undoubtedly right.

"We thought Donald might have inherited before the boys reached thirteen," she said intensely. "As he hasn't, we're borrowing every penny we can to pay the fees, the same as we borrowed for the prep school and a lot of other things. But we've borrowed against Donald's expectations… so you see it's essential for us that there really is plenty to inherit, as there are so many people to share it with. We'll be literally bankrupt if Malcolm throws too much away… and I don't think Donald could face it."

I opened my mouth to answer her but no sound came out. I felt as if I'd been thrust into a farce over which I had no control. Walking purposefully to join us came Serena, Ferdinand and Debs.

CHAPTER SIX

"Stay right here," I said to all of them. "I have to go into the weighing-room to deal with a technicality. Stay right here until I come out."

They nodded with various frowns, and I dived into privacy in a desperate search for a sheet of paper and an envelope.

I wrote to Malcolm:

Half the family have turned up here, sent by Joyce. For God's sake stay where you are, keep out of sight and wait until I come to fetch you.

I stuck the note into the envelope, wrote Malcolm's name on the outside, and sought out an official who had enough rank to send someone to deliver it.

"My father is lunching in the Directors' dining-room," I said. "And it's essential that he gets this note immediately."

The official was obliging. He was going up to the Stewards' room anyway, he said, and he would take it himself. With gratitude and only a minor lessening of despair – because it would be just like Malcolm to come down contrarily to confront the whole bunch – I went out again into the sunlight and found the five of them still faithfully waiting exactly where I'd left them.

"I say," Debs said, half mocking, "you do look dashing in all that kit."

Donald looked at her in surprise, and I had a vivid impression of his saying soon in his golf club, "My brother, the amateur jockey…", knowing that if I'd been a professional he would have hushed it up if he could. A real snob, Donald: but there were worse sins.

Debs, Ferdinand's second wife, had come to the races in a black leather coat belted at the waist, with shoulder-length blond hair above and long black boots below. Her eyelids were purple, like her fingernails. The innocence I'd photographed in her a year ago was in danger of disappearing.

Ferdinand, shorter than Debs and more like Malcolm than ever, appeared to be in his usual indecision over whether I was to be loved or hated.

I smiled at him cheerfully and asked what sort of a journey he'd had.

"A lot of traffic," he said lamely.

"We didn't come here to talk about traffic,"Serena said forbiddingly. "We want to know where Daddy is."

Malcolm's little Serena, now taller than he, was dressed that day in royal blue with white frills at neck and wrists, a white woollen hat with a pompom on top covering her cap of fair hair. She looked a leggy sixteen, not ten years older. Her age showed only in the coldness of her manner towards me, which gave no sign of thawing.

In her high-pitched, girlish voice she said, "We want him to settle very substantial sums on us all right now. Then he can go to blazes with the rest."

I blinked. "Who are you quoting?" I asked.

"Myself," she said loftily, and then more probably added, "Mummy too. And Gervase."

It had Gervase's thug gish style stamped all over it.

Donald and Helen looked distinctly interested in the proposal. Ferdinand and Debs had of course heard it before.

"Gervase thinks it's the best solution," Ferdinand said, nodding.

I doubted very much that Malcolm would agree, but said only,"I'll pass on your message next time he gets in touch with me."

"But Joyce is sure you know where he is," Donald objected.

"Not exactly," I said. "Do you know that Lucy and Edwin are here too?"

They were satisfactorily diverted, looking over their shoulders to see if they could spot them in the growing crowds.

"Didn't Joyce tell you she was sending so many of you here?" I asked generally, and it was Ferdinand, sideways, his face turned away, who answered.

"She told Serena to come here. She told Serena to tell me, which she did, so we came together. I didn't know about Donald and Helen or Lucy and Edwin. I expect she wanted to embarrass you."

His eyes swivelled momentarily to my face, wanting to see my reaction. I don't suppose my face showed any. Joyce might call me "darling" with regularity but could be woundingly unkind at the same time, and I'd had a lifetime to grow armour.

Ferdinand happened to be standing next to me. I said on impulse into his ear, "Ferdinand, who killed Moira?"

He stopped looking for Lucy and Edwin and transferred his attention abruptly and wholly to me. I could see calculations going on in the pause before he answered, but I had no decoder for his thoughts. He was the most naturally congenial to me of all my brothers, yet the others were open books compared with him. He was secretive, as perhaps I was myself. He had wanted to build his own kitchen-wall hidey-hole when I'd built mine, only Malcolm had said we must share, that one was enough. Ferdinand had sulked and shunned me for a while, and smirked at Gervase's dead rats. I wondered to what extent people remained the same as they'd been when very young: whether it was safe to assume they hadn't basically changed, to believe that if one could peel back the layers of living one would come to the known child. I wanted Ferdinand to be as I had known him at ten, eleven, twelve – a boy dedicated to riding a bicycle while standing on his head on the saddle – and not in a million years a murderer.