Moreland and I both laughed a lot, but it was a horrible moment. Maclintick had spoken with that strange, unearthly dignity that a drunk man can suddenly assume. We left him making his way unsteadily upstairs. By a miracle there was a taxi at the other end of the street.

‘I hope Maclintick will be all right,’ said Moreland, as we drove away.

‘He is in rather a mess.’

‘I am in a mess myself,’ Moreland said. ‘You probably know about that. I won’t bore you with the complications of my own life. I hope Matty will not be in too much of a fret when I get there. What can she be thinking of, forgetting her key? Something Freudian, I suppose. I am glad we went to see Maclintick. What did you think about him?’

‘I thought he was in a bad way.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Maclintick is in a bad way,’ said Moreland. ‘It is no good pretending he isn’t. I don’t know where it will end, I don’t know where anything will end. It was strange Maclintick bringing up Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant.’

‘Dragging up your past.’

‘Barnby went straight to the point,’ said Moreland. ‘I was struck by that. One ought to make decisions where women are concerned.’

‘What are your plans-roughly?’

‘I have none, as usual. You are already familiar with my doctrine that every man should have three wives. I accept the verdict that under the existing social order such an arrangement is not viable. That is why so many men are in such a quandary.’

We drove on to where I lived. Moreland continued in the taxi on his way to find Matilda. Isobel was asleep. She woke up at one moment and asked: ‘Did you hear anything interesting?’ I told her, ‘No’. She went to sleep again. I went to sleep for an hour or two, then woke up with a start, and lay there thinking how grim the visit to Maclintick had been; not only grim, but curiously out of focus; a pocket in time; an evening that pertained in character to life some years before. Marriage reduced in number interludes of that kind. They belonged by their nature to an earlier period: the days of the Mortimer and Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant. Maclintick’s situation was infinitely depressing; yet people found their way out of depressing situations. Nothing was more surprising than man’s capacity for survival. Before one could look round, Maclintick would be in a better job, married to a more tolerable wife. All the same, I felt doubtful about that happening. Thinking uneasy thoughts, I fell once more into a restless, disenchanted sleep.

The atmosphere of doom that hung over Maclintick’s house, indeed over the whole quarter in which he lived – or so it seemed the night Moreland and I had called on him – proved categorical enough. Two or three days later a paragraph appeared in the evening paper stating that Maclintick’s body had been found ‘in a gas-filled room’: no doubt the room in which he worked designated by his wife as the ‘only one where you can keep warm in the house’. The escape of gas had been noticed; the police broke in. The paper described Maclintick as a ‘writer on musical subjects’. As with the passing of St John Clarke, new disturbing developments of the European situation prevented Maclintick’s case from gaining the attention that a music critic’s suicide might attract in more peaceful times. The news was horrifying, yet there was no shock about it. It was cold, slow-motion horror, the shaping of a story recognisably unfinished. I tried to get in touch with Moreland. There was no reply to the telephone. The Morelands’ flat seemed always empty. Then one day when I tried again, Matilda answered. She began talking about Moreland at once.

‘The poor boy has been having an awful time about Maclintick,’ she said. ‘You know how he hates even the mildest business talks. Now he is landed with inquests and goodness knows what.’

Matilda had always got on well with Maclintick. He was one of those uncomfortably poised men whom she handled to perfection. There was every reason to suppose that Maclintick’s death would distress her. At the same time, I was immediately aware from the sound of her voice on the line that she was pleased about something; the fact of Maclintick’s suicide had eased her life for one reason or another. We talked for a time about Maclintick and his affairs.

‘Poor old Carolo,’ she said.

‘You think he is in for it?’

‘He has caught something this time.’

‘And your play?’

‘Coming on soon. I think it will be a success.’

I arranged to see Moreland. The meeting took place a day or two later. He looked as if he had been having a disagreeable time. I asked about Maclintick.

‘Gossage and I had to do all the clearing up,’ Moreland said. ‘It was pretty good hell.’

‘Why you two?’

‘There did not seem to be anyone else. I can’t tell you what we were let in for. It was an awful thing to happen. Of course, one saw it coming. Nothing more certain. That didn’t make it any better. Maclintick was a great friend of mine in a way. He could be tiresome. He had some very good points too. It was nice of him not to have done himself in, for example, the night we left him there. That would have been even more awkward.’

‘It certainly would.’

‘I’ve no reason to suppose he didn’t feel just as much like taking the jump then as three days later.’

‘Do you remember when he talked of suicide in Casanova’s?’

‘Suicide was always one of Maclintick’s favourite subjects.

‘It was?’

‘Of course.’

‘He said then that he gave himself five years.’

‘He lasted about eight or nine. Gossage has been very good about sorting the musical stuff. There is a mass of it to deal with.’

‘Any good?’

Moreland shook his head.

‘The smell in the house was appalling,’ he said. ‘Absolutely frightful. Gossage had to go and stand in the street for a time to recover.’

‘Anything been heard of Mrs Maclintick?’

‘I had a line from her asking me to deal with certain things. I think Carolo wants to keep out of it as much as possible for professional reasons – rather naturally.’

‘Do you think Maclintick just could not get on without that woman?’

‘Maclintick always had his fair share of melancholia, quite apart from anything brought on by marriage or the lack of it.’

‘But his wife clearing out brought matters to a head?’

‘Possibly. It must be appalling to commit suicide, even though one sometimes feels a trifle like it. Anyway, the whole Maclintick business has made certain things clearer to me.’

‘As for example?’

‘Do you remember when we used to talk about the Ghost Railway and say how like everyday life it was – or at least one’s own everyday life?’

‘You mean rushing downhill in total darkness and crashing through closed doors?’

‘Yes – and the body lying across the line. The Maclintick affair has reminded me of the disagreeable possibilities of the world one inhabits – the fact that the fewer persons one involves in it the better.’

‘How do you mean? However you live there are always elements of that sort.’

‘I know, but you get familiar with the material you yourself have to cope with. You may have heard that I have been somewhat entangled with a person not far removed from your own family circle.’

‘Rumours percolate.’

‘So I supposed.’

‘But you would be surprised to learn my own ignorance of detail.’

‘Glad to hear it. Need I say more? You must surely appreciate the contrast between the sort of thing I have been engaged upon in connexion with poor old Maclintick’s mortal remains during the last few days, and the kind of atmosphere one prefers when attempting to conduct an idyllic love affair.’

‘I can see that.’

‘I do not suggest my daily routine comes within several million light-years of an idyll – but it normally rises a few degrees above what life has been recently.’

I began to understand the reason why Matilda had sounded relieved when we had spoken on the telephone a day or two before.