“When would that have happened, would you suppose?”

“Sometime after I knew him, which was in 1951, I think,” Verity added and hoped it sounded casual.

“How long had Mrs. Foster known him, do you imagine?”

“Not — very long. She met him first at that same dinner-party. But,” said Verity quickly, “she’d been in the habit of going to Greengages for several years.”

“Whereas he only took over the practise last April,” he said casually. “Do you like him? Nice sort of chap?”

“As I said I’ve only met him that once.”

“But you knew him before?”

“It was — so very long ago.”

“I don’t think you liked him very much,” he murmured as if to himself. “Or perhaps — but it doesn’t matter.”

“Mr. Alleyn,” Verity said loudly and, to her chagrin, in an unsteady voice. “I know what was in the Will.”

“Yes, I thought you must.”

“And perhaps I’d better just say it — the Will — might have happened at any time in the past if Sybil had been thoroughly upset. On the rebound from a row, she could have left anything to anyone who was in favour at the time.”

“But did she to your knowledge ever do this in the past?”

“Perhaps she never had the same provocation in the past.”

“Or was not sufficiently attracted?”

“Oh,” said Verity, “she took fancies. Look at this whacking great legacy to Bruce.”

“Bruce? Oh, yes. The gardener. She thought a lot of him, I suppose? A faithful and tried old retainer? Was that it?”

“He’d been with her about six months and he’s middle-aged and rather like a resurrection from the more dubious pages of J. M. Barrie but Syb thought him the answer to her prayers.”

“As far as the garden was concerned?”

“Yes. He does my garden, too.”

“It’s enchanting. Do you dote on him, too?”

“No. But I must say I like him better than I did. He took trouble over Syb. He visited her once a week with flowers and I don’t think he was sucking up. I just think he puts on a bit of an act like a guide doing his sob-stuff over Mary Queen of Scots in Edinburgh Castle.”

“I’ve never heard a guide doing sob-stuff in Edinburgh Castle.

“They drool. When they’re not having a go at William and Mary, they get closer and closer to you and the tears seem to come into their eyes and they drool about Mary Queen of Scots. I may have been unlucky, of course. Bruce is positively taciturn in comparison. He overdoes the nature-lover bit but only perhaps because his employers encourage it. He is, in fact, a dedicated gardener.”

“And he visited Mrs. Foster at Greengages?”

“He was there that afternoon.”

“While you were there?”

Verity explained how Bruce and she had encountered in the grounds; and how she’d told him Sybil wouldn’t be able to see him then and how Prunella had suggested later on that he left his lilies at the desk.

“So he did just that?”

“I think so. I suppose they both went back by the next bus.”

“Both?”

“I’d forgotten Charmless Claude.”

“Did you say ‘Charmless’?”

“He’s Syb’s ghastly stepson.”

Verity explained Claude but avoided any reference to his more dubious activities, merely presenting him as a spineless drifter. She kept telling herself she ought to be on her guard with this atypical policeman in whose company she felt so inappropriately conversational. At the drop of a hat, she thought, she’d find herself actually talking about that episode of the past that she had never confided to anyone and which still persisted so rawly in her memory.

She pulled herself together. He had asked her if Claude was the son of Sybil’s second husband.

“No, of her first husband, Maurice Carter. She married him when she was seventeen. He was a very young widower. His first wife died in childbirth — leaving Claude, who was brought up by his grandparents. They didn’t like him very much, I’m afraid. Perhaps he might have turned out better if they had, but there it is. And then Maurice married Syb, who was in the WRENS. She was on duty somewhere in Scotland when he got an unexpected leave. He came down here to Quintern — Quintern Place is her house, you know — and tried to ring her up but couldn’t get through so he wrote a note. While he was doing this he was recalled urgently to London. The troop-train he caught was bombed and he was killed. She found the note afterwards. That’s a sad story, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Was this stepson, Claude, provided for?”

“Very well provided for, really. His father wasn’t an enormously rich man but he left a trust fund that paid for Claude’s upbringing. It still would be a reasonable standby if he didn’t contrive to lose it, as fast as it comes in. Of course,” Verity said more to herself than to Alleyn, “it’d have been different if the stamp had turned up.”

“Did you say ‘stamp’?”

“The Black Alexander. Maurice Carter inherited it. It was a pre-revolution Russian stamp that was withdrawn on the day it was issued because of a rather horrid little black flaw that looked like a bullet-hole in the Czar’s forehead. Apparently there was only the one specimen known to be in existence and so this one was worth some absolutely fabulous amount of money. Maurice’s own collection was medium-valuable and it went to Claude, who sold it, but the Black Alexander couldn’t be found. He was known to have taken it out of his bank the day before he died. They searched and searched but with no luck and it’s generally thought he must have had it on him when he was killed. It was a direct hit. It was bad luck for Claude about the stamp.”

“Where is Claude now?”

Verity said uncomfortably that he had been staying at Quintern but she didn’t know if he was still there.

“I see. Tell me: when did Mrs. Foster remarry?”

“In — when was it? In 1955. A large expensive stockbroker who adored her. He had a heart condition and died of it in 1964. You know,” Verity said suddenly, “when one tells the whole story, bit by bit, it turns almost into a classic tragedy, and yet, somehow one can’t see poor old Syb as a tragic figure. Except when one remembers the look.”

“The look that was spoken of at the inquest?”

“Yes. It would have been quite frightful if she, of all people, had suffered that disease.”

After a longish pause Verity said: “When will the inquest be reopened?”

“Quite soon. Probably early next week. I don’t think you will be called again. You’ve very helpful.”

“In what way? No, don’t tell me,” said Verity. “I–I don’t think I want to know. I don’t think I want to be helpful.”

“Nobody loves a policeman,” he said cheerfully and stood up. So did Verity. She was a tall woman but he towered over her.

He said: “I think this business has upset you more than you realize. Will you mind if I give you what must sound like a professionally motivated word of advice? If it turns out that you’re acquainted with some episode or some piece of behaviour, perhaps quite a long way back in time, that might throw a little light on — say on the character of one or the other of the people we have discussed — don’t withhold it. You never know. By doing so you might be doing a disservice to a friend.”

“We’re back to the Will again. Aren’t we?”

“Oh, that? Yes. In a sense we are.”

“You think she may have been influenced? Or that in some way it might be a cheat? Is that it?”

“The possibility must be looked at when the terms of a Will are extravagant and totally unexpected and the Will itself is made so short a time before the death of the testator.”

“But that’s not all? Is it? You’re not here just because Syb made a silly Will. You’re here because she died. You think it wasn’t suicide. Don’t you?”

He waited so long and looked so kindly at her that she was answered before he spoke.

“I’m afraid that’s it,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”

Again he waited, expecting, perhaps, that she might ask more questions or break down but she contrived, as she put it to herself, to keep up appearances. She supposed she must have gone white because she found he had put her back in her chair. He went away and returned with a glass of water.