“Were you having an intimate relationship with Dr. Paul?” I had to ask.

He looked offended. “No, sir,” he said, wagging his head hard.

“What do you think her problem was?”

“I don’t know.” He let out a pent-up breath. “It had something to do with her family, I think. Her mother and her aunt. I’d been helping with some organisation for her. She’s blind, did you know that?” I nodded. I knew. “I’d helped to organise photos for her mother’s biography. She was distressed by the result. I-honestly, sir, I don’t know what was in her mind.”

“Can you guess?” I persisted. I’ve found that people who don’t “know” anything for certain often have interesting suppositions that come out when they’re given permission to muse.

He sat up straighter, as if I had called his name in class and he was ready to deliver the right answer. “Well. I’ve been thinking about it. I think maybe her mother isn’t who she thought she was. She said her mother was Linda Paul, the writer. Linda Paul wrote something a long time ago. And then she gave it all up, to raise Gretchen. But I think… I think that’s what she told Gretchen but that that’s not who she really was.”

“Really.” That was strange. “So… who was she?”

“The nanny. I think. Except there wouldn’t have been a nanny at all if the nanny was the mother… Look. There were three women, all right? Linda Paul, her sister Ginny, and this other woman. Gretchen calls her the nanny. They were in Brussels together, for a World’s Fair. It was one of the last things Gretchen saw.

“I think the woman she calls the nanny was her real mother. A friend of Linda Paul, maybe a hanger-on. Maybe Linda said she couldn’t stay around them anymore, with the baby. She was cut off, and made up this story to herself about how she was Linda Paul, and gave up that life. Fantasised that she was the one making choices, not the one being pushed out. That would make sense of the photos.”

I made him repeat much of that, and drew a diagram in my notebook. He leaned over it to check my work, ever the good little helper. I shut it so fast that the pages fluttered against his chin. “That’s not your place, Nick.”

He swallowed. “No, sir.”

I rapped the closed notebook against the table. “What were you doing on this road?” I demanded. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”

He shook his head again. He opened his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I was following the A to Z. We’d mapped out a route, and I followed signs… We were in Haslingfield. The High Street. Lesley had fallen asleep and I couldn’t well look at the map and drive…”

“Why didn’t you just stop?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I’m not very good with the clutch,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to stop and start.” He shifted position. “I was following signs and all the names were running together in my mind. One said ‘ Cantelupe Road.’ I knew that name. So I took it. I figured it for part of the directions. It’s not a name you’d think to follow if you hadn’t planned to, is it? I recognised it, so I took it.”

I leaned back and thought about how we’d just come. “It’s not the way to Cambridge.” I let the accusation remain implicit. He’s a clever boy. He knew what I meant.

“I’ve never been here in my life, sir. I didn’t expect to be here, I didn’t know Gretchen would be here. Honestly, sir…”

“But you knew the name.”

“I knew the name of the street. I don’t know from where. I thought it was part of the route we’d looked at. I don’t know where else…” He stopped himself. He slapped his hand on the table. “It was the box. At Gretchen’s house. The box of photographs. It was an old packing box. Something had come shipped in it. The address label on top had been for where Gretchen lived years ago. In Brighton. Underneath that was the address for the place the box had been first. That was Cantelupe. Here, in Haslingfield. I noticed it. I suppose it stuck in my head…”

“And this box is in Dr. Paul’s house?”

“No… not anymore. She asked me to destroy it. I threw it in the pond behind my house. My family’s house.”

I nodded, but not as if I necessarily believed or approved. I didn’t trust any of this.

“The constable tells me you were driving without a licence,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you claim you didn’t see her at all? You-”

“I felt her, sir,” he said. He shook his head again. “I felt her under the car. I’d been looking down at the map. I didn’t see anything until I got out of the car and looked at her face.”

He looked like he was going to be sick. It was time to get him home. I could talk to him again after the pathologist’s report. Frohmann offered to help him walk to the car, but he insisted on hobbling. He said to his friend, “I apologise for taking advantage of your hospitality in this way.”

She said, “I won’t intrude on your homecoming, but call if there’s anything I can do.”

“I understand. Tomorrow…”

“Nick. I think your family would prefer I didn’t.”

“I don’t care what they-”

She laid her hand on his cheek. He held perfectly still.

“I’ll be in touch,” she promised.

He glowered. His hands made tight fists for a moment, then he opened them up and slapped his thighs.

Interesting.

She went into the lounge to call a taxi, as we had to keep her car. He watched her. If eyeballs were hands it would have been indecent.

Nick spun back to me. “May I please go home now?” he said.

I sent Frohmann to take him to her car, and wait for me. I wouldn’t be long with the other woman. She looked impatient to get rid of us.

“And you are…?” I asked.

She spelled her name for me: “Melisma Cantor. An M instead of a second S. It isn’t Melissa. It’s like when you slide around on a note of music, dress it up, right? Melisma.”

I wrote down her name, correctly spelled. I omitted the explanation.

All the time I’d been talking with Nick, she’d been putting away kitchen things from a cardboard box. Coffee. Tea towels. Dish soap, but it wasn’t new. It was half-full. She looked to be in her late twenties.

“I got here a couple hours ago. Susan wasn’t home. I’m her stepdaughter.”

“Susan is the owner here?”

“Yes.”

“Was anything out of the ordinary when you arrived?”

“No. No.”

“Did you hear the accident?”

“I heard-something. It must have been the accident. They rang the bell not long after. They asked me to call the police.”

“Had you ever seen them before?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know what Dr. Paul was doing here?”

She shook her head.

“Did you know she was here?”

She bowed her head, and shook it, staring at the tabletop.

“Is something wrong, Ms. Cantor?” She repeated no. “Where’s your stepmother?” She shrugged.

“I don’t know. She’s an adult, you know. She doesn’t always stay here every night.”

“Do you?”

She shook her head, again. “I broke up with my boyfriend, and I’ll be staying here for a little while. I just brought all my stuff from his place.” She held up the half-used Fairy liquid. “I was the only one who washed the fucking dishes. Sorry,” she quickly added. Suddenly she looked as if she’d been left out in the rain. Her long hair appeared limp, her face stretched down. It was the streak of a headlamp through the front window changing the shadows. In a moment she was restored.

“Have you ever seen Dr. Paul with your stepmother before?”

“I don’t know the name.”

All right. “Where’s your father?”

“He’s in Bangalore. He works there. They’re divorced. Look, I’m really tired. I’d like to go to bed.”

I got the father’s name and address in India, and made a move to the cottage door. I fiddled with the handle. It had a proper lock. “Do you have a key, Ms. Cantor?”

“Yes, of course. We used to live here. When they were married.”

“Did your stepmother-what’s her full name, please? Susan…”

“Susan Madison.”