LITMIR.BIZ

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place was made oppressive by walls of panelled oak. Almost the entire space was occupied by an enormously long and very old banqueting table. I didn’t need my father’s training in the trade to recognise its value. Nor did it require his skill to identify the ancient mechanism for a spit-roast within the equally massive but decrepit fireplace. It too was gloomy in that way that spoke of a livelier past long neglected.

      By the time I had proceeded through the turns of an impossibly dispiriting passage, the caller had given up and so had I, nearly. I couldn’t find a light switch and the array of paintings that belonged to the era when young gentlemen took grand tours had swiftly given way to the cold metal of old muskets and gin traps. Then I emerged into the loftier space of a broad Georgian stairwell and here was salvation in the form of an elegant table lamp. The moment it was lit, it felt as if I had stepped out of a museum and into a home. I had been beginning to feel thoroughly unwelcome in a place that preferred to be left alone to sleep and dream of the lingering weight of the son’s death. There was also, predictably enough, a growing sense of unease brought on by the memory of that unlocked door and the realisation that the man who had dropped Mr Winstone almost by my feet might have taken flight this way. The feeling was made worse when I checked the shadows in the passage behind me and realised that Freddy had not followed me here.

      That wonderful table lamp saved my ebbing confidence; saved everything. A small stack of letters had been collecting by its side for a matter of a fortnight at most. Here I was in a space where a white plasterwork ceiling hung high above at the level of the attic floor. Glass consumed the entire end wall of the house except for the black rectangle that was reserved for a wide front door. Dusky blues shot across the sky outside and the lamp sent rainbow hues racing after them across the chequerboard marble floor. This place was no monument to mortal decay or the lair of a dangerous man; more the tidy corner where the family ought to have been, only they had lately but temporarily stepped out for a while.

      The caller obliged me by trying again and drew me at last to trace the sound through the doorway that stood opposite in the narrow portion of wall at the foot of the stairs. If the entrance hall was welcoming, this room was glorious. A vast and elegant bay window faced full west over gardens and the lip of a drop that plunged away so suddenly into the valley below that it was almost powerful enough for vertigo. This view was at last the peace and glory of the countryside.

      I lifted the receiver from the thoroughly modern bakelite telephone, which stood on the expansive desk. I said, ‘Hello, um—’ I scanned about me frantically for something that would help me recall the family name, if I had ever been told it. The oval portrait of an attractive woman in dated clothing on the nearest bookcase was no help at all. With an effort I dredged up an image of the platter of post. ‘— Langton residence?’

      ‘At last.’ This was the operator. She sounded beyond exasperated as she hastily retreated from the conversation to allow the caller, male, to say tersely, ‘Hello? Hello?’

      ‘Good evening,’ I replied politely, repeating after a moment, ‘The Langton residence. May I help you?’

      ‘Where the devil have you been? I’ve been trying for days.’ My politeness was wasted. The man on the other end of the line was clearly intending to make absolutely no concessions for basic civility. He was also, as it turned out, unwilling to leave me room to actually answer him.

      I began, ‘Well actually I—’

      ‘Where’s Mrs Cooke? Why isn’t she there?’

      ‘I’m afraid I don’t know Mrs—’

      ‘What on earth do we pay you for if you don’t know where she is?’

      ‘You aren’t actually my employ—’

      ‘Hang on.’ The voice became muffled as a hand was placed over the mouthpiece. ‘I don’t know, sir. I’m trying to find out, only there’s some dim-witted—’

       ‘Sorry?’

      The voice came back into clarity. ‘Pardon?’

      ‘Ah,’ I said sweetly, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were speaking to me there.’ There was a momentary silence. Now that I had his attention, I resumed my idea of crisp orderliness. ‘This is the Langton residence, only I’m afraid no one is here who can take your call. I’m a neighbour, you see, or rather the guest of a neighbour and I only stepped in because the telephone was ringing again. It’s been going all afternoon and I’d have answered it sooner only then there was a bit of a crisis in the village and I’ve only just heard it again now. I thought I’d better come in to answer it anyway. Just in case it was urgent, you understand.’

      There was a pause when it dawned on me that I was explaining all this without having the faintest idea who this man was. Then it was proved that I hadn’t really been explaining anything as far as he was concerned. Just as I was about to ask this distant male his name, I heard him say on a faintly wearied note, ‘I’m not entirely sure I do understand, actually, no. Who did you say you were again?’

      In the background at his end I heard an older man’s voice adding something pettishly. I ignored it and said, ‘Emily Sutton. I’m staying with my cousin, Miss Jones. At least I’m staying at her house while she’s in h—’

      ‘Well, Emily, I’m not sure what you—’

      This time I interrupted him. Perhaps it was being sworn at, ridiculed and then called ‘Emily’ like some half-trained parlour maid that made me brave. I mean, anyone who was local knew my cousin as the daughter of the old steward, even if they had no reason to know me. And, besides, even at this time when war had done away with all sorts of obsolete social conventions, strangers could still expect to rank enough for a ‘Miss’.

      I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite catch who you are.’

      I was perhaps a shade hostile. It was slowly dawning on me that this man would want something from me. So when he told me he was Colonel Langton’s son I’m afraid I simply said impatiently, ‘You can’t be. He died.’

      I think I was imagining this might be some extension of the scene I’d just left by Mr Winstone’s house, or perhaps I was comparing this caller with the sort of chancer who occasionally tried to convince my father that the rare and valuable antique he’d just listed for sale was in fact their long-lost family heirloom and theirs by right. Any moment now, this man would lead me into making a fresh statement about the family just so that he could parrot it back to me later under the guise of genuine knowledge before he set about coercing me into popping some supposedly meaningless family trinket into the post for him.

      Only this man did none of it. After the smallest of hesitations, the caller replied calmly, ‘That was my younger brother. The Colonel’s other son.’

      And my cousin had feared that a lack of tact would cause misunderstandings.

      Through a stomach-gnawing fog of embarrassment, I heard him add, ‘This is Captain Richard Langton.’

      ‘That’s nice,’ I remarked faintly, while frantically trying to calculate how one addressed a captain. I finally tacked on as an afterthought a vaguely military, ‘Sir.’

      ‘Thank you. And now that we’ve cleared that up, perhaps we can return to the original question?’

      ‘Which was?’

      ‘Where is Mrs Cooke?’

      I was coiling and uncoiling the telephone wire about my fingers. I had to stop it before I twisted it into a permanent state of tangle. I told him, ‘I’m afraid I don’t actually know who Mrs Cooke is. The house looks shut up to me; there is no one about and the kitchen doesn’t look particularly well stocked, although admittedly I can only relate the impression I got on my dash through from the garden. As I’ve already said, I only answered the telephone because it’s been ringing all day—’

      ‘Yes, yes; and you only heard it ringing because you’re visiting your aunt Mrs Jane or something like that. Please don’t let’s go over all that again.’

      ‘My

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