"They've taken Anne," he announced laconically.
They nodded, unsurprised. "We were watching," said Phoebe. She gave Jonathan a comforting smile. "Don't worry, darling. I have more sympathy for the police than I do for her. They'll find that two hours in the ring with Mike Tyson would be preferable to half an hour in Anne's company when she's fighting her corner. She's phoned Bill, I hope."
"Yes." He went to the window and looked out on to the terrace. "Where's Lizzie?" he asked them.
"She's gone with Molly," said Diana. "They're searching the Lodge now."
"Is Fred there, too?"
"Fred's standing guard by the gates," said Phoebe. "It seems the press, have arrived in force. He's keeping them at bay."
"That reminds me. Anne said to take the phone off the hook."
Diana stood up and walked over to the mantelpiece, retrieving a dog-end from behind a clock there. She struck a match and lit the crumpled tip. "Already done." She squinted at the pathetic half-inch of tube and puffed inexpertly.
Phoebe exchanged a glance with Jonathan and laughed. "I'll go and get a decent one from Anne's room," she said, pushing herself out of the sofa. "She's bound to have some lying around and I do hate to see you suffer." She left the room.
Diana dropped the dog-end into the fireplace. "She's going to bring me one and I'm going to smoke it, and it'll be my second one today. Tomorrow it'll be three and so on till I'm hooked again. I must be mad. You're a doctor, Jon. Tell me not to."
He walked over, mollified by her sudden need of him, and put an arm round her shoulders. "Not a doctor yet and you wouldn't take any notice of me anyway. How does it go? 'A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.' Smoke, if it helps. I'd say stress is just as bad for you as nicotine." It was like cuddling an older Elizabeth, he thought. They were so alike: in their looks, in their constant search for reassurance, in the ironic twist they gave to everything. It explained so well why they didn't get on.
He squeezed her arm and let her go, moving back to the window. "Have all the police gone?"
"Except for the ones at the Lodge, I think. Poor Molly. It'll take her months to get over having her long Johns inspected by the fuzz. She'll probably wash them all several times before she wears them again."
"Lizzie will calm her ruffled feathers," he said.
She gave his back a speculative glance. "Do you see much of Elizabeth in London?" she asked him.
He didn't turn round. "On and off. We have lunch together sometimes. She works pretty anti-social hours, you know. She's in the casino till nearly dawn most nights." It was tragic, he thought, how much there was about a daughter you could never tell her mother. You couldn't describe the exquisite pleasure of waking at four in the morning to find her warm naked body rhythmically arousing yours. You couldn't explain that just to think about her made you horny or that one of the reasons you loved her was because, whenever you slipped your hand between, her thighs, she was wet with longing for you. Instead, you had to say you rarely saw her, pretend indifference, and the mother would never know of the fire her daughter could kindle. "I should think I see more of her down here," he said, turning round.
"She doesn't tell me anything about her life in London," said Diana with regret. "I assume she gets taken out but I don't know and I don't ask."
"Is that because you don't want to know or you think she wouldn't tell you?"
"Oh, because she wouldn't tell me, of course," she said. "She knows I don't want her to repeat my mistake and marry too young. If she is serious about someone, I'll be the last one to know, and by then it'll be too late for me to urge caution. My own fault entirely," she said. "I quite see that."
Phoebe came back and tossed an opened packet of cigarettes at Diana. "Would you believe they've left that child on guard in Anne's room? PC Williams, the one Molly's taken a shine to. He's had orders to stay there until further notice. Insisted on taking every one of these fags out to have a look at it." She crossed to the telephone and replaced the receiver. "I must have been out of my mind," she went on. "Jane's due in at Winchester some time this afternoon or evening. I told her to ring when she got there. We'll just have to put up with nuisance calls until we hear from her."
With a grimace, Jonathan opened the French windows and stepped out on to the terrace. "I'm going to take the dogs for a walk. I think I'll try and find Lizzie. See you later." He put his fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle before setting off down the garden.
Just then the telephone rang. Phoebe picked it up and listened for a moment. "No comment," she said, replacing the receiver. A few seconds later it began to ring again.
Benson and Hedges cavorted around him, waggling their bottoms and barking, as if a walk was a rarity. He struck out towards the woodland between the Grange and Grange Farm, flinging a stick every now and then to please the scampering dogs. His direction took him past the ice house and he watched with distaste as they made a beeline for it, only to whine and scratch with frustration outside the sealed door. He went on, pausing regularly to turn and scan the way he had come, whistling to the dogs to keep up.
When he reached the two-hundred-year-old oak, standing majestically in its clearing in the middle of the wood, he took off his jacket and sat down, relaxing his back into a natural concave in the wrinkled bark. He remained there for half an hour, listening, watching, until he was satisfied that the only witnesses to what he was about to do were dogs and wild creatures.
He stood up, removed the envelope from inside his folded jacket and popped it through a narrow slit into a hollow in the oak's great trunk where a branch had died and been discarded in infancy. Only Jane, who had swarmed with him through the leafy panoply when they were children, knew the secrets of the hidey-hole.
He whistled up the straying dogs and went back to the house.
"Can I talk to you, darling?"
Elizabeth, halfway up the stairs to her bedroom, looked reluctantly at her mother. "I suppose so." She had just got back from the Lodge and was tired and irritable. Molly's unspoken distress over the police search had upset her.
"We'll leave it if it's riot a good time."
Elizabeth came slowly down the stairs. "What's the matter?"
"Everything." Diana gave a hollow laugh. "What isn't the matter? I could answer that more easily."
Elizabeth followed her into their sitting-room. It was a room like Anne's, but with a very different character, less startling, more conventional, with a gold carpet and classic floral prints in tones of russet and gold at the windows and on the chairs. A dwindling sun fingered the colours with a mellow glow.
"Tell me," said Elizabeth as she watched Jonathan cross the terrace with Benson and Hedges and disappear through Phoebe's French windows.
Diana told her and, as the shadows lengthened, Elizabeth 's distress grew.
Inspector Walsh glanced at his watch and, with an inward sigh, shouldered open the door of Interview Room Number Two. It was nine fifteen. He looked sourly from Anne to her solicitor.
Bill Stanley was a great bear of a man with ungroomed ginger hair sprouting everywhere, even on his knuckles, and an air of shabbiness. From his card he was with a top London firm, no doubt earning a packet, so the black pinstriped suit, crumpled and frayed at the cuffs, was presumably some sort of statement-equality with the huddled masses, perhaps-although why he chose to wear it over a yellowed string vest, Walsh couldn't imagine. He made a mental note to check up on him. In thirty years of rubbing shoulders with the legal profession, he had never seen the like of B.R. Stanley, LLB. The card was probably a forgery.