To the hilt [en]

Chris wore white frilled shirt-cuffs over the thick wrists, and a small discreet white frill round his neck. He carried a small black handbag. Tobias attempted to chat him up. They could both hardly speak for laughing. 'This is a funeral, for God's sake,' I told them.

Keith Robbiston dashed in, glancing at his watch. He kissed my mother's cheek and murmured comfort quietly into her ear, so that she smiled at him gratefully. He shook my hand, nodding, and made a sort of sketchy bow to Patsy, who looked forbidding, as if Ivan's death were the doctor's fault. She had said, in fact, during the past few days, that clearly Ivan should have stayed in the Clinic and been shielded from stress, though she hadn't said it when he was alive, and had herself generated a good deal of the stress.

Keith Robbiston shook hands with Oliver Grantchester, their mutual disregard stiff in their spines, then, duty done, the doctor gave my mother another cheek-to-cheek fondness and hurried away.

I wandered round the room, thanking people for coming, carrying a glass of champagne that I didn't feel like drinking.

The champagne was good. So were the canape snacks. Patsy had ordered the best.

There was a woman standing apart in a far corner of the room, talking to no one and looking a little lost, so I drifted that way to draw her in.

'You have no champagne,' I said.

'It's all right.'

She was undemanding and not at home among Ivan's friends. She wore a tweed skirt, a shiny pale blue blouse, a brown cardigan, flat shoes and pearls. Sixty, or thereabouts.

'Take my champagne,' I said, holding it out to her. 'I haven't drunk any. I'll get some more.'

'Oh no, I couldn't.' She took the glass, though, and sipped, eyeing me over the rim.

'I'm Lady Westering's son,' I said.

'Yes, I know. I've seen you coming and going.' Then, seeing my surprise, added, 'I live next door. I'm the caretaker there, you see. I've just popped in to pay my respects to Sir Ivan. Lady Westering invited me. Always so kind to me, both of them. Really nice people.'

'Yes.'

'I'm ever so sorry Sir Ivan died. Did he find what he was looking for?'

'Er…' I said. 'What was he looking for?'

'Ever so distressed he was, poor man.'

'Was he?' I asked, only half interested. 'When was that?'

'Why, the night he died, of course.'

She sensed in me the sudden acute sharpening of attention and began to look nervous.

'It's all right, Mrs… er…' I assured her, calming us both. 'I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know your name.'

'Hall. Connie Hall.'

'Mrs Hall. Please do tell me about the night Sir Ivan died.'

'I was walking my little dog, you see, same as I always do before going to bed.'

'Yes, of course,' I said, nodding.

Reassured, she went on, 'When I got back to the house - next door, that is, of course - there was Sir Ivan down in the road, and in his pyjamas and dressing-gown poor man, and frantic, there's no other word for it. Frantic.''

'Mrs Hall,' I said intensely, 'what was he frantic about?"

She began to lose her nervousness and to enjoy telling me her tale.

'It was ever so unlike him, you see. I mean, I never thought of him in pyjamas like everyone else, and I didn't recognise him at first and told him pretty sharply to take himself off and leave the black plastic rubbish bags alone, because he was scrabbling about in them, and it wasn't until he turned and spoke to me that I realised who he was, and he said, "Oh, Mrs Hall, when do they collect the rubbish?" I mean, it was after ten o'clock at night! So I told him they collected the bags every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning - we have a good service round here, this being a wealthy sort of place and not a once-a-week-if-you're-lucky back street - and he was tearing open some of the bags with his fingernails… and looking inside them… he was ever so… upset… and I asked him if I could help him, and… and…'

Connie Hall stopped, herself distressed at the memory, and emptied her glass.

I pivoted one-eighty degrees, aware of Chris close behind me, and fielded his full glass of bubbles.

'Hey!' he objected.

'Get some more.'

I turned back to Connie Hall and exchanged Chris's glass for the empty one she held.

'You'll get me tiddly,' she said.

'What was Sir Ivan looking for in the black bags?' I asked. 'Did he tell you?'

'I mean,' she said, 'it didn't make sense, him emptying some of the bags like that.'

I waited, smiling vaguely, while she sipped.

'He said he was looking for an empty box,' she frowned. 'I asked him what empty box and he said Lois must have thrown it away. He was so fearfully upset…"

'What sort of box?'

'I think he said a tissue-box. I think that's what he said. But why should anyone worry so much about an empty tissue-box?'

Dear God, I thought: what had been written on it?

I said, 'Have you told my mother about this?'

'No.' She shook her grey-haired head. 'I didn't want to upset her. Sir Ivan left all the rubbish just lying there and went in through his front door, which was open, of course, and said he would look in the kitchen, and I said goodnight to him and went in myself with my little dog, and it was a terrible shock the next day when I heard Sir Ivan had died.'

'It must have been… I suppose Sir Ivan didn't tell you why he was looking for the box?'

'No, but he was sort of talking to himself. I think it was something about Lois always moving things.'

'Nothing else?'

'No, poor man. He can't have been himself, can he, poor Sir Ivan, to be scrabbling about in a rubbish bag in his nightclothes?'

'Well… Thank you for telling me, Mrs Hall. Would you like some smoked salmon?'

I collected a plate of goodies for her and found her another Park Crescent neighbour to talk to, but later on I saw her talking to Patsy, and from her gestures and her pleasure in the drama I suspected she was telling her the same story, and felt a deep thrust of unease, but wasn't quite sure why.

Surtees stood beside Patsy, listening, and when he saw me looking at him he gave me a stare of such high-voltage malevolence that Chris said 'Jeeze' into my ear.

Maddened and murderous, I thought. It wasn't the restrained and sensible who sought to kill. Surtees might, to my mind, be a fool, but I felt him also to be as unstable and volatile as hydrogen.

Himself also fielded Surtees's raw exhibition of an obsessional hatred fast ballooning past Patsy's enduring antagonism and, startled, asked, 'Whatever did you do to deserve that?'

'Probably didn't care being shut in the box in Emily's yard.'

'In retrospect, a bad move.'

'Mm.' I shrugged. 'It can't be helped.'

'Introduce me to your friend,' my uncle said, looking at Chris.

'Oh… er… Lord Kinloch,' I said to Chris, and to my uncle, 'Christina.'

Himself said, 'How do you do?'

Chris shook his head, silently, though shooting a frilled cuff with panache. My uncle looked at me quizzically. I smiled back without explanation. Chris stuck to my back.

The room gradually cleared until only those close to Ivan and his affairs were left. There was to be no formal reading of his Will as its general provisions had been much discussed and were well-known - the brewery to Patsy, everything else to my mother for her lifetime, reverting to Patsy on her death. For all her fears, Ivan had never swerved from his promises to his daughter, though all she displayed to me was triumph, not apology.