To the hilt [en]

She told me what I wanted to know, however, without my asking.

'You're bursting to know if I saw what Ivan wrote on that terrible box of tissues. Do you really think he was frantic to find it? I can't bear it, Alexander, I would have looked for the box, if he'd told me. But we'd kissed goodnight… he didn't say anything then about the box. I'm certain it wasn't in his mind. He'd been so much better… calmer… saying he relied on your strength… we were truly happy that evening…'

'Yes.'

'Connie Hall didn't say anything about Ivan being in the street, not until today.'

'She would have caused you pain if she had.'

She drank the tea and said slowly, reluctantly, 'Whatever was written on the box of tissues… I wrote it.'

'My dearest Ma…'

'But I don't remember what it was. I haven't given it a thought. I wish I'd known…'

The cup rattled in its saucer. I took them from her and kneeled beside her.

'I wish he was here' she said.

I waited through the inconsolable bout of grief. I knew, after four days, that it would sweep through her like a physical disturbance, making her tremble, and then would subside back into a general state of misery.

'Someone telephoned - it was a woman,' she said, 'and she wanted to speak to Ivan, and he was in the bathroom or something, and I said he would phone her back, and you know how there was never a notepad beside the phone, so I wrote what she said on the back of the box, like Ivan does, and I told him… but…' She stopped, trying to remember, and shook her head. 'I didn't think it was important.'

'It probably wasn't,' I said.

'But if he went down to the street to find it…'

'Well… when did the woman phone? What time of day?'

She thought. 'She phoned in the morning, when Ivan was dressing. He did phone her back, but she was out, I think. There was no reply.'

'And Lois was cleaning?'

'Yes. She always comes on Saturday mornings, just to tidy up.' She drank her tea, thinking. 'All I wrote on the box was the woman's phone number.'

'And you don't know who she was?'

She frowned. 'I remember that she wouldn't say.' A few moments passed, then she exclaimed, 'She said it was something to do with Leicestershire.'

'Leicestershire?'

'I think so.'

Leicestershire to me at that time meant Norman Quorn, and anything to do with Norman Quorn would have caught Ivan's attention.

I said slowly, 'Do you think it could possibly have been Norman Quorn's sister, that we met in Leicestershire, at that mortuary?'

'That poor woman! She wouldn't stop crying.'

She had just seen something pretty frightful, I thought. Enough to make me feel sick. 'Could it have been her?'

'I don't know.'

'Do you by any chance remember her name?'

My mother looked blank. 'No, I don't.'

I couldn't remember having heard it at all, though I suppose I must have been told. Perhaps, I speculated, it had been only when he was going to bed that Ivan remembered that he hadn't phoned back again to Norman Quorn's sister, and had then discovered that he had lost her phone number, and had gone to look for the box… and had thought of something to upset him badly.

How could I find Norman Quorn's sister if I didn't know her name…?

I phoned the brewery.

Total blank. No one even seemed to know he had had a sister at all.

Who else?

Via directory enquiries (because yet another tissue-box was long gone) I asked for Detective Chief Inspector Reynolds. Off duty. Impossible to be given his home number. Try in the morning.

I sought out and telephoned the mortuary. All they could or would tell me was the name of the undertaker to whom they had released the body of Norman Quorn. I phoned the undertaker, asking who had arranged cremation and paid the bills. Sir Ivan Westering, I was told, had written them a single cheque to cover all expenses.

How like him, I thought.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I reached Chief Inspector Reynolds in the morning. He hummed and hahhed and told me to phone him back in ten minutes, and when I did he told me the answers.

Norman Quorn's sister was a Mrs Audrey Newton, widow, living at 4, Minton Terrace, in the village of Bloxham, Oxfordshire. Telephone number supplied.

I thanked him wholeheartedly. Let him know, he said, if I found anything he should add to his files.

'Like, where did Norman Quorn die?' I asked.

'Exactly like that.'

I promised.

Using the portable phone, as I had for all the calls I'd made from the Park Crescent house, I tried Mrs Audrey Newton's number and found her at home. She agreed that yes, nearly a week ago she had tried to talk to Sir Ivan Westering, but he hadn't called back, and she would have quite understood if he didn't want to talk to her, but he'd been ever so kind in paying for the cremation, and she'd thought things over, and since her brother couldn't get into any more trouble, poor man, she had decided to give Sir Ivan something Norman had left with her.

'What thing?' I asked.

'A paper. A list really. Very short. But Norman thought it important.'

I cleared my throat, trying to disregard sudden breathlessness, and asked if she would give the list to me instead. After a pause she said, 'I'll give it to Lady Westering. Ever so kind, she was, that day I had to identify Norman.'

Her voice shook at the memory.

I said I would bring Lady Westering to her house, and please could she tell me how to find it.

My mother disliked the project.

'Please' I said. 'And the drive will do you good.'

I drove her north-west out of London in Ivan's car and came to a large village, almost a small town, not far from the big bustling spread of modern Banbury, where no fair lady would be allowed anywhere near the Cross on a white horse, bells on her toes notwithstanding.

Minton Terrace proved to be a row of very small cottages with thatched roofs, and at No. 4 the front door was opened by the rounded woman we'd met at the mortuary.

She invited us in. She was nervous. She had set out sherry glasses and a plate of small cakes on round white crocheted mats which smelled of cedar, for deterring moths.

Audrey Newton, plain and honest, was ashamed of the brother she had spent years admiring. It took a great deal of sherry-drinking and cake-eating to bring her, not just to give the list to my mother, but to explain how and why Norman had given it to her.

'I was over in Wantage, staying with him for a few days. I did that sometimes, there was only the two of us, you see. He never married, of course. Anyway, he was going away on holiday, he always liked to go alone, and he was going that day, and I was going to catch a bus to start on my way home.'

She paused to see if we understood. We nodded.

'He was going to go in a taxi to Didcot railway station, but someone, I think from the brewery, came to collect him first. We happened to be both standing by the window on the upstairs landing when the car drew up at the gate.' She frowned. 'Norman wasn't pleased. It's extraordinary, but looking back I might almost say he was frightened, though at the time it didn't occur to me. I mean, the brewery was his life.'

And his death, I thought.

'Norman said he'd better go,' she went on, 'but all of a sudden he took an envelope out of the inner pocket of his jacket - and I saw his passport there because he was going to Spain for his holiday, as he usually did - and he pushed the envelope into my hands and told me to keep it for him until he sent for it… and of course he never sent for it. And it wasn't until I was clearing out his house after the cremation that I remembered the envelope and wondered what was in it, so I opened it when I got home here and found this little list, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the brewery… if I should give it to Sir Ivan, as he had been so good to me, paying for everything he didn't need to, considering Norman stole all that money, which I can hardly believe, even now.'