by Francis - TO THE HILT

Patsy would . I said, 'Mrs Hall didn't want to upset you.'

My mother said unhappily, 'I think Patsy has gone down to the kitchen to talk to Lois about it.'

I glanced round the room. Surtees, Xenia, Grantchester still, but no Patsy.

'Let's go down, then,' I suggested, and moved her with me below stairs, where Lois was tossing her head and bridling with umbrage at any insinuation that her work wasn't perfect. Edna stood beside her, nodding rhythmically in support.

The caterers, spread all around the extensive room, were packing away their equipment. I threaded a path through them, my mother following, and fetched up by Patsy's side in time to hear Lois saying indignantly, '… of course I threw the box away. There were only a couple of tissues left in it, which I used. I gave Sir Ivan a fresh box, what's wrong with that ?

'Didn't you check whether anything was written on the bottom of the box you threw away?'

'Of course not,' Lois said scornfully. 'Whoever looks on the bottom of empty tissue-boxes?'

'But you must have known my father wrote on the bottom of a tissue-box all the time.'

'Why should I know that?'

'You kept moving his notepad onto the desk, out of his reach.'

Patsy was right, of course, but predictably (like most legislation) she achieved the opposite result to that intended.

Lois inflated her lungs and stuck out her considerable frontage, her hoity-toity level at boiling-over point. 'Sir Ivan never complained,' she announced with self-righteousness, 'and if you're implying some stupid tissue-box gave him a heart attack and that it's my fault I'll… I'll… I'll consult my lawyer!'

She tossed her head grandly. Everyone knew she didn't have a lawyer. Even Patsy wasn't fool enough to point it out.

My mother, looking exhausted, said soothingly, 'Of course it wasn't your fault, Lois.' Turning to go, she stopped and said to me, 'I think I'll go up to my sitting-room. Alexander, would you bring me some tea?'

'Of course.'

'Patsy…' My mother hesitated, '… thank you, dear, for arranging everything so well. I couldn't have done it. Ivan would have been so pleased.'

She went slowly and desolately out of the kitchen and Patsy spoiled the moment by giving me the grim glare of habit.

'Go on, say it,' she said. 'You could have done it better.'

'No, I couldn't. It was a brilliantly managed funeral, and she's right, Ivan would have been proud.' I meant it sincerely, which she didn't believe.

She said bitterly over her shoulder, stalking away, 'I can do without your sarcasm,' and Edna, touching my arm, said kindly, 'You go on up, I'll make Lady Westering's tea.'

Lois, in unspent pique, slammed a few pots together to make a noise. She had been Patsy's appointee and, I guessed, Patsy's informant as to my comings and goings in that house, but she was discovering, as everyone did in the end, that Patsy's beauty and charm were questionable pointers to her core nature.

I followed her up the stairs to where my mother was bidding goodbye on the doorstep to Oliver Grantchester and, after him, to Patsy, Surtees and Xenia.

A taxi cruised past slowly on the road outside. Chris Young didn't look our way out of the window, but I saw his profile clearly. I wouldn't have known how to begin to follow Surtees, but when Chris was trying he seldom lost him. Since the dust-up in Emily's yard, Surtees hadn't often left home without a tail.

I went up to my mother's sitting-room where she soon joined me, followed by Edna with the tea. When Edna had gone I poured the hot liquid and squeezed lemon slices and handed the tea as she liked it to a woman who looked frail and spent and unable to answer questions.

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.

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.