"Well, her parents wouldn't discuss it," she said with certainty. "Her father would probably have no idea, but her mother would. Mothers can read their daughters quite fright-eningly well. I don't know why it is, but we all tend to imagine our parents were never young or in love." She shrugged. "Which is probably stupid, when you come to think of it. If there is anybody at all one can be absolutely certain had some experience of intimacy, it is one's mother. Otherwise one would not be here. But at fifteen or sixteen we never see it. I thought my mother the most old-fashioned and tepid of creatures alive." She smiled to herself, her thoughts far away. "I wanted to wear a red dress. There was this young man I thought was marvelous. He had ginger hair and a wonderful mustache...."

Monk held his tongue with great difficulty. He tried to imagine her at sixteen, and resented the young man with the mustache simply for having been there.

“I wanted to impress him," she went on ruefully. "The dress was very daring. He admired Lavinia Wentworth. She had black hair which curled. I thought the red dress would make the difference." She laughed with a ripple of real humor, no pity or regret, her eyes bright. "I would have looked awful. I was so pale, and far too bony to wear red. Mama made me wear white and green. The young man with the mustache ignored me utterly. I don't think he even saw me."

"Lavinia Wentworth?" He had to ask.

"No—actually, Violet Grassmore." She said it as if it still surprised her. "She told me afterwards that he had sticky hands and was the greatest bore she had ever met. Lavinia Wentworth went off with a young man in some sort of uniform. They became very close, but he was unsuitable, I don't recall why. Lavinia's mother took her away to Brighton or Hove or somewhere."

She swung around to face him.

"That's what you should look for! An association her mother stopped. That will be the one to pursue."

"Thank you. I suppose it is better than nothing. But there is so little time."

"Then you had better not waste any more of it," she replied, but she did not stand up. "Would you like a cup of tea, and perhaps something to eat, before you begin to search?"

"Yes," he accepted immediately. Actually, he was very hungry, and not in the least looking forward to what would almost certainly be a fruitless enquiry.