“Who is it?”

“Don’t know, do I? Bit late for carol singers.”

I had hoped for more chat, for questions—how had David seemed? How was it to see him again? The kind of teasing out Em was good at.

After a bit, I called the vicarage. The terms at Oxford were short, but Peter often stayed up to be close to the libraries. To the quads, and balls and punting. Or just away from home. But I was lucky and after a minute, Patricia succeeded in bringing him to the phone. After I’d told him, I listened carefully to hear what was in his voice, but he sounded flat. Perhaps it was just that Patricia was listening.

“Will you come then?”

“And Rob Calcraft invited me and Em? I mean by name.”

“Yes.” I thought about it and began wondering what other information David had offered up about us besides our names.

“If Rob’s invited us, it’s because he wants something. I’d think twice, Andy.”

“You know him?”

“He was in the year above me. Left Oxford last year. Perverse sense of humor.”

“So you won’t come?”

Peter didn’t answer straightaway. Outside, it had started snowing again. He would be in the front room, and from what he said next I knew the curtains were still open, and he was looking at the snow falling, on Patricia’s flowers beds and on the lawn and the yew hedge. “If you’re determined to, I suppose I will. It’ll be sort of funny. The manor, a weekend party, the snow. Just like that night Mortimer died.”

I can’t say I felt any presentiment though, no shiver of apprehension or warning, although it struck me that neither of us had said anything about David. I had the TV on and the remnants of a tin of Roses on my lap, my fingers searching out any hazelnut caramels Marcus might have overlooked. There was a game show on. It involved people competing to win mystery prizes and then trying to hide their disappointment at what the prizes were.

And I fell asleep there, and when I woke up it was the middle of the night, and Marcus must have decided to stay at his mum’s because the van wasn’t there, and the bed was empty, and apart from the TV I was alone.

“Get in the back! Get in the back with us!”

I pulled open the sliding side door to the van. Peter and Em were huddled on the cushions inside, their faces ghoulish in the blue light of a battery lantern. In one hand, Peter was clutching a bottle of sloe gin. He was wearing a tuxedo that was too big in the shoulders, and Em—underneath the blanket she had draped about her—was showing flashes of iridescent peacock green.