‘I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.’

Hobbes searched his memory. ‘I don’t know that one.’

Mary Estelle nodded. ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sonnet forty-three. But I know it better from A Streetcar Named Desire. Mitch has that line engraved on his silver cigarette case, which he shows to Blanche DuBois. She is very taken by it.’ Her lips tightened. ‘I so desired to play the part of Blanche. It would have been my parting gift to the West End. But the producers deemed me too old. Can you imagine? That I was losing my looks.’

‘Isn’t that the point? With Blanche, I mean. About her looks.’

‘Yes, yes, of course!’ She wrung her hands together, another theatrical gesture. ‘Oh, those imbeciles. Olivier included! He was to direct it, you see.’ She scoffed. ‘Sir Larry! Men like that, they turn their own incompetence into a religion. And they glory in it!’

It took her a moment to calm herself. She drew a handkerchief from the sleeve of her gown and wiped her lips and cheeks with it, a delicate action. Then she smiled. She revealed the handkerchief to Hobbes: he recognized the letters embroidered on the corner – M.E. And she said, ‘Leonard always used to laugh at this. “Mary Estelle,” he’d say, “only you would have the word Me as a monogram!”’ And she laughed again.

Hobbes studied her. He did something strange: he asked a question for the second time.

‘Mary Estelle. How many children do you have, altogether?’

The answer came instantly: ‘Three, of course.’

‘And their names?’

‘Rosamund, Nicholas, and young Camilla.’

Perfectly said, without hesitation. The truth. Until the sands next shifted.

‘Do you know Camilla’s whereabouts?’

‘She came to see me. Once only.’

‘She did?’

‘Oh, it was a long time ago now, I can’t remember when.’

‘But you don’t know where she lives?’

There was no reply. Mary Estelle blinked repeatedly.

Hobbes tried to keep her focused. ‘Is she married? Is Camilla married?’

She raised a hand. ‘I find these questions distasteful, of a sudden.’

It might have been a line from a play, performed exquisitely. And yet it was all artifice: there was little true feeling behind it, Hobbes was sure.

Now she picked up the bottle of perfume once more and gave her neck a spray, first on one side, then the other. And then her wrists, one and two. The cloying smell gathered around her, like a shroud. Hobbes felt sick. He got up from the stool. The room seemed far too small, more like a trap. With the door closed he felt he was a resident of the home, a long-term patient. And although in his career he had faced down some powerful gangsters, and brutes, and callous murderers, there was something about Mary Estelle Graves that worried him deeply. He couldn’t state it plainly, even to himself, and it had nothing to do with her mind’s afflictions, but with the weight she carried, the weight of the past, and what it might mean for present-day events. That certain events, long lost, buried deep, might have led to the murder of her son, Nicholas.