Alexander stood up. ‘The only reason for this war is so that modern capitalism can destroy the great empires. It’s just a great shedding of men who would otherwise need jobs! Isn’t anybody going to see that? Isn’t anybody going to say that killing half the world over Serbia is insane?’

‘No.’ Benny squared her jaw at him, finding herself defending history as if her pet dog had savaged a sheep. ‘They all dive in like it’s a great relief to them.’

‘What if I went to Sarajevo? Shot the man who kills the Archduke?’

‘Somebody had a go a few streets earlier. Somebody else would be around the next corner. Besides, it isn’t really down to him, is it? As you say, the industrial world is waiting for this war. A way would be found. I’m just sorry you had to find out about it.’

Alexander sat down slowly. ‘We could push for a revolution now, declare a workers’ state. I always thought it could be real now, that it could be done. But there’s no time. Damn it, if only you’d told me earlier! I have to get a telegraph, there’s only a few weeks before it all starts, have to…’ He found that he was staring at his hands, and suddenly burst into great sobs. ‘Poison gas? How can they contemplate poison gas?’

Benny went to him and held him. ‘I’m so sorry. What have 1 done to you?’

‘Did it to myself, loved one,’ he said, quietening after a while. ‘God, what do I say to Richard when I next see him?’

‘There’s nothing you can say. I don’t want to raise false hopes, but it may not happen. His death, I mean. I don’t know what records you were accessing, but if they’re ones from the future, then all sorts of things may have happened in between. Time’s very big. We don’t get to see it all. That’s all I can say, really.’

Bernice was rapidly starting to feel as if she’d killed Richard Hadleman herself.

‘Damn it, Alexander, I wish you hadn’t looked.’

Alexander pulled out a big spotted handkerchief and blew his nose, quickly wiping his tears away, though a hard emptiness remained. ‘Why, if I may ask, did you and your friend decide to visit us here?’ he asked. ‘Are we morbid zoo creatures, on the brink of extinction?’

Benny leant on his shoulder. ‘Wasn’t my choice. He wanted to come here and suffer a bit, I think.’

The doorbell chimed. Alexander rose and visibly pulled himself together, buttoning his waistcoat. ‘I’ll have to go through all that business of going to prison,’ he muttered. ‘I might be too old to be conscripted, though, at least initially. What a winter it’s going to be for us all.’

As he wandered downstairs, Benny grabbed the unit, and tapped out a request.