“Still sharp, though! Always fought like a rat, and I mean that as a professional compliment. He’s still ready to take a bite out of anybody he thinks might be up to a bit of no good. Not sure in a two-man fight whether I’d get the better of Ratty. But Herbert . . . hmm, Herbert’s changed. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I think we young officers decided that too quickly. He couldn’t read or write when we first knew him, not because he wasn’t all there, but because nobody’d ever bothered to teach him. The nearest board school was twenty miles away from his village, and, anyway, why would a ploughboy need to know his letters? We underestimated him.”

“Not his strength and determination, we didn’t!” Dickie was quick to disagree. “And he was always absolutely trustworthy. He had all the attack of a steamroller. On the slow side, but nothing stopped him.”

“But would it take him twenty years to react in this way? Even with the brakes off? I hadn’t realised you were such an admirer. Sounds to me like you must have written his references! He’s got a doorman-security job with the Cavendish Bank in London. Still enjoying wearing a uniform, you see. Moved down to London after the war. Bought his old ma a house in Camden, and that’s where he still lives. He and Ratty both received one of these letters as well. With assignations for ten p.m. And ten-thirty p.m.”

“And you’re booked for eleven p.m.?” Dickie gave a shout of laughter. “What the hell is this? The waiting room for Death? ‘The Grim Reaper will see you now, sir.’ Are you sure Syd’s lost his marbles? It sounds like just the sort of batty Boy’s Own Paper stuff he’d think was clever.”

“Once thought clever! The kid was only seventeen when he joined our outfit. Storybooks were all the excitement he’d ever had in his life before that. It’s why he joined up. Well, that and his two older brothers kicking him out of the nest. Hardly the right preparation for three bloody battles in as many days. He survived better than most of us. He’ll have matured.”

“Until this illness struck him down?”

“Yes. Totally out of it, according to the missis. For at least a month. These were posted last Tuesday. I noticed you looking at the post office stamp in the corner.”

“Ten o’clock collection from Cambridge central. Hmm . . . I can see why you thought of me. And then, I hope, dismissed the thought. I’d have had the wit to ask a mate to post them in London.”