Tears of laughter oozing from the corners of her eyes, Matilda gasped. ‘It’s so unkind to laugh. Anabel had come. It was after Tom had been dead some time, a year perhaps. Mr Jones was being helpful, so kind, weeding the garden. I’d let it go dreadfully. Anabel was with me in the kitchen. She’d just said in an arrogant, bossy voice, “Ma, you should brace up. What you need is sex. It’s very bad to stop suddenly and give it up altogether. You’ve tried pot,” she said – I don’t know how she knew – “you’ve tried pot and it doesn’t do anything for you, you must have sex. Why not,” said Anabel, fixing me with those great brown eyes, “have old Jones? Do him a favour. You know he pines for you.”’ Matilda wiped the tears with her finger. ‘We looked at him. He was crouching there wearing wide khaki shorts and his balls were hanging down over the carrot leaves. Oh!’ Matilda’s eyes filled again. ‘I’ve never been so close to that girl. She said, “They look like nutbags you hang out for the tits. Sorry I spoke.” Poor girl. She laughed until she threw up and Mr Jones came in and made us a resuscitating cuppa. He thought we were crying over Tom. That was the last time she came here. I saw her in London. She came into the Connaught looking lovely with the most beautiful man. John, Sir Piers to be, knew him. She wasn’t expecting to see me. She carried it off rather well.’

‘You didn’t know she was in London?’

‘No. She had not wanted to see me. I might have asked her to visit me. It’s a risk.’ Matilda shook her head. ‘Poor Mr Jones.’ Hugh felt it safer to leave Anabel sick with laughter.

‘So Mr Jones’s UFOs?’

‘Why are you changing the subject?’

‘That’s the art of conversation – edge. Did you know about the UFOs, what they were?’

‘Not until I found the drugs after Tom’s death. While he was alive it all went on under my nose so . . .’ She seemed unwilling even now to say more.

‘So?’ Hugh pressed.

‘So if he was a smuggler and I didn’t know, it may well be true that he slept with Lalage as well as Louise and that he was one of the next-honours-list Sir Piers’s spies. But I cannot see him as a bugger, as Anne suggests.’

‘Would you have loved him less?’

‘No. I loved him. If you need proof there’s Louise. No divorce.’

‘You couldn’t cite your own daughter.’

‘I don’t see why not. I thought of doing it but it wouldn’t have altered anything. Louise is married to a man I like, it would have broken him, whereas you –’

‘Whereas I, who have killed my mother, can understand, is that it?’

‘I suppose so.’