Her face had been white as a menu when Collis had knocked at her door.

‘You didn’t go to see Walter,’ she had said. Her voice had sounded odd, like somebody talking into an empty cup.

‘I, er, no. No, I didn’t, I wanted to talk to you first. I mean, talk to you some more. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to—’

Her look had silenced him. ‘A boy came, with a note. He’s been murdered.’

Collis hadn’t tried to act. He had been too tired for that. Instead, he had simply stood in Hannah’s room while she poured out her guilt, and her grief, and her grief at not feeling more grief than she did. It was only when she had utterly exhausted herself, when she had cried her eyes dry, and when she was simply talking for the sake of not having to think, that he reminded her of the simplest and most telling fact of all.

‘Hannah,’ he said, ‘you’re a widow.’

She stared at him. It was so gloomy in the room now that they could scarcely make each other out.

‘Perhaps if you’d gone there, you might have saved his life,’ she said.

Collis made a face. ‘I might have. But then again, I might have been killed along with him.’

‘Don’t say that. I can’t bear it.’

‘Hannah — I can’t bring him back. I can’t change the course of history. I didn’t go to see him today, and that’s all. I don’t know why he was murdered. Maybe he had some business enemies you never even knew about. Maybe he owed people money.’

She went to the corner of the room, with her back to him.

‘I shall have to mourn,’ she said in a small voice.

‘For how long?’

‘In Boston, it would have been a year. But, under the circumstances, I think six months should be sufficient.’

‘These are modern times, Hannah. Fast times. Six months can see a whole lot of changes.’

‘I know, Collis. But my husband is dead, whether I loved him truly or not, and I shall mourn him.’

They buried Walter West four days later, on a Tuesday, at the Lone Mountain Cemetery. From the Presidio, coincidentally, came the sound of a bugler practising taps. It was a cold, brisk day, and the mourners walked along the neat cultivated lanes of the cemetery with their breath escaping in intermittent puffs. There were some friends of Walter’s there, mostly storekeepers, and a portly representative from the merchants’ association, who kept taking out his heavy gold watch and staring at it. Collis stood bareheaded by the grave for a while, with Dan McReady a little way off, and Kwang Lee, in a shiny black top hat, remaining politely beside a newly planted cypress.

Andy Hunt was looking for Collis at the cemetery gate, in a vivid heather-coloured tweed coat. His cheeks were red and he was out of breath.

‘Andy,’ said Collis, taking him aside. ‘What’s the matter?’