“And country tweeds?”

“Not necessary, but if you insist.”

She sighed. “Not sure about a portrait. We’re looking a bit shabby just now –”

“You are not!”

“We might brush up well enough but the house isn’t at its best. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“In a house this age and this size, there’ll always be something to do.”

“You’re right there. We took a hammering with the death duties, hanging over from when Benjie inherited.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Nothing to be done, Kate. One puts on a brave face but the strike added to our woes. We saved on wages of course. I can’t tell you how much we lost by having to leave coal in the ground. After the neglect there was a huge amount of maintenance. Royds pit was in no fit state to re-open, just not viable.”

I felt a wave of sympathy for Gertrude. “It must have been hard to see your workers and their families struggling to survive.”

“As Benjie likes to point out to me, they had donations and money from all over the place. Don’t start him on this. He’ll tell you all about a delegation of Labour women going to Russia.”

“From here?”

“From the Northeast, but it’s all the same to him. Of course Raynor is gung-ho along with him. They spent hours in the study, plotting against the plotters.”

Much as I appreciated Gertrude and Benjie’s position, I felt greater sympathy for the miners and their families. “It’s a pity the miners had to look abroad for support.”

“According to Benjie, they got support aplenty. He’ll tell you those women came back with vodka, caviar, Russian gold and instructions for sedition.”

Russian gold. Where had I heard that before? Commander Woodhead and Benjie Brockman would get on very well. “And what do you think, Gertrude?”

“I just wish that strike had never happened.” She poured tea.

I changed the subject. It was too soon to start probing and arouse suspicion. “Do you remember this?”

“Indeed I do!”

It was a picture of Gertrude and me with our ponies, taken on my camera by our riding mistress. I brought out one of her wedding day. I had snapped her with her bridesmaids, a cousin and her little nieces. In another candid and slightly grainy snapshot—not one of my best—Gertrude was standing with her mother on their lawn.

For a little while, we reminisced.

When the right moment came, I asked her what had happened to the children’s home. “Milly said it was demolished?”

“Yes. It turned out to be in danger of subsiding. We couldn’t take the risk of just leaving it.”

“Where are the children?”

“They’re in good hands. I saw to that.”

“It was a grand old house. We used to look through the railings when we cycled out this way as children. Wasn’t it called the Bluebell Home?”

“Everyone called it that, because of the Bluebell Wood nearby.”

“Couldn’t it have been shored up in some way, to make it safe?”