“Ivan, you were the son of her son,” Brett cut in quickly, “that obstinate fellow who had dared to cross her, and of the daughter whose docility she despised even though she expected it. You embodied them. You embodied her past failure, mistakes and follies. She couldn’t put them out of mind because she couldn’t put you out of sight. She had cunning enough to know that she depended on you, reason enough to know what had made you as you are—heredity, aggravated by her upbringing. She’d made a rod for her own back, but like most people in that position, she wouldn’t admit, beyond the first secret acknowledgment, that it was true. Most people find a way out. She did. Your existence was a reproach, she turned it into an offence. To save herself from hating herself, she hated you.”

Brett stopped. Lights shone outside the windows, at the side of the road and behind coloured curtains in houses. They were passing through a considerable village. He saw a pub, a chapel, a filling-station, a weatherboarded wall with posters on it.

“Wingham, or I’m much mistaken,” whispered Majendie, “on the Canterbury-Sandwich road, you know. Heading for the coast, do you think?”

“Easy to understand your feelings,” Brett went on. “She’d injured and insulted and finally began to torment you. Didn’t she, after her first searing refusal to sell, constantly reiterated, take a malicious pleasure in setting out the treasures in your presence? Didn’t she say that you were not to be her heir, would never touch so much as a bead of it? Perhaps she told you she’d already made the will. She hadn’t, but how could you know? All you knew was that alive she deprived you, dead, she deprived you. And you were in despair, divided between drinking yourself into oblivion and trying to think of a way out.

“You had one brilliant idea—to have her certified. You consulted a doctor, perhaps even a solicitor as well, only to find that it wouldn’t work. What about stealing the trunk? It could have been done, despite her almost continuous presence. But you knew you’d have had a very short start before she discovered the loss, you knew she’d have notified the police, that you’d be the first suspect. Even if you managed to hide, how could you have hoped undetected to get rid of the pieces? Of course, you thought of killing her. The trouble was the same—inevitable discovery. You could think of nothing that didn’t end in that. So more arguments, more drink, more despair—until, one night in the Oak Tree, you met Stan Wacey.”

“The one that jumped?” asked Majendie with interest.

“The one that jumped,” said Brett. “How did he come to be in that pub—by chance? Most unlikely. You didn’t take the initiative, Ivan, I’m sure you didn’t. You’d been marked, and Wacey spoke first, working you round to the subject of your inheritance—easily done, with the aid of several pints—thence, to the trunk.”