He stared at it for some time before crouching down to search for more envelopes. He found several. All but two were addressed to Gryffe at his London home. The others were addressed to the same PO box number in Brussels. He got up and started looking around the room for more. Within a few minutes he had found seven. All empty. He clutched them in his hand and cursed softly. So Gryffe had been receiving letters which he picked up from a PO box in Brussels. Private correspondence that he didn’t want anyone to know about.

Bannerman dropped the envelopes on the floor. Whoever had gone through the dead man’s papers had been careful to remove all his letters. But he had overlooked the tell-tale address on the envelopes. If Gryffe had kept a private PO box then he would almost certainly have had a poste restante card. It was just possible that the intruder might have overlooked that too, if it was here. But it had to be. For surely if it had been among his personal possessions in Brussels, du Maurier would have told him.

It did not occur to him until after nearly an hour of fruitless searching among the chaos in the house that it might be among Gryffe’s things in London. The thought stopped him as suddenly and effectively as if he had walked into a stone wall. He righted the upturned desk chair and slumped into it, hot and frustrated. Through the open window he saw that the sun had become a big red globe hanging over the distant horizon. The room had sunk into a deep pink gloom. He felt drained and disappointed. The card would have given him access to the box. It was just possible that there would still be mail there for Gryffe that had never been collected.

The drawers down either side of the desk had been pulled out and then not replaced. They lay about the floor where they had been dropped or thrown. Instinctively Bannerman felt under the leaf of the table and found the small round knob of the tray drawer that slides in and out above the top drawer of most office desks. He pulled it out. The card lay in the tray section among a scattering of paper clips and pins. Carefully, Bannerman lifted it out and examined it before slipping it into his jacket pocket and allowing himself a tiny smile. ‘Got you,’ he said softly, and the whisper seemed thunderous in the still of the room.

He leaned back in the chair then and everything slowed. His thinking, his breathing, even time itself. It would have been impossible to say how long he sat there, allowing time to wash over him.