“I guess he admires your work.”

I bowed. But Mary Lou went on with much simplicity.

“I expect I shall too.”

It took me some time and most of my coffee to find an answer to that one.

“Indeed, my dear, they are very adult reading—except The Birds of Prey, of course. I rather let myself down with that one. Condottieri!”

She nodded sagely.

“That’s what Rick says.”

“Oh he does, does he?”

“Yes, sir. He said like as not you wrote it with the film in view.”

“I did not! Only, only—you know, people were like that in the fourteenth century. It was quite natural to—swashbuckle. In Italy anyway. Well. So. If he thinks like that, why is he stuck with me?”

“He said no one else was doing you as of this moment in time.”

“I’m wounded.”

“He couldn’t find anyone. He did look, Mr Barclay, Wilf, because I did too. I was his student, you know. We worked together on you, sir. He said in that kind of study you can be beaten by a nose. He said it was essential to be quick as well as exact. We had to know the subject thoroughly.”

“Me, in fact.”

“He said he was investing our time and money in you—Wilf—and we couldn’t afford to make a mistake.”

“Maybe he made a big one.”

“It was the back room on the first floor, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Felstead Regina.”

“The cottages? The one at the end of the lane? Looking out into the woods?”

“Yes, sir, where you were born. We got photographs. That was the room, wasn’t it?”

“So my mother said. She ought to know. My God.”

“It was a small window.”

“My God. My God.”

“The man who lives there now didn’t mind at all. He let us go up.”

“You haven’t got a photograph of the house where I died?”

“Sir?”

“My God.”

“Have I said anything—?”

I poured myself more coffee and drank it in one gulp.

“No, no. Please go on. You are—you are helping Rick.”

“Well. There’s Mr Halliday, you see.”

“I don’t know a Mr Halliday.”

“He’s rich. Real rich I mean. He’s read your books. He likes them.”

“It’s nice when rich men can read.”

“Yes. It’s nice for them, isn’t it? He liked your second book best, that’s All We Like Sheep.”

“How do you know the names of my books when you haven’t read them?”

“I majored in flower arranging and bibliography. His secretary, that’s Mr Halliday’s secretary, she said he particularly liked All We Like Sheep. She said he had noted one sentence particularly.”

“Ah.”

“Let me see if I can get this right. It was where you admit to liking sex but having no capacity for love.”

After that neither of us said anything for a long time. How long? In a novel I’d watch a clock on the wall, perhaps noting the ornamentation round the glass, and then be surprised to see how the minute hand had moved from ten to upright. There wasn’t a clock on the wall. Well. I’d think thoughts. But there wasn’t anything but a long time.