“Possibly I am. Anyway, if my father’s not dead, he’s hardly present. Not even a postcard for eight years. If he isn’t dead, he’ll be getting on. He was fifteen years older than my mother, so that makes him over sixty.”

“So he’s unlikely to appear demanding a little financial help from the legacy.”

“Well, he wouldn’t get it if he did. I haven’t seen the will, but when I rang the family solicitor—just out of interest, you understand—he told me he wouldn’t give me a copy of it. He said I could get a copy when probate had been granted. I don’t think I’ll bother. The Westhalls would leave money to a cats’ home before they left a penny to a Boyton. My claim is on the grounds of justice, not legality. I’m their cousin. I’ve kept in touch. They’ve got more than enough cash to spare and they’ll be very rich once probate is granted. It wouldn’t hurt them to show a little generosity now. That’s why I visit. I like to remind them that I exist. Uncle Peregrine only survived thirty-five days after Grandfather. I bet old Theodore hung on as long as he could just in the hope of outliving his son. I don’t know what would have happened if Uncle Peregrine had died first, but whatever the legal complications, nothing would have come to me.”

Rhoda said, “Your cousins must have been anxious, though. There’s a clause in all wills saying that the legatee has to survive twenty-eight days after the death of the testator if he is to inherit. I imagine they took good care to keep their father alive—that is if he did survive for those vital eight days. Perhaps they popped him into a freezer and produced him nice and fresh on the appropriate day. That’s the plot of a book by a detective novelist, Cyril Hare. I think it’s called Untimely Death, but it may have been published originally under a different name. I can’t remember much about it. I read it years ago. He was an elegant writer.”

He was silent and she saw that he poured the wine as if his thoughts were elsewhere. She thought with amusement and some concern, My God, is he really taking this nonsense seriously? If so, and he started pursuing it, the accusation was likely to finish him with his cousins. She could think of few allegations more likely to close Rose Cottage and Cheverell Manor to him for ever than an accusation of fraud. The novel had come unexpectedly to mind and she had spoken without thinking. That he should take her words seriously was bizarre.

He said, as if shaking it off, “The idea is daft, of course.”

“Of course it is. What do you envisage, Candace and Marcus Westhall turning up at the hospital while their father is in extremis, insisting on taking him home and popping him into a convenient freezer the moment he dies, then thawing him out eight days later?”