Helena said, “I’m sorry, but you know best, you always did. But if I need you . . .”

Lettie said quietly, “You won’t.”

“None of the usual platitudes need saying between us, but I’ll miss you. And the Manor will still be here. If you get tired of wandering, you can always come home.”

But the words, genuine as they knew them to be, were perfunctory. Lettie saw that Helena’s eyes were fixed on the stable block, where the morning sunlight was moving over the stone like a golden stain. Already she was planning how the reconstruction could be carried out; seeing in imagination the guests arriving, consulting with Dean over the menu, the possibility of a Michelin star, perhaps two, the restaurant well in profit and Dean ensconced for ever at the Manor, to George’s content; standing there happily dreaming, looking to the future.

Chapter 3

3

In Cambridge, the wedding service was over and the guests were beginning to move into the antechapel. Clara and Annie stayed seated, listening to the organ. The Bach and Vivaldi had been played, and now the organist indulged himself and the congregation with a variation on a Bach fugue. Before the service, waiting in the sunshine with a small group of other early arrivals, people had introduced themselves, including a girl in a summer dress with short light-brown hair framing an attractive and intelligent face. She had come forward smiling to say that she was Kate Miskin, a member of Mr. Dalgliesh’s squad, and to introduce the young man with her, Piers Tarrant, and a handsome young Indian who was a detective sergeant in Adam’s squad. Others had joined them, Adam’s publisher, fellow poets and writers, a few of Emma’s college colleagues. It had been a happy and friendly group, lingering as if reluctant to exchange the beauty of stone walls and great lawn lit by the May sunshine for the cool austerity of the antechapel.

The service had been short, with music but no homily. Perhaps bride and groom had felt that the age-old liturgy said all that was necessary without the competition of the usual commonplace injunctions, and Emma’s father had been seated in a front pew, clearly having rejected the old symbolism of the passing of possessions into another’s keeping. Emma, in her cream wedding dress, a chaplet of roses in her gleaming upswept hair, had walked slowly up the aisle alone. At the sight of her composed and solitary beauty, Annie’s eyes had filled with tears. And there had been another break with tradition. Instead of facing the altar with his back to his bride, Adam had turned and, smiling, had held out his hand.