‘Arthur and I are taking a trip to Devon. You can come with us if you want. There’s plenty of room.’

‘No, I’m still settling in here.’

‘Will you be all right on your own?’

‘I’ll be fine, I promise.’ She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I have a lot of reading to catch up on. Someone needs to hold the fort. I’m working my way through Uncle Arthur’s journals.’

‘Don’t believe everything you read in them,’ May warned. ‘He has a habit of greatly exaggerating our successes.’

‘And libelling everyone else. One police chief is described as “a human leech with a mind genetically resembling old Stilton.” I can’t imagine these accounts will ever see the light of day.’

‘For God’s sake don’t tell him that. He thinks he has a bestseller on his hands. Remember to call me if you feel the slightest anxiety, won’t you?’ He hovered awkwardly in the doorway. ‘I know I haven’t always been there for you in the past, but now that you know part of the reason why—’

‘It’s fine, Granddad,’ April assured him. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

But after her grandfather had left the office, his turn of phrase began to puzzle her. Part of the reason? He had finally been honest about her mother’s death, but was there more she had not yet learned about her blighted family?

7

PATHOLOGY

Oswald Finch was peering gimlet-eyed through the crack in the door like some grizzled old retainer considering whether to admit a tradesman into a mansion. Bryant wrinkled his nose at the sour reek of chemicals drifting through the gap. He looked up from his desk and gave a start.

‘Good Lord, Oswald, you frightened the life out of me; it smells like something has died. Don’t lurk outside like some grotesque from Gormenghast. Come in and stop scaring people.’

The ancient pathologist creaked into the room and lowered himself gingerly onto a bentwood chair. ‘Piles,’ he explained, grimacing into a tragedy mask. ‘I’m at the age where my diary is marked with more hospital appointments than social events. Of course, doctors can do miracles now. Do you know, I’ve hardly anything left that I started out with. Nothing is in its original place. The doctor who opens me up is in for a shock. My intestines lose several feet every year.’

‘Well, I’d love to discuss the state of your internal organs all day, but as you can see I’m pretending to be busy.’ Bryant ostentatiously flicked over one blank page to examine another. ‘What do you want?’

Finch sniffed noisily and looked around with disapproval. ‘The state of this place. A little order wouldn’t kill you. What’s in those petri dishes?’ He pointed to a row of plastic bowls arranged on the windowsill.