“Yes, apparently Stephen had this silly notion that he’d been the inspiration for the Wings of Fire poems—the love poems—and Susannah said the museum was really to his glory, not Olivia’s. It was cruel, but she was furious with him for making such a silly fuss when everyone else had agreed on selling. That’s the point, you see, we’d always more or less expected the house would be sold when Olivia and Nicholas died. But Adrian Trevelyan had made certain, in his will, that Cormac couldn’t inherit the house. He left the house to Olivia, not Rosamund, to prevent it!”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Well, I was a child, inspector, but a child hears things, a child is sometimes very quiet in a corner, and the adults forget he—or she—is there. And they talk. And that child listens. Sometimes it doesn’t mean anything, sometimes it does. But I have a clear memory of Adrian speaking to Rosamund when James Cheney died. We’d just had the reading of his will, and so I knew what a will was. And Adrian said, “I won’t be here to see you wed again.’ And she said, ‘I don’t think it’s likely that I shall—I’ll never find another man like George Marlowe, and I won’t be as lucky as I was with James.’ And Adrian replied, ‘You’re young. You have a zest for living. You’ll take another husband, and I won’t be here. So I’m changing my will, my love, and taking the house from you. Do you mind if I give it to Olivia? I’ve loved her, and her father in her, since she was put into my arms as a newborn. I’d like to think of her here, moving through my house, loving it, after I’m gone. You’ve got the house George left you, and Nicholas will have James’. Olivia has no other home, may never have one.’ To my disappointment, eavesdropping, Rosamund asked for several days to think about it, and I never heard the outcome, until Adrian died and his will was read. I knew then what they’d decided, between them. That’s why Cormac’s suggestion ... upset me. I couldn’t tell him what Adrian had said, could I? That house has always been a haven of warmth and love, and now we’re all quarrelling over what becomes of it, spoiling it! Every time I’m reminded of Stephen’s death, I remember that he died still angry with us for not doing what he’d asked of us.”

“Rosamund had another home?”

“Yes, in Winchester, in the Close, actually. It was George Marlowe’s—he bought it himself. My own father inherited the family home, where he and George had grown up. George was the younger son, and chose the army.”

“And Nicholas had a house?”