‘It is very kind of you to receive me like this,’ he began.

‘I’d do as much for a dog in this weather,’ she said. While he was trying to find the right answer, she added, ‘Wouldn’t you?’

Had Mary perhaps received her murderer with the same graceless humanity?

Leaping over both questions, he said, ‘I must introduce myself, Miss Glasscastle. My name is Charlton Mackrell, and I knew Mary when she lived in London.’

‘Did you? Well, I suppose you know what happened to her. It was in all the papers.’

‘I read about it. I was deeply shocked.’

‘I daresay you were. And they haven’t found the man yet. Poor girl, she was killed in this very room.’

‘I believe you were in hospital at the time,’ he said, endeavouring not to seem as though he had come merely out of an interest in Mary’s murder.

‘I was. What’s that to do with it?’

‘I was thinking of the shock to your nerves,’ he said. 53Hearing the ineptitude of his speech, he added, making it worse, ‘It must have retarded your recovery.’

She looked at him, with Mary’s grimace of the lower lip sucked to one side, and said nothing.

‘You must have remarkable powers of recovery,’ he continued, driven into developing some of his own, ‘to have set about collecting material for a biography already. But you are quite right. It should be done.’

‘Yes. It ought to sell like hot cakes if it comes out while people still remember the trial.’

This vulgarity reclothed him in dignity, and he said, with calm, ‘That was not what I had in mind. Your niece was a proper subject for a biography, quite apart from how she met her end. Are you going to write it yourself?’

‘I’m writing it now.’

‘May I ask if you have found a publisher?’

This was the first question he had come to ask, and if the answer had been propitious, he might not have needed to ask further, for he knew many publishers, and was known as a power by every publisher in London. It was quite likely that if he questioned the need for a life of Mary Glasscastle, they would follow suit. But the answer was not propitious.

‘Naturally, I’ve seen to all that. It’s being done by Argus, in Nottingham. They’re quite used to publishing. They did a cookery book for the Women’s Institute. I’ve got a proper typist, too.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he replied. ‘So much depends on the typist.’54

‘That’s what the typist says. But do you know the old saying? “It all depends on me. And I depend on God.”’

Squirming inwardly, Charlton made the appropriate small guffaw.

They sat on either side of an old-fashioned coal-burning range, and between them his overcoat hung on the clothes-horse and steamed. The temptation to put it on and go away was strong, but something told him that if he were to do so, he might be considerably more uncomfortable in the future than he was now. There was a pause, and this time she broke it.