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couldn’t enforce his relocation under the mental health legislation. He explained to me once that if he abandoned Bromyards he would feel that he was letting down his ancestry. As you may know, the house has been in the Housecarl family for nearly three hundred years.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘The original house looked different, it was smaller, a much more modest building. It was expanded during the Victorian era when the family really came into very serious money . . . but it was the same family who owned it. He felt sad that he was going to be the last of the Housecarls but he accepted that the end of each dynasty has to come some time.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And so the least he could do, he said, was to ensure that when he does leave Bromyards, he is carried out feet first. He felt he owed that to his forebears . . . and he had everything upstairs.’ March tapped the side of his head. ‘In here he was as bright as a button, his body was failing but his mind was sharp and as a consequence of that, he had the right to self-determination . . . and said right we have to respect.’
    ‘Of course,’ Webster spoke softly; he felt the reverence owed to the consulting room. ‘He was no harm to himself or others and Bromyards wasn’t standing in the way of a proposed motorway development.’
    ‘No . . . listed building anyway. It might fall down because of neglect but it is protected under the terms of the National Monuments Act and can’t be demolished.’
    ‘So, to confirm our belief and fully remove all suspicion, he could not, in your medically qualified opinion, be party to anything untoward which was going on outside the house?’
    ‘No . . . not physically part of it and I can’t see him giving permission for anything like that. He was a gentleman of the old school . . . a man of principle.’ Dr March pursed his lips. ‘No, he wouldn’t have known anything about it.’ March paused. ‘He was a hermit for many years. He had a carer . . . an assistant . . . I met her once . . . jolly lady. Now what was her name? What on earth was it? It was a name which I thought seemed to fit her personality. Charles Dickens could have named her . . . you know how Dickens suggested the personality of his character by the names he chose for them?’
    ‘I didn’t know that.’
    ‘Oh, yes . . . like Mr Gradgrind the schoolmaster . . . and the boy pickpocket called the Artful Dodger . . . his characters have well-suited names and this lady had a name that Dickens would have pounced on . . . what was it? Mrs Mirth . . . no . . . M something . . . she came into a room like a ray of sunshine and she was introduced and I thought how apt . . . Merryweather!’ March smiled and looked pleased with himself. ‘That was it, Mrs Penelope “Penny” Merryweather, and a jolly soul was she, salt of the earth . . . milk of human kindness sort of individual . . . lovely lady. She was the last of the staff at Bromyards, the last to be laid off . . . and I had the impression that she was the sort of employee who did more than her job. She seemed to have a devotion to Nicholas Housecarl. She’ll be the lady to ask . . . hers will be the brains to pick about the matter of the old boy’s retreat, but I think he abandoned the grounds about twenty years ago. I recall visiting about twenty years ago, when he was still living in the downstairs rooms and sleeping in an upstairs bedroom, and as I drove away I recall remarking that the hedge on the approach road . . .’
    ‘Too long to call a drive,’ Webster smiled.
    ‘Yes, “drive” just does not convey the road from the public highway to the house, “approach road” is more apt . . . but to continue . . . as I was driving down the approach road I noticed that the privet was overdue for a trim, which it never got, and in hindsight that was the beginning of the retreat. He was letting the garden go. It was beginning then to slide