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written:
The bearer, Miss Cordelia Gray, is authorized to make enquiries on my behalf into the death on 26th May of my son, Mark Callender
. He had signed and dated it.
    He asked: “Is there anything else?”
    Cordelia said: “You talked about the possibility of someone else being responsible for your son’s death. Do you quarrel with the verdict?”
    “The verdict was in accordance with the evidence which is all one can expect of a verdict. A court of law is not constituted to establish the truth. I’m employing you to make an attempt at that. Have you everything you need? I don’t think we can help you with any more information.”
    “I should like a photograph.”
    They looked at each other nonplussed. He said to Miss Leaming: “A photograph. Have we a photograph, Eliza?”
    “There is his passport somewhere but I’m not sure where. I have that photograph I took of him in the garden last summer. It shows him fairly clearly, I think. I’ll get it.” She went out of the room.
    Cordelia said: “And I should like to see his room, if I may. I assume that he stayed here during his vacations?”
    “Only occasionally, but of course he had a room here. I’ll show it to you.”
    The room was on the second floor and at the back. Once inside, Sir Ronald ignored Cordelia. He walked over to the window and gazed out over the lawns as if neither she nor the room held any interest for him. It told Cordelia nothing about the adult Mark. It was simply furnished, a school boy’s sanctum, and looked as if little had been changed in the last ten years. There was a low white cupboard against one wall with the usual row of discarded childhood toys: a teddy bear, his fur scuffed with much cuddling and one beady eye hanging loose; painted wooden trains and trucks; a Noah’s Ark, its deck a-tumble with stiff-legged animals topped by a round-faced Noah and his wife; a boat with limp dejected sail; a miniature darts board. Above the toys were two rows of books. Cordelia went over to examine them. Here was the orthodox library of the middle-class child, the approved classics handed down from generation to generation, the traditional lore ofnanny and mother. Cordelia had come to them late as an adult; they had found no place in her Saturday comic- and television-dominated childhood.
    She said: “What about his present books?”
    “They’re in boxes in the cellar. He sent them here for storage when he left college and we haven’t had time to unpack them yet. There hardly seems any point in it.”
    There was a small round table beside the bed and on it a lamp and a bright round stone intricately holed by the sea, a treasure picked up, perhaps, from some holiday beach. Sir Ronald touched it gently with long tentative fingers then began rolling it under his palm over the surface of the table. Then, apparently without thinking, he dropped it into his pocket. “Well,” he said. “Shall we go down now?”
    They were met at the foot of the stairs by Miss Leaming. She looked up at them as slowly they came down side by side. There was such controlled intensity in her regard that Cordelia waited almost with apprehension for her to speak. But she turned away, her shoulders drooping as if with sudden fatigue, and all she said was: “I’ve found the photograph. I should like it back when you’ve finished with it, please. I’ve put it in the envelope with the note. There isn’t a fast train back to London until nine thirty-seven, so perhaps you would care to stay for dinner?”
    The dinner party which followed was an interesting but rather odd experience, the meal itself a blend of the formal and casual which Cordelia felt was the result of conscious effort rather than chance. Some effect, she felt, had been aimed at but whether of a dedicated band of co-workers meeting together at the end of a day for a corporate meal, or the ritual imposition of order and ceremony on a diverse company, she wasn’t sure. The party numbered ten: Sir Ronald