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But when the silence was broken by Miles’ voice, he sounded as friendly as ever.
    “Well, then, that saves us a lot of explaining. You see, Stephen wrote and told this fellow that if he came over here or pestered Mamma any further, he’d really be in trouble. It was done to scare him off, and it’s done just that. And at the same time, this is what Clarissa was talking about, he sent the man twenty-five pounds.”
    “I see,” I said, although I did not see at all. “You think, then, that the letter isn’t from David.”
    “From David!” Stephen got up, pushed back his chair and began to walk about the room. His eyes, dark like his mother’s, but small and intense where hers were large and lustrous, stared at me. “Of course it’s not from David, David died in the war. Don’t you understand that this sort of thing is the commonest kind of confidence trick when a woman’s lost her son, don’t you know that?”
    “Just why I was against giving him money,” Clarissa said, evidently continuing a long argument. “Give it ’em once, they come back again. Twenty-five quid’s not bad pay for a begging letter.”
    “There is no question that this letter is a forgery, no question, do you understand?” Stephen went out of the room, almost ran in his eagerness, and came back with a letter which he put before me. The date was 1941, the letter began “Dear Stephen” and was signed “David.” “The writing is quite different, you can see that.”
    “Yes, it does look different.” I went on half-apologetically, “This letter’s signed David.”
    “Well?”
    “The other one is signed Rikki Tikki.”
    Stephen turned away impatiently. Miles said, “That was the name Mamma used for David.”
    “I know that. How did this man know it?”
    The three began to speak together, and then Miles held up a hand. Like Stephen, he seemed anxious that I should believe what he was saying.
    “Use your common, my old Christopher. David’s plane was shot down, there’s no doubt he was killed. But say that this chap was someone in his squadron, a friend of his even. There are a dozen different ways he could have known about the name. Maybe he saw David writing letters, maybe he was a censor, perhaps he saw a letter from Mamma that began ‘Dear Rikki’.” Miles beamed and mopped his red brow. Stephen broke in.
    “The important thing is that this was the only bit of identification. The rest is the sort of stuff anyone could have made up.”
    They were curiously anxious to convince me, I thought, and then something else occurred to me. “But she’s expecting him. She told me so.”
    Clarissa slapped her thigh with her palm, almost as though her hand were a riding crop. “You’d better tell him.”
    “She’s written to him.” There was silence. “So he’ll write back to her.”
    Miles did not look at me. Stephen gave me a glance, then looked away. It was Clarissa, always impatient of fine feelings and subtleties, who spoke. “Come on, come on. What’s done is done.” To her husband she said, “What’s done is right.”
    Stephen gave her an uneasy look and I realised, as I had never done before, that behind the stiffness and starch he was a weak man. She turned to Miles and then, seeing that he too would say nothing, back to me. “For God’s sake, are you frightened of the boy? He’s got to know.” She spoke to me directly, her thick neck reddening with the words. “She did write to him, but Peterson took the letter. We told her to. We destroyed it. And if he writes another letter to her, we shall make sure she doesn’t get it.”
    For a moment I could not take it in and then, looking at Miles and Stephen a little shamefaced, and Clarissa with her lower lip out-thrust like one of her own dogs, I knew that it was true. “You can’t do that,” I said.
    “Oh, can’t we?” That was Clarissa.
    Miles interjected something about trying to understand, but I ignored him. When I thought of that poor old woman