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moved gracefully along the line of them to the front door. She saw his face first in black shadow, then in the short-lived evening twilight. He advanced on her and said, “Good evening, Gloria, how very good of you to have me,” in a voice so bravely mustered that she could have wept and later did.
    “We're just so relieved to be able to do anything to help, Justin darling,” she murmured, kissing him with cautious tenderness.
    “And there's no word of Arnold, one takes it? Nobody rang while we were on the road?”
    “I'm sorry, dear, not a peep. We're all on tenterhooks, of course.” One takes it, she thought. I'll say one does. Like a hero.
    Somewhere in the background Woodrow was advising her in a bereaved voice that he needed another hour in the office, sweet, he'd ring, but she barely bothered with him. Who's he lost? she thought scathingly. She heard car doors clunk and the black Volkswagen drive away but paid it no attention. Her eyes were with Justin, her ward and tragic hero. Justin, she now realized, was as much the victim of this tragedy as Tessa was, because Tessa was dead while Justin had been lumbered with a grief he would have to cart with him to his grave. Already it had grayed his cheeks and changed the way he walked and the things he looked at as he went along. Gloria's cherished herbaceous borders, planted to his specification, passed him by without a glance. So did the rhus and two malus trees he had so sweetly refused to let her pay for. Because it was one of the marvelous things about Justin that Gloria had never really got used to—this to Elena in a lengthy resume the same evening—that he was hugely knowledgeable about plants and flowers and gardens. And I mean, where on earth did that come from, El? His mother probably. Wasn't she half a Dudley? Well, all the Dudleys gardened like mad, they'd done it for eons. Because we're talking classic English botany here, El, not what you read in the Sunday papers.
    Ushering her treasured guest up the steps to the front door, across the hall and down the servants' stairs to the lower ground, Gloria gave him the tour of the prison cell that would be home to him for the duration of his sentence: the warped plywood wardrobe for hanging up your suits, Justin—why on earth had she never given Ebediah another fifty shillings and told him to paint it?—the worm-eaten chest of drawers for your shirts and socks—why had she never thought to line it?
    But it was Justin, as usual, who was doing the apologizing. “I'm afraid I haven't much in the way of clothes to put in them, Gloria. My house is besieged by newshounds and Mustafa must have taken the phone off the hook. Sandy kindly said he'd lend me whatever I need until it's safe to smuggle something round.”
    “Oh Justin, how stupid of me,” Gloria exclaimed, flushing.
    But then, either because she didn't want to leave him, or didn't know how to, she insisted on showing him the awful old fridge crammed with bottles of drinking water and mixers—why had she never had the rotting rubber replaced?—and the ice here, Justin, just run it under the tap to break it up—and the plastic electric kettle that she'd always hated, and the bumblebee pot from Ilfracombe with Tetley tea bags and a crack in it, and the battered Huntley and Palmer's tin of sugared biscuits in case he liked a nibble last thing at night, because Sandy always does, although he's been told to lose weight. And finally—thank God she'd got something right—the splendid vase of many-colored snapdragons that she had raised from seed on his instructions.
    “Well, good, I'll leave you in peace then,” she said—until, reaching the door, she realized to her shame that she had still not spoken her words of commiseration. “Justin darling—” she began.
    “Thanks, Gloria, there's really no need,” he cut in with surprising firmness.
    Deprived of her tender moment, Gloria struggled to recover a tone of practicality. “Yes, well, you'll come