Stone's Fall

'I have considered that possibility,' I replied.

'I see. So are you here to tell me you do not wish to continue in my employ? Or are you trying to discover a way of keeping the money, even though it comes from a murderess?'

She was quite calm as she spoke, which convinced me that she was furious with me; so furious that I doubted whether it was going to be my choice.

'I am trying to discover what happened. Which is the job you gave me. Part of it, anyway. I must say that I do not really think you are a murderess. But I need to get circumstances clear in my mind. You ask me to find this child, and the task would be easily accomplished if the evidence was where your husband said it was. Someone moved it. It might help considerably if I knew who.'

'So? Ask.' She had not forgiven me, nor entirely resumed her pose of calm, but I could see my remarks had mollified her a little.

'Did you move it?'

'No. Do you believe me?'

'Who did move it?'

'I don't know.'

'Who could have moved it?'

'I don't know that either. Or rather, I could give you a list of people who have been in the house long enough to occupy you for months. I imagine it would have been in the large drawer which contains a strongbox. It would have been locked. Only my husband had a key.'

'Forgive me for asking, but could I see this desk?'

'By all means.' She stood up and walked to the door. She was not the sort of woman whose clothes needed smoothing down, however long she had been sitting; they simply fell into place. That was expensive couture, I guessed. Or maybe she was simply one of those people who was like that. My own clothes looked rumpled even when they were fresh back from the laundry.

'Was your husband disturbed or preoccupied at all in his last few weeks or months?' I asked as we walked up the stairs. I walked beside her out of modesty, as the sight of her from behind was too enticing to be polite.

'Perhaps. He had been different, more distant for some time before his death. And in the last few days he was very preoccupied.'

'In what way?'

'I could see something in his eyes. Worry. I think it was a premonition.'

'About his death?'

'Yes. The human mind is a strange and complex thing, Mr Braddock. Sometimes it can see the future without realising it.'

'Did you ask what concerned him?' I said, steering the conversation away from this topic as fast as was seemly.

'Of course. But he simply said there was nothing which I should worry about. That all would be well. I never doubted it until he reassured me.'

'But you have no idea . . .'

'None. I assume it was something to do with his business affairs, because I can discover no other possible explanation. Although I saw less of him than usual.'

'Why was that?'

'He was working. He would be out late. Ordinarily, he would return in the early evening, and he rarely left the house again. He preferred to eat at home, then we would read together. Sometimes he would have work to attend to, but only in his office. Sometimes he would read his papers sitting by the fire, with me next to him. In the last few weeks he would go out again, sometimes coming back late at night. But he never told me why.'

'Do you know a man called Cort? Henry Cort?'

She gave no reaction, either of pleasure or anything else. 'I have known Mr Cort for more than twenty years,' she replied evenly. 'John also knew him for a long time.'

'Who is he?'

'He is . . . I don't know how to describe him, really. He was once a journalist, although I understand he gave that up long ago. He was a correspondent for The Times in Paris, which is where I came to know him.'

'So he was not an employee of your husband?'

'Oh, no. He has independent means. Why do you ask?'

'A name that came up,' I replied. I still didn't know what FO meant. Some religious order? 'Was your husband a Catholic?'

She smiled. 'His mother was, but John was brought up as an Anglican. His father was a vicar. But he was not a great churchgoer.'

'I see,' I replied.

'Here we are,' she said, opening a door on the second floor. 'This was his office. And where he fell.'

It was a room about eighteen feet square, the same size as the sitting room we had been in a few moments previously. And, presumably, directly above it. A simple but masculine room where the other had all the touches of a woman's hand. In this room brown dominated; the woodwork painted as mock oak, the curtains heavy velvet. A smell of tobacco hung in the air; heavy wooden filing cabinets filled one wall, and there were no paintings, only a few photographs in heavy silver frames. Family? Friends?

'All his family,' she replied. 'His parents, sisters and their children. He was fond of them all, but they rarely met after his mother died. She was a remarkable, if rather strange, woman. Foreign, like me. He got much of his drive from her, his kindness from his father. They all live in Shropshire, and rarely come to Town.'

'Would one have been close enough for him to have confessed an indiscretion?'