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    Dad had taken me out for a country walk—possibly, though possibly not, merely to escape Mum’s far from tactful hints about Australia being so warm, the loveliness of Trethewin’s garden, and being very sick of the English winters. With the added bonus of Sarah’s and the children’s not really being settled in the local village. Dad had merely looked resigned when this one came up, so I concluded that he’d already tried to point out to her that they’d been there a bare month. The response would probably, in any case, have been: “Much more than a month!” In fact it had been five weeks: when Sarah made up her mind to something, it happened. And of course it would have been a pity to miss out on the one really attractive cottage that was up for sale… She was now discovering its deficiencies in the way of heating (no double glazing or central heating) and plumbing (very old downstairs loo whose chain was too heavy for Molly to work and was besides temperamental at the best of times, leaking kitchen taps, and a “charming” old bath on legs that had been unevenly resurfaced and was too high for Molly to get in and out of unaided). The pipes hadn’t yet frozen over but possibly that was a treat in store. The roof at least was sound, as Dad had pointed out to her.

    We strolled in silence for a while. Pooch hadn’t wanted to come with us: a Bad Sign, alas. Finally I said: “Dad, I think Pooch’s time has come.”

    He sighed. “Yes, poor old boy. His arthritis is bad, he can’t get into the car any more, and he’s very deaf now. Well, Colin Stuart is very sympathetic, Alex. He’ll come and put him quietly to sleep in his own home—it’s one of his special services.”

    “That sounds all right. A lot better than the last man.”

    “Yes: efficient medically but no understanding of small animals’ owners’ feelings. Good horse vet, and the farmers all approved of him, but apt to tell you brutally to have your cherished pet put down. Poor old Miss Peters from the village was in tears when he told her her prized bunnies were only fit for the pot.”

    “Oh, Lor’: I hadn’t realised he was that bad.”

    “Mm. It’s taken a while for everyone to realise that Colin’s not like him, but he’s a fixture now. Gets invited to innumerable tea parties!” he said with a grin.

    “Oops!”

    “Mm. Of course they can’t stand his wife—bit like being a country vicar, really.”

    “What’s wrong with her?” I said dopily.

    “Absolutely nothing. Completely pleasant, inoffensive young woman. That’s why.”

    “Huh? Oh! I get it!” I laughed.

    “Yes.” He took my arm and said: “So, tomorrow for Pooch, while your mother’s having her hair done?”

    “I think so, Dad, if Stuart can fit it in.”

    “I’ll ring him.” He got out his mobile phone and duly rang. “Fixed,” he said, ringing off. “Two-thirty. Don’t worry, Belinda won’t wonder why we don’t feel like lunch, hairdresser day is a whole girly day in town, lunch included.”

    Yes, well, he always had had considerable organising ability. “Good.”

    He squeezed my arm a little. “End of an era, eh?” he murmured.

    “Yes,” I agreed with a sigh that hadn’t been meant to be there.

    We strolled on in silence for a while, skirting the edge of the wood that Molly had dubbed “Hundred Acre Wood”, though there wasn’t a pine tree in sight for Pooh Bear’s hunny pots, headed slightly uphill, and emerged onto the slope of a wide stretch of downland. A bridle path ran up it. We walked silently uphill.

    The mid-February air was chilly but I gratefully drew in deep lungfuls of it at the top of the rise. Poor old Pooch… Never mind, he’d had a good life. Even used to lollop along with me if I managed to get out on a hack. Bugger. I sniffed a little. Beside me Dad gave a tiny sigh and hugged my arm. We stood looking out over a stretch of downland in silence.

    “I suppose,” he said at last, “they’ll be harvesting the grapes at Trethewin.”

    “Yes, all systems go. They were disappointed that I couldn’t stay, but I’d only have been in the way, really. Perry’s keeping me up to date. The weather’s very, very hot, forty-one yesterday and forty-three down in the city, but the picking’s going well and the big cooling tank that Andrews failed to destroy is faithfully doing its thing. Of course it was impossible to vet all the pickers, but they’re the same crowd they always get, plus one or two extra friends and relations vouched for by their mates, and he’s brought in four more old Army pals with large dogs who patrol all night and have promised to guard the resultant vintage with their lives until either it’s all sold or bloody Anson/Andrews is caught.”

    “Whichever is the longer?”

    “No, whichever comes first!”

    “Mm. Nevertheless it must be costing you a packet, old man.”

    “It’s worth it. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the wine, but nice Miranda would be devastated if anything happened to Ben, and then, Mike’s a very decent fellow who puts his heart into his work. They don’t deserve to be the victims of a spiteful shit who’s got his knife into me.”

    “No.”

    I realised what I’d just said. “Sorry. No pun intended, Dad.”

    “I know that, you idiot,” my father returned with his usual mildness.

    We turned to stroll gently along the top of the rise. In the distance, a few horses were visible at exercise.

    “Jeremy Cooper’s lot,” Dad discerned. “His Uncle Ralph’s finally given in and admitted he can’t manage any more. Most of his string went to his daughter Fiona, of course, she’s making a real name for herself these days, but half a dozen owners seem to have agreed that Jeremy could take theirs, so he’s got eight more, in all.”

    “Good grief. Racing won’t be the same without old Ralph Cooper,” I said limply.

    Dad had always followed steeplechasing, even though he hadn’t wanted me to race. I’ve never been too sure that Mum knew just how much interest he did take in it: she spent a lot of time on her own interests: gardening, of course, but she was also a keen quilter, in a club of like-minded ladies, a member of the local town’s biggest church choir, which wasn’t bad, usually tackled the Christmas Oratorio, and a very keen home cook, which entailed belonging to the local branch of the WI. Its internecine feuds alone would have been an absorbing pastime, but so far she’d managed to more or less keep out of them.

    “No. One can’t imagine the Cheltenham Gold Cup without at least two of his runners,” Dad now agreed.

    “Right. And he had something entered in the Grand National most years. Had a couple of great wins, didn’t he? Um, who’s got Flyaway?” I asked cautiously.

    “Fiona, of course.”

    I sagged slightly. “Oh, good. Not that Jeremy’s not competent.”

    Dad nodded. “But not in the same class. Oh—she’s dumped that useless Paul Rowntree, by the way. Not that she ever used his name, of course.”

    “Would you, if you wanted to train and your dad was Ralph Cooper?” I replied with a smile.

    “Well, hard to put oneself in the opposite sex’s shoes… Cooper-Rowntree, perhaps?”

    After a minute I said: “I see what you mean. Well, perhaps it was indicative, yes.”

    “Mm. A real marriage,” he said in his usual unemphatic way, “is a commitment.”

    Lightly I replied: “Of course; and Fiona’s always been one-track-minded.”

    He said nothing, just strolled on in silence.

    I walked beside him mentally kicking myself.

    Finally I said: “Sorry, Dad. I do see what you mean, and it’s one of the reasons I want to settle at Trethewin. If she’ll have me.”

    “Mm. You haven’t said anything to her yet?”

    “No,” I replied, smiling; “but I have kissed her, at last!”

    “Progress!” he approved with a laugh.

    It certainly had been. Being surrounded by helpers and minders was excellent in its way, but extremely hampering when one wanted to get near the object of one’s affections in any sort of privacy. However, on one of our early-morning rides when Gavin hadn’t managed to wake up in time, I had asked Cassie if she’d like to come out for a meal with me—just the two of us.

    She went very pink, nodded hard and said: “Yes, please, Alex.”

    I was so relieved I nigh to fell off good old Postman.

    Of course I didn’t have a clue where to go: the Hyatt’s dining-room frankly didn’t appeal and I hadn’t dined anywhere else in the city. And the thought of having to drive all the way back to Trethewin didn’t appeal, either. So I asked for suggestions, and she thought, shyly, that there was a place over in Stirling that I might like. I looked at the very pink cheeks and forbore to ask if it was the place the bloody doctor had taken her to.

    So we went. It was quite a drive from Trethewin, but at least we didn’t have to get all the way down into the city. The restaurant was a pleasant little place, the food was edible, if nothing special, and as by now I knew to avoid anything that called itself Brie in Australia, I refrained from the cheese course.

    Cassie looked at me doubtfully and said: “King Island Brie is supposed to be very good.”

    “But do you like it, Cassie?”

    She blushed that delicious pink blush of hers and admitted: “Not really. I always think it tastes a bit soapy.”

    “Oh, good,” I said. “In that case, we’re definitely soulmates!”

    More blushing, and she gave an awkward but pleased laugh and looked away.

    We’d had dessert, quite acceptable crème brûlée, so to finish we just had coffee, as I didn’t for an instant trust anything that might call itself brandy here, and she admitted that she didn’t really like liqueurs much, they were too sweet. I looked at the choices available, and winced. No wonder, if they were what she’d tried heretofore. Baileys Irish Cream, Irish Mist (it wasn’t an Irish pub, so one might well ask Why?), Limoncello. God. The alternative to coffee and liqueur was a selection of Irish (again) coffee, Jamaican coffee and similar. Actually, she admitted, she thought they were a bit yucky. Definitely a girl after my own heart!

    So we had espressos (“short black, full cup” being what one had to say in South Australia in order to get more than a thimbleful), nicely sugared. They were excellent.

    On the drive back I broke the news that I’d have to get back to England very soon.

    “I see,” she said in a small voice.

    I took a deep breath. This was much harder than facing up to either Andrews Junior or his father, knives or not. “I am definitely thinking about coming back here permanently, though.”

    “Are you?” she croaked.

    “Mm. The company appears to be going along perfectly well without me, and there’s a very competent fellow in charge, who more than deserves to step up.”

    “Yes,” Cassie agreed. “Neil Plowden, you’ve mentioned him.”

    I hadn’t thought she’d remember that! I found I was grinning like an ape. “That’s right. Er, well, I’ll have to see for myself how things are going, and make sure I can get the board to vote in Neil to take over. He’s popular with the younger execs, though they’re all jealous of him as well, of course, but some of the stuffy old brigade, not just execs but on the board, aren’t too keen on him. He’s got a very hands-on approach: came up through the technical side initially, as an aircraft engineer, and if there’s any conflict between management and the boys on the ground—or in the air!—he tends to be on the workers’ side. Since he reached his current position we’ve had no problems at all with the unions, so I’ll have to hammer that into their thick pin-striped-suited skulls.”

    She gave a smothered giggle. “Their skulls can’t be wearing pin-striped suits, Alex!”

    “No; it only feels like it,” I admitted ruefully.

    “Mm, I bet. I—I suppose it’ll take a while.”

    “Yes. There’s the flat in town and the house in the country to think about, too. I do know a very pleasant married couple who’d be happy to take the house off my hands, so that won’t be too much of a problem, but I’ll have to put the flat in the hands of an agent.”

    “I see. What about your furniture?”

    “Er… yeah. I have a few nice pieces in the house, but I’ve never really had time to furnish it properly. All the bedroom stuff’s modern, but there’s a pleasant Victorian dining suite, with balloon-back chairs. Mum chose the sofas and chairs in the sitting-room, they’re all rather flowery, not my taste at all. I suppose they could be re-upholstered… Not sure if it’d be worth bringing them out, really. The flat used to belong to Grandfather, it’s all heavy leather-covered chesterfields and armchairs, gentleman’s club style: chunky. Too heavy-looking, really. I’d like to keep his old desk, though: it’s a Victorian piece, mahogany, rather nice.”

    “You could put it in the study instead of that one of Mr Crozier’s!” she said eagerly.

    “Yes: I can’t say I care for it.” The thing was huge, lumpy and hideous. I don’t think it dated back further than the house itself did, but it was offensively Victorian Gothic in style. Panelling, carving, extraneous small lion or gargoyle heads everywhere that could possibly support a small head, including the drawer handles, a couple of carven foot-tall knights leaning on their swords worked into its front, and half a dozen separate and quite distinct fake coats of arms incised in its panels. At least they were only vanished—very darkly, like the rest of it—not brightly painted, but ye gods!

    “You could send it to auction… I think you might have to take it into town yourself, Alex: if they had to collect it the price it’d fetch would never cover the haulage charge. Mum said that Mrs Crozier didn’t like the dining suite they had when she started working for them and she sent it to auction, but though it was almost new and in very good condition she only made ten dollars out of it because they charged so much for getting it there. She was furious.”

    “Needless to say!” I said with a laugh.

    She gave a guilty giggle. “Well, yeah! But it was a bit on the nose, really, wasn't it?”

    “Yes. Well: back of Perry’s ute?”

    “That’d work!” she said with another giggle.

    “Er… Gavin’s not attached to it, is he?” I asked fearfully.

    “No, only to the blimmin’ Lazy-Boy,” she said with a sigh. –I still tended to think of it as that, though I now knew it was a brand name, La-Z-Boy.

    “That’s a blessing. I really don’t think I could live with the desk. Every time one opens a drawer one encounters a damned lumpy gargoyle’s head.”

    “Ugh, yeah, ya would. I never thought of that. Heck, how did Mr Crozier stand it?” she wondered.

    “I don’t suppose he used it for business much, Cassie.”

    “No, come to think of it, he really only came up to Trethewin to relax. He left the stables pretty much to the manager. Ted Thorpe, his name was. He was very nice. He was an older man, so he was quite happy to retire when Ralph sold up. Dad said he got a golden handshake; Leanne was wild about it, of course. Mr Crozier left him and Dad each a kind of pension in his will, too, wasn’t that nice? Um, that wasn’t the word… But it was that sort of thing.”

    “An annuity?”

    “Yes, that’s it! That’s how Mum and Dad could afford to retire, you see.”

    “Decent man, old Crozier,” I murmured.

    “Yes, he was.”

    I went back to brooding on my furniture. Finally I sighed and admitted: “Well, we’ve plenty of contacts in the long-distance furniture removal business, I can get stuff properly packed, no problem, but it’s deciding what to bring, really…”

    “Mm. You need to take a kind of fresh look at it when you get back, and imagine it at Trethewin. Think of the way you’d like the rooms to look and whether it would fit.”

    “Er… I don’t think I can. No visual imagination or something.”

    “In that case it might be sensible just to bring the bits you really like.”

    “Yes, I think you’re right. I wish you could come with me and help me choose!” I burst out without thinking.

    “Um, I can’t,” she said in a strangled voice. “I can’t leave Gavin. Mum thinks she can cope, but she’s been really slowing down and her eyesight’s deteriorating: she had to get new glasses just before you came out, but she simply can’t drive at night any more. I mean, she was okay on the straight roads to Uluru in broad daylight, but she’s very unsure of herself up in the hills now. She’d never be able to drive even as far as Stirling to do the shopping. Dad’s okay with driving but he gets tired easily these days. He never used to have a nap in the afternoons but now he always does. He's in his seventies, he’s nine years older than Mum. I was a late baby, she was already forty-two when I was born, she’s sixty-six now. Having to cope up at Trethewin’d be too much for them.”

    “That’s okay: I quite understand.”

    “Thank you, Alex.”

    I drove on, gripping the steering wheel hard. If only one could give Fate, or whatever malign force it was that determined the destinies of mice and men and lovely girls who sacrificed themselves for their little nephew and their aging parents a bloody hard kick in the bum!

    We reached the lower gate in silence. I’d come that way without thinking, though really, going further up the hill and turning into the track to the main entrance to the house would have been more convenient, if I just dumped the car on the sweep instead of trekking round to the garage. I’d been on auto-pilot, my feelings were in such a turmoil.

    I got out to open the gate and then just stood there, hands clenched on the top bar.

    I heard her door open but didn’t turn my head. She came over to me and said: “What’s up? Is it stuck? Gavin will’ve been playing with the latch again, drat him.”

    “Uh—no. Just thinking…” I turned round and said on a desperate note: “Cassie, may I kiss you?”

    Cassie just lifted up her face in the glow of the headlights and said simply: “Yes.”

    So I kissed her. It was at the same time terrifically exciting and yet… normal? Was that the word? I couldn’t really think, but I felt somehow, silly cliché though it sounds, as if I’d come home and this was how it was meant to be.

    “Help,” she said very faintly when I at last drew breath.

    I panted. “I can’t help you, I’m so dizzy I may fall over at any minute.”

    “Me, too!” she gulped.

    After that I had to kiss her again and hug her luscious person in its lightweight summer frock very, very closely to me… Ooh, er! Gosh.

    “God, I’ll have to stop,” I croaked eventually. “Or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

    “Um, me, too!” she gasped.

    “Thank God for that. Look, I know it’s too, um, precipitate or whatever the bloody word should be, and I’m far too old for you and I have to dash back to England and leave you behind, but will you wait for me?”

    “Yes, of course.”

    “Er… No backsliding with extremely suitable young medical men?”

    “Don’t be silly!” she cried indignantly. “I don’t even like him!”

    “That’s good,” I admitted shakily. “Uh—well, I suppose we’d better open the bloody gate. Was it supposed to keep the horses in?”

    “No, to discourage people who wanted the cellar door from heading up this way.”

    “Oh, of course! –Somehow my brain’s gone fuzzy,” I admitted.

    “Actually, if ya wanna know, mine’s been fuzzy for ages and ages, ever since that first day,” said Cassie, holding her chin well up.

    “I do want to know! Darling Cassie!” I said, swooping on her and holding her very, very tight.

    After quite some time during which I blatantly pressed myself against her and she pressed up against me, she said shakily: “We can’t possibly do it, there’s too many people in the house.”

    “How true. We’ll have to work something out. When are Gavin’s next school holidays?”

    “Won’t that be worse?”

    “Er—no. Send him down to stay with Fred and Stella?”

    She gave an explosive giggle. “Good idea!”

    “Yes. Good, good, good,” I said, hugging her harder than ever. Uh—Jesus. “Er—better stop,” I admitted, stopping.

    “Mm.”

    “But when?”

    “Eh?” she replied vaguely.

    “When are the blessed boy’s next hols?”

    I could see her smiling. “One doesn’t say hols out here, old chap.”

    “Hah, hah. Easter?”

    “Um… ye-es. Yes, we’ve had Australia Day… There’s ANZAC Day but sometimes they combine it with Easter… Well, about then.”

    “Hm. I’ll try to be back by early March. When is this, uh, ANZAC Day? An Australian thing, is it?”

    “It commemorates the Gallipoli landing of the Aussie and Kiwi troops, ya nit,” my beloved informed me.

    “Oh, good Lord! In the First World War: of course! I’m so sorry.”

    “That’s okay, I couldn’t tell you what on earth Maundy Thursday is. –I saw it in an English book. ANZAC Day’s always on April the 25th. But Easter goes by the moon, doesn’t it? It seems really weird, when it’s supposed to be a Christian holiday.”

    “My thought exactly. Oh, well, we could see if we can get your parents to take him for a weekend, earlier.”

    “Yes,” said Cassie happily.

    I turned back blindly to the gate and opened— No, I didn’t.

    “Dammit, the bloody boy has fucked it up!”

    She collapsed in giggles, and I sucked my hand and glared over it.

    “Sorry!” she gasped. “Shall I have a go?”

    “No, we’ll go round the other way,” I decided heavily. “Come on.”

    We drove round the other way. “Um, Alex, you’d better put something on that hand,” she said as we reached the front sweep. “When did you last have a tetanus injection?”

    I took a deep breath. “Funnily enough, when I was sampling the delights of sunny, tropical Bryron Bay!”

    “Good,” returned Cassie on a grim note. “That’s recent enough.”

    I gave in and sighed. “Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago…”

    “Mm. –I bet he’ll find some way of getting at you after you come back, Alex. You’ll have to be awfully, awfully careful.”

    “Yes. If I can’t manage to buy a handgun, I’ll borrow one of Jim’s.”

    “Good idea,” she replied calmly. “I’ve got Dad’s rifle. I wouldn’t mind if he did front up. I’d give him bloody knives and bombs!”

    I swallowed. I did think I knew her fairly well by now, but— Well, Jim had been right, hadn’t he? Ruthless. The female was deadlier than the male.

    I hadn’t told Dad all the details, naturally, but I had included the bits about the gate and the rifle, so he said with a smile as we turned to walk back to the house: “I hope you did put something on the hand?”

    I cleared my throat. “Not precisely. She inspected it narrowly, ordered me into my bathroom, washed it thoroughly, inspected my bathroom cabinet, N.B.G., bustled off to inspect other bathroom cabinets, having adjured me not to dare to touch it while she was gone, and returned with a large wad of cotton wool, a long gauze bandage, several small safety pins, and a bottle of Stella’s dreaded mercurochrome.”

    He shook all over.

    “It took days and days to—”

    “Yes!” he gasped. “Don’t go on!”

    “—to wear off,” I finished defiantly. “It wasn’t funny. Everyone I met asked solicitously after it, from little Tanya up to yer actual Andrew Zeff, Q.C.!” Dad refrained from asking, so I explained: “Er, I asked him if he could recommend a solicitor and he volunteered. Thought I’d better make some testamentary dispositions, just in case.”

    “Of course old man, very wise.”

    “I’ve left Trethewin jointly to Cassie and Gavin,” I said abruptly.

    He patted my shoulder. “Good.”

    “Yes, well, if bloody Anson/Andrews does get me, they’ll be looked after for life… Zeff was rather surprised at the bit for Jim Hawkes—he knows the firm, you see—but I didn’t explain.”

    “No need to,” he agreed.

    “No. Of course I had to pay for the privilege: dinner with the Zeffs and a choice couple of even worse pseuds. No, well, that’s a bit unfair, they did seem genuinely keen on art and music, but the name dropping was deafening, nonetheless. I didn’t let on that the only one I recognised was Philip Glass, and I can’t stand his stuff!”

    “Well done,” he said mildly. “Er—did you give Zeff any indication that you were thinking of living at Trethewin?”

    “No. The fewer people who know the better.”

    “Yes. Good.”

    “Uh… Dad?”

    “Mm?”

    I bit my lip. “I’d love to have you and Mum come out, if you think you’d both be happy there, but don’t let her make any definite plans until that bloody murderous bastard’s been caught, will you?”

    He sighed. “I’ve been mulling it over… Well, remember what we all said after 9/11?”

    “Uh—not to pop out to see my old school friend in Abu Dhabi?” I groped. “I won’t say Ahmed wouldn’t hurt a fly—he owns a charming collection of fly whisks, and he’s the best shot with a small-bore rifle I know—but he’s certainly opposed to all forms of terrorism. Very decent chap.”

    “Not that.”

    “I remember Mum forbade me absolutely to fly Emirates ever again— No?”

    “No,” he said with a sigh. “We said that carrying on as normal was the only possible response to the bloody terrorists, remember?”

    “Oh. Look, we did, but it’s different when it comes down to cases! There’s no need to put yourselves voluntarily at risk!”

    “The alternative seems to be to have you go off to the other side of the world and hardly ever see you for an indeterminate period which may well be the rest of our lives. I thought the damned Australian police might at least make a push to find the bastard after the bomb attempt, but apparently not.”

    “They did their best,” I said heavily.

    “Well, quite.”

    “No, well, the situation’s complicated by their bloody federalism. We already had three different states involved, what with the initial fire and embezzlement at Trethewin, the knife attack in Byron Bay and the gallery fire in Melbourne, not to say the forgeries turning up here, there and everywhere.”

    “Alex, there must be some big reliable London investigative firm you could hire! Or—or New York? Pinkerton’s?” he groped.

    I grimaced. “They’d be strangers, Dad, the accents would stick out like sore thumbs. Australians are by and large intensely parochial and heavily prejudiced against all foreigners. On a personal level, they’ll be very pleasant to you, and God knows I’ve met some extremely decent people. When it comes to foreigners asking nosy questions, however, they’ll clam up. It’s no different from the village here when the authorities thought that creepy dog poisoner was holed up locally. Terrific indignation and complete non-cooperation to the point of misdirection.”

    “Er—well, they did eventually find him eighty miles away, old son.”

    “That isn’t my point. Communities tend to band together against outsiders. Jim Hawkes and his people are locals, they can indulge in the sort of cosy chat in the right vernacular that no outside agency personnel, however good at their jobs, could possibly do.”

    “Mmm… I see what you mean. But are there enough of them?”

    “I’ve told Jim I’ll foot the bill for the entire agency to concentrate on the job. So far we know that both Andrewses have tended to rotate back close to home. Which as a matter of fact isn’t surprising,” I added slowly. “Australians do, on the whole. Sure, they’re great ones for heading off abroad for holidays: Bali and Thailand for beaches and sex for the younger or more dissolute, and Britain, Europe or Japan for the older and slightly more culturally aware; but the parochialism applies to their own state. They tend to live where they were born. Take Perry and Junie, for instance: they were doing well in Queensland but were both keen to come home to South Australia. All the Aussies I met except Pete were working in the state where they grew up.”

    “What, really?”

    “Mm.”

    “Zeff as well?”

    “Certainly. Very big fish in very small pond.”

    “I see. Well, fingers crossed that Hawkes is on the right track,” he said heavily. “We’ll hold off for six months, Alex. But Belinda won’t let it rest, you know.”

    “No.” We strolled on along the edges of the pretty wood, the still-bare trees making an intricate tracery, darker grey against a pale grey sky. Shining in amongst the damp, dead, mottled brown mass of the fallen leaves a few white heads of snowdrops showed bravely.

    “What in Hell has Mum got against Ahmed, anyway?” I asked idly. “She’s always had a down on him, ever since School.”

    “He’s an Arab, Alex,” my father replied heavily. “Wogs begin at Calais, you know.”

    I stopped dead. “What?”

    “Mm.” He looked at my face. “It’s not rational, and she doesn’t know she does it. If you asked her what she’s got against Ahmed, she’d say nothing, and probably believe it.”

    “Uh… She did say once she didn’t like the look of his eyes,” I ventured.

    “Was this when you were at school?”

    “Mm.”

    “Did you ask her why not?”

    I sighed. “Yes. I was very indignant. She just said there was something about them.”

    “There you are, then. Not rational.”

    “No.”

    He must have felt my doubtful glance: he smiled, took my arm, leant on it rather heavily and said: “I married her because she was very, very pretty, very sweet-natured, completely innocent as regards the prejudice thing, and turned down my first three proposals.”

    “What?” I replied limply.

    “Yes; the third time she cried her eyes out, so I wasn’t entirely disheartened!” he said with a chuckle.

    I smiled weakly. Added to which he had, for all his mild manner, the typical Cartwright determination to go for what he wanted, whatever the cost. “What on earth did she think was wrong with you?”

    “Too much money. Didn’t want a lifestyle of the rich and famous,” he said with a grimace. “Did you know that the late George VI had exactly the same problem? When he was Duke of York, of course. Nice Scottish girl in that case, didn’t want the palaver of being one of that family, even though it was never expected that he’d accede to the throne.”

    “I see,” I said limply. “So how did you manage it?”

    “Well, this was the Swinging Sixties, remember. I moved out of the with-it mews flat in Chelsea and sold my lovely Lotus Elan,” he said on a wry note.

    “Dad!”

    “Yes, well, if that was what it took… Bought a very down-market little second-hand Austin—in a spirit of complete hypocrisy, I might add—and wrote her a note telling her I’d changed my lifestyle and I’d be outside her father’s gate at such-and-such a time. I was a bit late, had problems with the bloody thing’s gears. Chickened out on going up to the door, just blew the horn—calculated to enrage her father, incidentally. She came rushing out, more to stop me doing it than to welcome me, and burst into tears when she saw the car. After that it was more or less plain sailing.”

    I looked at him limply. “Was that when you moved into the place Mum always refers to as ‘our dear little flat’?”

    “Yeah. More of a bedsit, really, it was very poky. On the ground floor of a place in Isleworth together with two of the same. Belinda had pots of geraniums on the windowsill.”

    I looked at him limply. “Isleworth!”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “How long did it take you to get to work?”

    “To the office? A while. One could drive over to Osterley or Hounslow East and leave the car there, take the Tube—the Piccadilly line—or endure the bus. The agony didn’t last long, however: when he realised you were on the way the bloody landlord chucked us out: no kids allowed. The furniture was his, so we turned up at Dad’s place in the country with our suitcases, a pile of bedding, and a back seat full of pots of scarlet geraniums.”

    I swallowed.

    “After that,” he said musingly, “nothing was too good for the blessed babe…” He grinned at me.

    “I see,” I said weakly.

    “Mm.”

    We strolled on towards the house. After a while I croaked: “Dad, the flat in Chelsea…”

    “Well, yes. Dad had bought the building outright about five years earlier—good investment.”

    I swallowed. It had come to me from Grandfather along with various other London properties.

    “She still doesn’t know,” he said serenely.

    I had to laugh—but it wasn’t the sort of relationship I’d have wanted.

    Next day, of course, we had to say goodbye to dear old Pooch. We waited until Mum was safely out of the way and then popped down to the village and bought him some fillet steak—it’s that sort of village, Sarah’s cottage was just about the last to be unrenovated. Most of the others were incredibly tarted up, with tacked-on “conservatories”, hideous modern kitchens extending out the back where no kitchen had ever been, and in many cases brand-new lead lighting. Several also had thatch where no thatch had ever been—that sort of place.

    Then we came back, made a fuss of him, gave him the steak, and sat down in the sitting-room with him in his usual place on the big old rug before the fire, and waited for the vet.

    Yes, well. Colin Stuart was very efficient and very kind, all we could have hoped for.

    When Mum got back there were floods of tears, but by that time our friend Johnnie Walker had well fortified us. She burned the dinner but as it was only macaroni cheese, which neither of us particularly care for, it didn’t matter. It had used up the last of the cheese so we fell back on bread and honey. After that Mr Walker saw us off to Bedfordshire.

    “Well,” I said limply to Dad over the breakfast table next morning, “I’ve got Figgy, I suppose that’s something.”

    “Yes, of course. How are he and Gavin getting on?”

    I took a piece of toast and looked at it without much interest. “Fine. Though the notion that dogs need to be walked regularly hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”

    “Keep it up.”

    “Well, at the moment he’s got Perry Hawkes, Pete Goodwin and Ken Larkin on his tail, I think he’s going to get the point.”

    “Good,” he replied, smiling. “Have some marmalade, Alex?”

    “I don’t fancy it after a dinner of honey, really.”

    “Marmite, then.” He passed it to me.

    I spread it on the toast, noting: “Most Aussies despise it, I’ve discovered. It’s Vegemite all the way. Three people have now sung the Vegemite song to me.”

    “What?” he said weakly, putting his coffee cup down.

    “That coffee’s too strong, Mum’ll do her nut,” I noted meanly.

    Airily he replied: “What the eye doesn’t see. –An advertising jingle, is it?”

    “Mm. The sort that one doesn’t want to retain but that infests the brain for days. Sung by a group of children, distinctly high-pitched.” Meanly I warbled the first line: “‘We’re happy little Vege-mites—’ Sorry!”

    He winced. “Who sang it for you, if I dare ask?”

    “One, Fred Forrest—Gavin told him he was being sissy; two, dear little Tanya Hawkes—”

    “I wish I’d been there!” he interrupted, smiling all over his face.

    “Yes, isn’t she the dearest little thing? And three— No, I’ll let you guess,” I decided.

    “Uh… Stella? Correcting Fred’s version?”

    “A likely scenario, granted, but no.”

    Dad had been most impressed by Miss Evans at Christmas. “If it was Christina Evans I’ll eat my hat. Unless she was taking the Mick?”

    “No.”

    “Um… Miranda!”

    “Easy to envisage, true, but no.”

    “Very well, I’ll look for the most unlikely person! Perry.”

    “Close but no cigar.”

    “Not Pete?”

    “Ditto.”

    He gave me a baffled glare. “The macho Mike, then.”

    “He is, rather, isn’t he? No.” I looked at him blandly.

    “It can’t have been that smoothie city lawyer!” he said wildly.

    I collapsed in sniggers. “No!”

    “Pity, that would have been good. I give up, Alex.”

    “It was Ken.”

    His jaw dropped. “The chap who owns Fang? Why?”

    “It was early in the morning, not long before I left. Most of them were still asleep. Ken had finished his breakfast and was preparing to venture out into the wilds of the property to do the boundary, unquote. He was putting himself up a sandwich lunch. I urged him to have something else—there was plenty of stuff in the fridge, including the remains of a roast chicken—but he just grinned and said he liked Vegemite, and sang the song. Then he exited with his sandwiches, a thermos of tea, a bottle of water and a couple of bananas.”

    “This,” said my father grimly, “is apocryphal.”

    “No. He’s a baritone—very nice voice, actually. Ludicrously incongruous with the bloody jingle.”

    “I suppose I believe you. Does he belong to a choir or anything?”

    “I didn’t ask. Would you?”

    Dad of course hadn’t met him, but I’d described his solid person and the matching personality with some feeling, so he admitted with a laugh. “Probably not! It’d be rather like asking a tank if it could dance a minuet!”

    Precisely. We ate toast and drank far-too-strong coffee companionably.

    After quite some time Dad said: “Er, Alex, I’ve probably been reading too many of those crime novels that your mother insists on borrowing from the library for me, but I was wondering… This’ll sound mad. It is mad.”

    Help, what was coming next? “Go on.”

    “You, er, mentioned that you were thinking of replacing the big desk at Trethewin with that old one of Dad’s.”

    “Ye-es… Oh! Of course Grandfather’s desk is all yours if you’d like it, Dad.”

    “No thanks, dear boy, it shrieks ‘work’ at me. No, I was thinking about the other one.”

    “Crozier’s? It’s hideous, but if you’d like it—”

    “No, don’t need a desk at all, thanks! No, uh… Well, hearing about Christina’s revelation of the hidden cupboard in the master bedroom made me wonder… If that was the sort of chap he was, could there be a secret drawer in the desk?”

    What? Shaken, I replied: “You have been reading too much rubbish, Dad!”

    “I know. She got another lot yesterday,” he said with a sigh. “The kindly young librarians put them aside for her: age-appropriate or some such. But, um, might be worth checking it. You said yourself that the study was barely affected by the fire. Could Andrews in fact have been planning to investigate the desk while the house was unusable, and your installing Perry and Fifi stopped him in his tracks? –An explosion down at the winery would have been a bloody good distraction, too, you know.”

    Jesus.

    When the stupefaction had more or less worn off I managed: “There’s at least one very strong flaw in that theory, Dad.”

    “Go on, then.”

    “Andrews post-dates old Crozier’s time. How on earth could he have got to know about such a thing?”

    “Good point,” he conceded. “Though there is a resident blabbermouth at Trethewin. In fact back then there’d have been two.”

    “Gavin? But surely he’d have mentioned something that exciting to his relatives, too!”

    “Maybe.”

    “And who was the oth— Oh: Stella. Cassie did say she was completely taken in by Andrews. But Crozier was a very shrewd businessman, you know; I can’t see him confiding in her.”

    “No… And Christina never liked Andrews, did she?”

    “No, and if she was aware of such a thing she’d have mentioned it along with the cupboard.”

    “I agree,” he admitted. “I was wondering where the desk came from.”

    “Hell?” I suggested politely.

    He swallowed, hah, hah! “I can’t say I ever looked at it. Is it that bad?”

    “Yes.”

    He was now trying not to laugh. “Lor’. Nevertheless some misguided artisan must have made it—or was it a commercial thing, do you think?”

    “No, has to be a one-off. Well—knights, gargoyles, lions’ heads, fake coats of arms?”

    “The full works,” he acknowledged weakly. “If Crozier had it made to order, he could well have requested a secret drawer.”

    “I agree that that’s perfectly possible, but that still leaves us with the question how did Andrews get to know about it?”

    “We-ell… Definitely too many mystery novels, here, but if his frightful father was well in with the arts and crafts crowd? I know he’s long since put his foot in it with the fine art Establishment, but that’s not the same thing, is it? They’re usually deadly enemies, and I don’t imagine it’s any different in Australia.”

    I looked at him limply. “It’s certainly a theory.”

    “Mm.”

    I thought it over. “I’ll get Jim onto it. It’s a long shot, but if it helps us to find any Andrews contacts at all, it might be worth it. But on the other hand…”

    “Yes?”

    “We know,” I said slowly, “that bloody Anson/Andrews has always had an eye on the main chance, and isn’t beyond nicking anything nickable that comes to hand. Don’t you think it’s likely that he spent some time snooping round the house—Stella was there, but she’d have been in the kitchen most of the time, and it wouldn’t have taken him long to get on top of her routines, and Fred seems to have spent almost all of his time outdoors. What’s the betting that he had a good look round the study, fiddled with the desk on the off-chance, and found the secret drawer?”

    Dad didn’t point out that I was now saying “the secret drawer”, rather than doubting its existence; he said: “You know, that sounds very likely indeed, Alex. But in that case, why didn’t he abstract whatever was in it there and then?’

    I rubbed my chin. “Good question….”

    We looked at each other.

    Finally Dad stuck his neck out. “Too heavy?”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Well—krugerrands? Gold bars?”

    “Er—a significant number of gold bars would certainly be too heavy to stroll off with unobtrusively,” I agreed. “But he could have nipped in any night.”

    “Mm-mm… Panicked when he heard it was you who’d bought the place and lit out, thinking he could come back quietly at his leisure?”

    “It’s possible. Oh—hang on! This could have thrown a rub in his way: new locks throughout! My lawyers checked out just what the situation was when Ralph Crozier suggested he leave the contents, found that although the main doors were locked the house wasn’t alarmed, and demanded that a system be put in. Then they found that the firms that do that are as keenly efficient as the rest of commercial South Australia, and there’d be a delay of something like three months, so they insisted on new locks, not just for the main doors but for all the rooms which contained furniture or appliances. When Cassie took over she was given a set of keys. It’s possible that Andrews left it too late and when he got there the place was locked up tight as a drum. Any copies of keys to the main doors that he had would no longer have worked.”

    “Sounds good to me. Let me think… Study window?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows.

    “Unlikely; it’s one of the few downstairs rooms without French doors. Its windows are quite high. He’d have had to bring his own ladder. There’s one on the property but it’s in the shed, which was padlocked.”

    “Mm. No sign of anyone trying to force any of those French doors?”

    “No.”

    He raised his eyebrows again. “Possible, then?”

    “Mm, just.”

    “But?”

    “I’ve just remembered that according to report old Crozier declared—when he had the winery’s deep cellars put in, think it was—that he wouldn’t care if the house burned down.”

    “Gold,” said my father sedately, “doesn’t burn. It merely melts.”

    “Uh—true.”

    We looked at each other weakly. I at least was imagining Mr Crozier, Senior, endeavouring to haul out a very large lump of gold from the burnt ruins of his house after a bushfire, and I rather think Dad was, too.

    “I think I need another coffee,” he said at last.

    I looked nervously at the door but there was no sign of Mum. “I’ll make it, Dad.”

    Having fortified myself with a fresh belt of well-sugared caffeine, I said: “Look, maybe Crozier had a secret drawer and maybe it was full of gold ingots, but if so, why the Hell didn’t he tell his son about it?”

    Dad looked wry. “No-one believes they’re going to die, Alex. He wasn’t ill, was he?”

    “Er—no. It was very sudden. A stroke, I think Christina said.”

    “There you are, then.” He looked at his watch, got up and went to rinse out his coffee cup at the sink bench.

    There was one piece of cold toast left. I buttered it lavishly and ate it slowly with enjoyment. One of my secret vices, cold toast with far too much butter. Highly illegal in Mum’s house, of course.

    “Okay,” I said as Dad came and sat down again and indulged in one of his secret vices, to wit, a spoonful of marmalade, neat. “Possibly there’s a horde of miser’s gold in the desk that Andrews knew about and hasn’t been able to cart away yet. On the other hand, there’s an earlier theory that would fit this scenario, isn’t there? Possibly Andrews did find this secret drawer, it was empty, and he used it to secrete the incriminating whatsit that we thought he might have been after. It would account for the fire and the bomb in the same way, if we allow that the bomb was intended to create a diversion and lead everyone away from the house.”

    Dad nodded slowly. “One’s as likely as the other, really. I mean, what sort of idiot hides incriminating evidence in a house that he knows is about to be sold?”

    I raised my eyebrows slightly. “A very vain one?”

    “Er—you have a point, old son.”

    And that was it for that morning’s discussion, as a suspicious soprano voice then said from the doorway: “Charles, have you been drinking strong coffee again? You know it’s not good for you.”

    He got up, smiling, and said smoothly without actually committing a falsehood: “Alex made it, darling. His metabolism can stand it. Let me make you a nice pot of tea.”

    Yes, well. That’s Dad for you.

    I did email Jim and ask him to check where the desk came from and if its creator had been a pal of Andrews Senior’s. Naturally he emailed back asking why on earth? I didn’t fancy putting anything in writing so I just replied that it’d be worth seeing if he might have been pally with the arts and crafts set. He replied with the succinct message: “It’s your dough.”

    I rang Cassie that evening and nearly forgot to mention the desk at all, it was so wonderful to hear her voice. I hadn’t meant to, but I found myself telling her about poor old Pooch. She was very sympathetic and I could hear in her voice that she was really upset for my sake, bless her. A considerable change from the self-seeking, self-absorbed cows I’d been seeing over the last umpteen years. When I finally remembered about the desk and asked if she’d ever heard anything odd about it she said in surprise that she hadn’t, and couldn’t imagine why I was asking. And reminded me that I wouldn’t get anything for it if I had to pay the auctioneers to cart it off. I thought of what Dad had revealed about his early relationship with Mum, and made a face. When I got back to Australia I would wise her up about exactly how much I was worth. I didn’t intend to hide anything from her.

    “What, darling?”

    Oh. Gavin wanted to speak to me. “Shouldn’t he be at school?”

    “No, it’s Saturday.”

    “Uh—oh. It would be, it’s Friday night here. Put him on, then.”

    “Hey, Alex! Guess what! Fang, he can beg, and Ken reckons he can teach Figgy, too!”

    Oh, good. A dog that could beg. We really wanted that. “Great,” I croaked. “So Figgy’s okay, is he?”

    “Yeah, ’course! He treed a possum yesterday!”

    “Good for Figgy,” I said weakly.

    “Yeah. He’s a great dog! He hasn’t sniffed out mean ole Tony Brownloe, though.”

    “Well, that’s a good sign, we don’t want him hanging round the place, do we?”

    “Nah. Are you in your house?”

    “No, at my parents’ place.”

    “Aw, right. Have you been up the London Eye?”

    Er… Recently, or ever? “No, I’m afraid I’ve never bothered, Gavin.”

    “Heck! I would!”

    “Yes, well, Ben has,” I admitted. “He loved it. But Molly doesn’t like heights, she didn’t fancy it. Mum and Sarah are the same, so Dad took Ben up.”

    “Say I came over there…”

    I could just imagine the eyes narrowing! I grinned. “Yes?”

    “Maybe him and you and me could go up in it!”

    “Why not?”

    “Gavin, what are you saying?” said a suspicious female voice in the background.

    “Nothink!”

    “Much. We don’t invite ourselves to visit other people, geddit?”

    “Um, we could stay in a motel,” the valiant boy returned.

    I could hear her sigh. “You’re being silly. Say goodbye and hang up.”

    “I haven’t finished talking!”

    Silence.

    “Was there something else, Gavin?” I asked.

    “Sort of,” he admitted.

    “Well, go on.”

    “Like, well, Ring-a-Ding and them, they’re all old, eh?”

    “NO!” shouted Cassie in the background. “Give me that!”

    Some panting ensued and then she came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Alex. Ignore him.”

    I grinned. “Wants me to buy him a horse, does he?”

    “I’ve forbidden him absolutely to even drop a hint,” she replied grimly.

    “Got it. Tell him,” I said on a sly note, “that one never knows what may happen in the future, mm? –I’ve spoken to that couple I told you about, by the way, and they’ve made me a very fair offer for the house.”

    “Oh,” she said squeakily.

    “Yes, oh! I’ve still got stuff to sort out in London; I’m going up there on Monday. I’ll ring again soon, okay? Take care of yourself, darling Cassie.”

    “You, too!” she gulped. “Bye-bye.”

    I was hanging up when I heard Gavin say loudly: “Whaddareya crying for? He’s okay!”

    I put the phone away, smiling a little mistily. Darlingest Cassie! The board could bloody well come to heel next week! I was still the major shareholder, after all.

    Next morning I told Dad about Gavin’s side of the conversation and he enjoyed it as much as I had.

    “You know,” I said, “there are a couple of things I’ve been meaning to ask Master Gavin, but somehow they kept slipping my mind.”

    “Oh, really?” he returned, grinning.

    “Mm. Firstly, his reaction was distinctly odd when the stable loft was mentioned. Andrews used the flat up there, you know. I’m wondering if he saw him up to something.”

    “I see. And?”

    I rubbed my chin. “It may or may not be connected. I never did find out how he got concussion; he was still recuperating when I arrived at Trethewin.”

    “You said,” he agreed, nodding.

    “Yeah. Fell off the stable roof spying on Andrews? But he was well away by the time I got there. Fell off the burnt remains after going up there in search of whatever it was he saw in the first place? You know what children are: if an earlier guilty episode was involved, he wouldn’t have breathed a syllable of it.”

    “Mmm… You’d better ask him as soon as you get back, Alex.”

    “Yes. It’d be bloody ironic if the clue to Andrews’s shenanigans and even to his whereabouts was in the kid’s head all along, wouldn’t it?” I said drily.

Next chapter:

https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/06/south-australia-with-little-touch-of.html