A Delicate Truth A Novel

part of the original problem.’
    ‘Are you part of the original problem?’
    ‘No. Just a guilty bystander.’
    ‘And when you’ve put your case together, what will you be then?’
    ‘Out of a job, most likely,’ he says, and in an effort at light relief reaches out for the cat, which has been sitting all this while at her feet, but it ignores him.
    ‘What time does your father get up in the morning?’ he asks.
    ‘Kit does early. Mum lies in.’
    ‘Early being what?’
    ‘Sixish.’
    ‘And the Marlows, how about them?’
    ‘Oh, they’re up at crack of dawn. Jack milks for Farmer Phillips.’
    ‘And how far from the Manor is the Marlows’ house?’
    ‘No distance. It’s the old Manor cottage. Why?’
    ‘I think Kit should be told about Jeb’s death as soon as possible.’
    ‘Before he gets it from anyone else and blows a gasket?’
    ‘If you put it like that.’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘The problem is, we can’t use the landline to the Manor. Or his cellphone. And certainly not email. That’s very much Kit’s opinion too. He made a point of it when he wrote to me.’
    He paused, expecting her to speak, but her gaze remained on him, challenging him to go on.
    ‘So I’m suggesting you call Mrs Marlow first thing in the morning and ask her to pop over to the Manor and bring Kit to the phone in the cottage. That’s assuming you’d like to break the news to him yourself rather than have me do it.’
    ‘What lie do I tell her?’
    ‘There’s a fault on the Manor line. You can’t get through direct. No panic, but there’s something special you need to talk to Kit about. I thought you could use one of these. They’re safer.’
    She picks up the black burner and, like someone who’s never seen a cellphone before, turns it speculatively in her long fingers.
    ‘If it makes it any easier, I can hang around,’ he says, careful to indicate the meagre sofa.
    She looks at him, looks at her watch: 2 a.m. She fetches an eiderdown and a pillow from her bedroom.
    ‘Now you’ll be too cold,’ he objects.
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ she replies.



6
    A stubborn Cornish mist had settled itself in the valley. For two days now no westerly had managed to drive it away. The arched brick windows of the stable that Kit had made his office should by rights have been full of budding leaves. Instead they were blanked out with the deadly whiteness of a shroud: or so it seemed to him as he quartered the harness room in his agitation, much as three years ago he had pounded his hated prison bedroom in Gibraltar waiting for the call to arms.
    It was half past six in the morning and he was still wearing the wellingtons he’d put on to hurry across the orchard at Mrs Marlow’s urging to take the phone call from Emily on the spurious grounds that she couldn’t get through on the Manor line. Their conversation, if you could call it that, was with him now, albeit out of sequence: part information, part exhortation, and all of it a knife thrust through the gut.
    And just as in Gibraltar, so here in the stables he was muttering and cursing at himself, half aloud: Jeb. Jesus Christ, man. Utter bloody nonsense  …  We were on a roll  …  Everything to go for – all of this interspersed by imprecations of bastards, bloody murderous bastards and the like.
    ‘You’ve got to lie low, Dad, for Mum’s sake, not just for yours. And for Jeb’s widow. It’s only for a few days, Dad. Just believe whatever Jeb’s psychiatrist said to you, even if she wasn’t Jeb’s psychiatrist. Dad, I’m going to hand you over to Toby. He can say it better than me.’
    Toby? What the hell’s she doing with that sneaky bugger Bell at six in the morning?
    ‘Kit? It’s me. Toby.’
    ‘Who shot him, Bell?’
    ‘Nobody. It was suicide. Official. The coroner’s signed off on it, the police aren’t interested.’
    Well, they ought to be bloody interested! But he hadn’t said that. Not at the time. Didn’t feel he’d said anything much at the time, apart from yes , and no , and oh well , yes , right , I see .
    ‘Kit?’ – Toby again.
    ‘Yes. What is it?’
    ‘You told me you’d been putting together a draft document in anticipation of Jeb’s visit to the Manor. Your own account of what happened from your perspective three years back, plus a memorandum of your conversation with him at your club, for him to sign off on. Kit?’
    ‘What’s wrong with that? Gospel truth, the whole bloody thing,’ Kit retorts.
    ‘Nothing’s wrong