THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

them.
    Nelson follows Michelle into the kitchen, where she is sorting out the post.
    ‘Why don’t you ever open letters, Harry?’ she asks mildly.
    ‘They’re always bills.’
    ‘They still need opening. And paying.’
    Nelson ignores this. Michelle always pays the bills from their joint account. ‘Have you heard from Rebecca?’ he asks.
    ‘Yes. She’s staying the night at Paige’s.’
    ‘She’s never here, that girl. Is she going to do her homework at Paige’s house?’
    ‘Coursework,’ corrects Michelle. ‘I expect so. She’s working very hard, you know.’
    Nelson doesn’t know. Rebecca seems to spend most of her time at home watching reality TV or doing something inexplicable called ‘chatting on MSN’. He can’t remember the last time he saw her read a book, but then, he’s not exactly a reader himself.
    Michelle has reached the last letter which is encased in a rather eye-catching purple envelope. She holds it up for Nelson’s attention.
    ‘This is a bit different.’
    ‘Probably a nutter,’ says Nelson, surveying it with a professional eye.
    And, in a way, he’s right.
    You are invited
, reads the black text on the pale mauve card,
to Kate’s naming ceremony. Place: under the stars. No presents please, just your positive energy
.
    ‘Kate,’ says Michelle, ‘it must be from Ruth.’
    ‘Must be.’
    ‘It doesn’t sound like Ruth. Oh …’ she turns the cardover and laughs. ‘It’s from that mad warlock. Cathbad. He’s the one that works at the university, isn’t he?’
    Nelson acknowledges that he is.
    ‘Well, he’s certainly taking an interest in Kate. Harry, you don’t think … ?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You don’t think he could be the baby’s father?’
    Nelson looks at his wife who is now pouring boiling water into the teapot. She always makes a proper pot, just like his mum does. In her bare feet, her black trousers sweeping the floor, her blonde hair loose, Michelle looks beautiful and rather touching, like a child dressed in her mother’s clothes. But she’s not a child; she’s forty (something she is consciously trying to forget). Has she really never suspected about Ruth? But Nelson knows the answer to this. With an attractive woman’s unconscious vanity, Michelle would never think of Ruth – overweight, untidy Ruth who thinks more about her career than her waistline – as a potential rival. Michelle likes Ruth but she really hardly thinks of her as a woman. She’s one of Nelson’s colleagues, like Clough or Judy, not a sexual threat at all.
    Michelle hands Nelson a cup. ‘Shall we go?’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘To the naming ceremony. Shall we go? Might be a giggle.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson, taking his tea and heading back to the study. ‘I’m up to my neck in work at the moment.’
    Despite repeated attempts, he doesn’t get through to Whitcliffe until the morning. He tells his boss that he needs to speak to Archie again, new evidence has emerged whichmakes him a very important witness, related to the Superintendent or not. But Nelson is too late. His grandfather, Whitcliffe informs him stiffly, died last night, just before midnight.

CHAPTER 10
     
    ‘Was he ill?’ asks Clough, rather indistinctly, through a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie.
    ‘He seemed fine when Johnson and I saw him yesterday,’ says Nelson, swerving to overtake a farm lorry.
    ‘It’s Johnson, that’s what it is,’ says Clough. ‘She’s a jinx. Remember last year?’
    Nelson does, indeed, remember last year, when Judy interviewed a sick old woman with star tling, and tragic, results.
    ‘Maybe he had a heart condition, though,’ says Clough, licking crumbs from his fingers. ‘How old did you say he was?’
    ‘Eighty-six,’ says Nelson.
    ‘There you go, then,’ says Clough. ‘Old age, that’s what did it. Mystery solved.’
    Was it really as simple as that, wonders Nelson, as he takes the turning for Greenfields Care Home. Old man dies. No mystery, just the expected end of a long life. But eighty-six is no great age these days. His own mother, Maureen, is more active at seventy-four than many people in their thirties. Every day you read about people living to a hundred,or even older. The Queen must be worn out writing all those telegrams. And Archie Whitcliffe, standing proudly in his neat cardigan and regimental tie, had certainly seemed the picture of elderly good health. No-one at the Home had mentioned a heart condition and Archie showed no