THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

saw Maria as a surrogate granddaughter but, then again, he was hardly short of grandchildren.
    When was the will written? Two years ago, says Wentworth. Archie was not to know that Hugh would predecease him by a matter of weeks. Archie mentioned corresponding with Hugh some years ago – was this correspondence more significant than it seemed, important enough to be marked by a memento? Nelson has made an appointment to see Hugh Anselm’s niece, his closest relative. He doesn’t expect much. According to Kevin Fitzherbert, the niece, Joyce Reynolds, visited maybe twice in ten years. Nevertheless, she has inherited all of her uncle’s effects (including, presumably, the writing case) and so it may be worth talking to her. There’s always a chance that an avid letter writer like Hugh Anselm may have a journal or an unpublished novel somewhere.
    He is thinking about letter writing and
Countdown
and crossword puzzles when his phone rings.
    ‘Nelson,’ he barks.
    ‘Jack Hastings here,’ answers another, equally authoritative voice. ‘Are you aware that there’s a Kraut journalist hanging round my daughter?’
    Nelson wonders whether to affect surprise and force Hastings to tell him about Dieter Eckhart and his suspicions, but in the end he settles for faint distaste at such shockingly un-PC language. ‘I’ve spoken to a
German
military historian called Dieter Eckhart,’ he says.
    ‘That’s the fellow. Turned up at my house, if you please.An Englishman’s home is his castle, I told him.’
    Nelson ponders how much Hastings loves this phrase. He uses it in almost every TV interview (Nelson has looked them up) and it is, presumably, why he still insists on living in the fortress-like house on the cliff. Delusions of grandeur.
    ‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear,’ Hastings continues. ‘Then I find out he’s been pestering Clara.’
    ‘Pestering’ is not how Nelson would describe the distinctly mutual snuggling on Ruth’s sofa, but it’s hardly worth mentioning this now. Instead, he says, ‘Why did Eckhart want to speak to you?’
    For the first time, Hastings sounds discomfited. ‘He had some ridiculous theory about those bodies found under the cliff. Thought they were German, or some such nonsense.’
    Time to stir Hastings up a little, thinks Nelson. ‘Our forensic tests show that the bodies were very possibly of German origin,’ he says.
    There is a silence. ‘What?’ says Hastings.
    ‘Mineral analysis shows that the six bodies found in Broughton were of possible German origin,’ repeats Nelson patiently. ‘And we believe we know their identities.’
    ‘You do?’
    ‘Dieter Eckhart has been researching the disappearance of six German commandos in September 1940. I assume that’s why he came to you.’
    ‘What the hell’s it got to do with me?’
    ‘Your father was in charge of the Home Guard at that time.’
    There is another silence and then Hastings says, in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Look, I’m more than happy to help withany police enquiry but my mother’s old and she’s not very strong. Something like this could upset her, make her ill. And Clara, well, she’s sensitive …’
    Nelson remembers the blonde girl bouncing into the sitting room at Sea’s End House. Sensitive is not the word he’d use.
    ‘We’ll be very low key,’ he assures Hastings. ‘But I’ll need to speak to you again.’
    ‘Understood,’ says Hastings, sounding subdued.
    ‘One more thing, Mr Hastings. Does the name Hugh Anselm mean anything to you?’
    ‘Hugh Anselm? No I don’t think so.’
    ‘Your mother mentioned a Hugh, one of the other young men in the troop. That was Hugh Anselm.’
    ‘Very possibly, but what’s he got to do with anything?’
    ‘I think he may have been murdered,’ says Nelson.

CHAPTER 16
     
    ‘I did my best,’ says Joyce Reynolds, ‘but I’ve got my own family, you see.’
    ‘It must be difficult,’ says Judy sympathetically, ‘looking after an elderly relative.’
    Joyce Reynolds relaxes and looks saintly, though, as Judy and Nelson both know, her only contact with Hugh Anselm, her elderly uncle, was a yearly Christmas card and those two visits to the sheltered housing estate. Two in more than ten years.
    ‘Was he lonely?’ Nelson had asked Kevin Fitzherbert.
    ‘Lonely?’ Fitzgerald smiled, rather sadly. ‘Sure and we’re all lonely here. Hughie coped with it better than most. He had his books, his crossword, his letters. He hadn’t shut the