The driveway was forty yards long, with a bend to the right which would take them to the front of the house. He drove along it, parked and said, ‘No other cars. Perhaps they’re out.’

  Miriam said, ‘They don’t park in front of the house. There are garages and spaces at the rear. My father thinks parking cars in front detracts from the views of the place from the road.’

  ‘Oh. Should I-’

  ‘No. It’s fine. By the time we leave tomorrow, where you parked your car will be the least of your worries.’

  At that moment he would have said to her, look, if this really is too horrible for you… But then he saw that the front door of the house had opened, and a woman was standing there. A statuesque woman, to say the very least, opening her arms wide as she began to approach the car. This, thought Waters, is not what I was expecting in so many ways – for a start, this lady is most definitely of mixed descent.

  He said to Miriam, ‘Well, someone is here to welcome us. In fact she’s almost upon us,’ but Miriam had already opened her door. She got out and was enveloped in the woman’s embrace, almost entirely lost in it for several seconds. Waters got out then, and heard the woman’s muffled voice – her face pressed into Miriam’s hair – saying ‘My baby! My baby!’

  The thought came to him that all the apprehension had been an elaborate joke on Miriam’s part, though certain matters of parentage were going to need some explaining. The woman was holding Miriam at arms’ length now and looking at her – Waters made his way around the car so that he was on the same side. When her attention turned to him, he braced himself because it seemed for a moment as if she intended to take hold of him too. Instead she beamed at him and said, ‘And this is him? Oh my goodness he’s tall, Mimi!’

  He spotted the little wincing smile before Miriam said, ‘Chris, this is Martha. Martha, this is Chris – my fiancé.’

  She held up her left hand and disappeared in another welter of hugs and congratulations. Then Martha shook Waters’ hand and said, ‘You better be as kind as you is tall, or you’ll be dealing with me.’ It was clear that she meant every word.

  When he had their bags out of the car, they went into the house – Miriam had hold of the woman’s arm and he followed. There had been no explanation but his extensive detective’s training had led him to suspect that Martha was not Miriam’s mother. They were taken to a reception room which was about the size of half a tennis court and about as welcoming – it was white and immaculately, stylishly furnished in shades of grey with carefully studied highlights of black and red – a vase here, a table-lamp there; the sort of thing you glance at in magazines while you’re waiting to have a tooth filled but never imagine seeing with your own eyes. Martha told them to make themselves comfortable without a trace of irony and then said she would let everyone know they were here.

  When they were alone, he looked at her properly – she would be waiting for him to speak so that she could judge his reactions as much from the tone of his voice as any words he might utter. He stepped close, took her hand and said, ‘So – Mimi – who is Martha?’

  She nodded and he knew she had guessed correctly that he wouldn’t be able to resist it – she said, ‘Martha is the only person in the world who calls me that, and that’s how it’s going to stay.’

  She wouldn’t go on until he responded, so Waters said, ‘OK. I’m going to do my best with that. I know it won’t always be easy.’

  She squeezed his hand enough to hurt a little – all that piano-playing gives you quite a grip – but instead of letting go, he reached for her other hand. She lifted her face and he kissed her. Then she said, ‘Martha describes herself as ‘the help’. She’s been with them forever, from when I was a baby, anyway. She is the only reason there was even a semblance of a family at all.’

  He said, ‘You grew up with a maid?’

  ‘And a cook a lot of the time. None of them ever lasted very long. I expect she’ll have got someone in for the meal tonight.’

  ‘You mean your mother?’

  She nodded, let go of his hands and put her arms around him. The black sheep – it began to make some sense. She had older siblings. He could not remember which was which but among them he knew there was a medical consultant in Glasgow and another one was lecturing in America. Hadn’t she told him that a third was something important in Brussels? Didn’t this begin to explain too why her views were considerably to the left of his own? We are products as much of our early circumstances as of our personalities because the one inevitably shapes the other. Anyone who could not embrace a lifestyle that included maids and cooks was likely to rebel against it.

  Her ears were sharper than his, and she had let go of him before Martha entered the room. The woman said, ‘Why you not sittin’ down? I’ll make you some tea. Your ma just finishing up in the studio, she be along soon. Your pa on his phone, some case business. They’ll meet you in here, as soon as…’

  Martha disappeared again. Miriam stood very still and alone as he looked at her; he realised she was unfamiliar with this room, which must have changed many times since she left when she was eighteen. She knew he was watching her and smiled that same rueful smile, as if she needed to apologise for this. The thought of her pain made him a little angry, but he didn’t know what he could do.

  Eventually she turned her face in his direction and said, ‘Welcome home.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Benjamin Josephs’ knife and fork hovered over the fillet of wild Scottish salmon – he said, ‘Detective sergeant, you say?’

  He had leaned a little into the word that gave Waters’ rank, as if impressed but it could equally have been taken to imply ‘is that all?’ The acquaintance of a single afternoon had been enough to teach his prospective son-in-law not to take much that the man said at face value. Yes, said Waters, adding that he had been promoted not quite two years ago.

  Miriam’s father ate a morsel of the fish, taking his time, chewing towards the front of his mouth as if he expected to find a bone in it sooner rather than later. Then he said, ‘Good, good… The police service is an admirable choice of career. What did your father do, by the way?’

  Josephs didn’t often look at you directly – this time he was reaching for the cucumber and dill sauce. He spooned a tiny amount onto the side of his plate.

  Waters said, ‘He was also a policeman.’

  Miriam’s father said, ‘Ha!’ and looked at his wife and daughter as if vindicated – ‘Following in your father’s footsteps.’ Then to Waters, ‘None of mine saw fit to practise law…’

  Waters said, ‘They seem to have done all right for themselves, though.’

  He had considered before today whether it would be wise to address Benjamin Josephs as ‘sir’ a few times on their first meeting, but had not, in the end, been able to bring himself to do it. Now Josephs’ mouth twisted slightly as if he had found that bone at last, before saying, ‘I suppose so, by and large.’

  Waters glanced towards Miriam but her face gave nothing away; this was no longer a surprise to him – she had been wearing a mask almost from the moment they arrived in this peculiar household. He had, of course, done due diligence in preparation for such a visit. Josephs was as eminent a lawyer as Miriam had told him all those months ago when they first talked about their families. He practised out of the same London chambers as Gloria Butterfield QC, the barrister who had defended Petar Subic – Waters had spotted her name when he read through the list on the website. A succession of high-profile criminal cases, some at the Old Bailey and almost all of them won, had led to Josephs’ name appearing often in newspaper reports and law journals – the results of the search had been too extensive for Waters to read them all. But he knew enough to realise that not every one of those victories had resulted in the innocent walking free from the courtroom – quite the reverse – and his own experience had taught him that finding enough evidence for a conviction is only half the battle. The deeper a criminal’s pockets, the better his chances of evading that conviction, whatever the evidence. A cynic might say that a house like this one had been paid for in part by such pockets as those.

  Josephs said, ‘And what is next? Detective inspector? Detective chief inspector?’

  Waters gave a non-committal answer but it was odd that the same questions had been on his mind over the past week or two. Another tiny spoonful of the sauce found itself deposited on the side of the plate – the great lawyer seemed determined that not a drop should be wasted when he finally finished that piece of fish.

  ‘I expect I sound like the cautious soon-to-be father-in-law, doing my duty and checking out your prospects! But I’m sure you are both going to be very happy together…’

  Those sounded like concluding remarks, the end of the case for the defence. Josephs raised his wine glass towards Waters, who took up his own and drank. For all he knew, the bottle of viognier had cost more than he earned in a week but he found it a little too dry for the occasion.

  They were back in their room by nine forty-five that evening. The bedroom overlooked the garden at the rear of the house – lawns, borders, trees all perfectly arranged and manicured. Miriam sat on the bed behind him and brushed her hair as Waters gazed at the view without interest and wondered quite where to begin. Smith used to say, well, you could always start with the obvious.

  ‘Is your mother all right?’

  There was a speculative, ‘Hmm’ first and then a short pause before, ‘Are you asking locally – I mean just this evening – or in a more global sense? Like, has she ever been all right?’

  He turned towards Miriam and leaned back against the window sill – watching her brush that long dark hair was a pleasure in itself. Sometimes she wore makeup before they went out but she hadn’t used any for this visit – tonight she looked entirely natural and that was what he preferred. One day, after they were safely married, he might tell her so.

  He said, ‘In either sense, I suppose. She hardly spoke a word all evening.’

  Miriam said, ‘Right. Well, the first thing as far as you are concerned is not to take that personally. It’s perfectly normal. I suppose I should say, it’s typical, because obviously I know it isn’t normal. Abigail can go for weeks without saying very much.’

  ‘Abigail?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You call your mother by her Christian name?’

  ‘Yes. It was something she insisted upon when we were young. I think it was part of her lifelong struggle to be Bohemian. As children we hated it, especially when we were with other people and they were all saying “Mum!”’

  She was smiling to herself as if this was some trivial childhood story, and for once Waters was grateful she could not see his own expression. The woman – wearing paint-spattered overalls – had arrived in the reception room several minutes after Martha had brought them tea. Waters got up to greet her and she had looked at him in vague surprise, as if she had forgotten Miriam was bringing a guest. Then she went to her daughter and air-kissed each side, holding Miriam by her shoulders for the briefest of moments before she asked, ‘And did you have a good journey?’

  What mother fails to notice or fails to mention an engagement ring on her youngest daughter’s third finger? The answer, he now knew, was Abigail Josephs.

  Miriam must have realised he would need time to process. After some seconds she said, ‘Next question?’

  Still searching for the key that might unlock all the answers, Waters said, ‘Was she always an artist?’

  ‘No. She decided to be one when I was about ten, I think.’

  At every turn there seemed to be something slightly wrong, slightly out of key with normality if not reality. He said cautiously, ‘She decided to be one?’

  ‘Yes. She wasn’t before, at least as far as I know. I think it was a way of not coping. What I mean is, it gave her a reason not to be coping – because she was an artist? It’s a trope, isn’t it, that the normal rules and expectations don’t apply to people with artistic temperaments. So it was a way out. And she had friends who were artists, so…’

  Waters said, ‘It’s good that she has some friends,’ and Miriam laughed a little. He wanted to go to her then but he also wanted to know more about her family, and so he remained at the window sill for now.

  She said, ‘There’s no shortage of like-minded people around here. It’s the Cotswolds scene… Writers, poets, artists, every sort of creative person you can imagine. And they’re all doing inexplicably well, with effing great houses like this one.’

  She swore only infrequently – he took it as an indication of the emotions she was in other ways concealing from him. He knew her now; on the one hand she would want to be open and make jokes about this, on the other, she would be embarrassed that he was having to go through it. She might even be recalling how relaxed she had felt soon after meeting his own parents.

  He said, ‘What sort of art does she do?’

  ‘Oh, it varies. I think she’s still in search of her true metier. I’d say from the smell on her overalls we’re working in oils again. There was a spell of sculpting in bronze but that led to a fire and a shed burned down… So then he built her a brand new studio. You can’t see it from there, it’s on the other end of the house.’

  Waters half-turned to look out of the window again. He wanted to ask the obvious question, but how do you say to someone, what sort of a mother was she? And what might be the consequences of doing so?

  Miriam said, ‘Obviously I’ve never seen any of it. Daniel, my brother, once told me that her paintings looked like Picassos gone horribly wrong. I’ve never seen a Picasso either but I’ve read a bit about art, and Picassos sound wrong in the first place. So I guess it’s one of those occasions where loss of sight isn’t entirely a bad thing.’

  It was almost too painful to hear, in a way. He changed the subject a little and said, ‘Your father wasn’t too hard on me.’

  She shrugged and put her hair brush away. He had considered offering to take her for an evening walk around the place where she used to live, but she lifted her feet, took off her shoes and made herself comfortable on the bed.

  ‘No. But he hasn’t done his research yet. He will, though. If there’s anything I ought to know, now’s the time to tell me.’

  She wasn’t joking about her father looking into his background.

  He said, ‘I was surprised you wouldn’t play anything for him. He suggested it twice.’

  Those had been awkward moments, especially when she ignored her father for the second time. Josephs had said, ‘It has been a long time since we heard you, Miriam. We’d like to know whether you can still play.’

  As with almost everything the man said, there was within it some note of provocation, as if he had you on the stand and wanted a reaction for the benefit of an invisible jury. Miriam had shaken her head but made no excuse or apology for not doing so – Josephs’ mouth had tightened into a silence that lasted for fully a minute, and during those long seconds he had included a look at Waters, as if expecting him to intervene. Perhaps the look meant he thought Waters was to blame.

  Miriam stretched out on the bed and said, ‘That goes back a long way. He knows I’ll never perform for him again.’

  Perform? Every interviewing instinct told Waters he was close to something significant now. He invited her to tell him why not.

  She said, ‘It goes back a long way and it’s complicated. How long have you got?’

  ‘We’ve got all the time in the world…’

  She lifted her right hand towards him. He said, ‘No, not yet. I know those tricks. Tell me first.’

  When she pouted a little he felt himself giving way, but then she sat up and hugged her knees. She said, ‘OK. But just remember you turned down a chance not to know all this stuff.’

  ‘On my head be it.’

  She told him that she began piano lessons when she was five years old and immediately showed promise. As far as any of the children in the family were made a fuss of, she was, as the youngest and the most self-willed – she became her father’s favourite and she played upon that as well as she played upon the pianos he bought her as she grew up. He was particularly fond of Bach, and by the time she was eight she could play some of the partitas well enough to meet with his approval. By then, Benjamin Josephs was beginning to talk to her about a career as a concert performer.

  ‘And then,’ she said, ‘one afternoon I couldn’t play very well. I had a temperature and felt strange. He said that we have to work on through those things if we are to achieve greatness – those were his actual words to the eight-year-old me who was at that moment coming down with meningitis. By the next morning I was in Accident and Emergency, and that afternoon they told my family to expect the worst – they asked if I had been baptised.

  ‘But, obviously, I refused to die. About a month later the specialist told them I’d been incredibly lucky. Apart from the optic nerves being damaged beyond any hope of repair, I’d dodged the bullet. Lots of children lose fingers, hands or feet when it’s septicaemia. That would have been worse.’

  Miriam told the story in an offhand way. Some of this he had heard before, but here in the family home it took on new resonances, even though she had been living in the previous house when she was struck down. Waters said, ‘How long was it before you began playing again?’

  She shrugged – ‘A couple of weeks.’

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘Memory. I’d played from sheet music up to then, like everyone else. But when I sat down and felt the keys, I discovered I have unusual recall, musically. Things I hadn’t played for months would come back close to… Well, not perfect but pretty good. So then we experimented with new things, to find out how long it would take to learn by ear alone.’

  ‘We? You and your father?’

  Miriam nodded. He could sense this was taking her back to some difficult places. He wanted to ask, where was your mother in all this but there would be no point – what she was telling him now was where the answers to the important questions lay.