“Raphael had the decency to be ashamed of himself, then. Tried to help his father. Jasper told him to get out of it, made me close the door, leave him in there…”

Now sounding gruff, Drummond broke off and poured himself and Strike tea. He was evidently in some distress. As he added three lumps to his own cup, the teaspoon rattled against the cup.

“’Pologise. Last time I ever saw Jasper, you see. He came out of the bathroom, ghastly color, still, shook my hand, apologized, said he’d let his oldest friend… let me down.”

Drummond coughed again, swallowed and continued with what seemed an effort:

“None of it was Jasper’s fault. Raphael learned such morals as he’s got from the mother, and she’s best described as a high-class… well, well. Meeting Ornella was really the start of all Jasper’s problems. If he’d only stayed with Patricia…

“Anyway, I never saw Jasper again. I had some difficulty bringing myself to shake Raphael’s hand at the funeral, if you want the truth.”

Drummond took a sip of tea and Strike tried his own. It was far too weak.

“All sounds very unpleasant,” the detective said.

“You may well say so,” sighed Drummond.

“You’ll appreciate that I have to ask about some sensitive matters.”

“Of course,” said Drummond.

“You’ve spoken to Izzy. Did she tell you that Jasper Chiswell was being blackmailed?”

“She mentioned it,” said Drummond, with a glance to check that the door was shut. “He hadn’t breathed a word to me. Izzy said it was one of the Knights… one remembers a family in the grounds. The father was an odd-job man, yes? As for the Winns, well, no, I don’t think there was much liking between them and Jasper. Strange couple.”

“The Winns’ daughter Rhiannon was a fencer,” said Strike. “She was on the junior British fencing team with Freddie Chiswell—”

“Oh yes, Freddie was awfully good,” said Drummond.

“Rhiannon was a guest at Freddie’s eighteenth birthday party, but she was a couple of years younger. She was only sixteen when she killed herself.”

“How ghastly,” said Drummond.

“You don’t know anything about that?”

“How should I?” said Drummond, a fine crease between his dark eyes.

“You weren’t at the eighteenth?”

“I was, as a matter of fact. Godfather, you know.”

“You can’t remember Rhiannon?”

“Goodness, you can’t expect me to remember all the names! There were upwards of a hundred young people there. Jasper had a marquee in the garden and Patricia ran a treasure hunt.”

“Really?” said Strike.

His own eighteenth birthday party, in a rundown pub in Shoreditch, had not included a treasure hunt.

“Just in the grounds, you know. Freddie always liked a competition. A glass of champagne at every clue, it was rather jolly, got things off with a swing. I was manning clue three, down by what the children always used to call the dell.”

“The hollow in the ground by the Knights’ cottage?” asked Strike casually. “It was full of nettles when I saw it.”

“We didn’t put the clue in the dell, we put it under Jack o’Kent’s doormat. He couldn’t be trusted to take care of the champagne, because he had a drink problem. I sat on the edge of the dell in a deck chair and watched them hunt and everyone who found the clue got a glass of champagne and off they went.”

“Soft drinks for the under-eighteens?” asked Strike.

Faintly exasperated by this killjoy attitude, Drummond said:

“Nobody had to drink champagne. It was an eighteenth, a celebration.”

“So Jasper Chiswell never mentioned anything to you that he wouldn’t want to get into the press?” asked Strike, returning to the main point.

“Nothing whatsoever.”

“When he asked me to find a way of countering his blackmailers, he told me that whatever he’d done happened six years ago. He implied to me that it wasn’t illegal when he did it, but is now.”

“I’ve no idea what that could have been. Jasper was a very law-abiding type, you know. Whole family, pillars of the community, churchgoers, they’ve done masses for the local area…”

A litany of Chiswellian beneficence followed, which rolled on for a couple of minutes and did not fool Strike in the slightest. Drummond was obfuscating, he was sure, because Drummond knew exactly what Chiswell had done. He became almost lyrical as he extolled the innate goodness of Jasper, and of the entire family, excepting, always, the scapegrace Raphael.

“… and hand always in his pocket,” Drummond concluded, “minibus for the local Brownies, repairs to the church roof, even after the family finances… well, well,” he said again, in a little embarrassment.

“The blackmailable offense,” Strike began again, but Drummond interrupted.

“There was no offense.” He caught himself. “You just said it yourself. Jasper told you he had done nothing illegal. No law was broken.”

Deciding that it would do no good to push Drummond harder about the blackmail, Strike turned a page in his notebook, and thought he saw the other relax.

“You called Chiswell on the morning he died,” said Strike.

“I did.”

“Would that have been the first time you’d spoken since sacking Raphael?”

“Actually, no. There had been a conversation a couple of weeks prior to that. M’wife wanted to invite Jasper and Kinvara over for dinner. I called him at DCMS, breaking the ice, you know, after the Raphael business. It wasn’t a long conversation, but amicable enough. He said they couldn’t make the night suggested. He also told me… well, to be frank, he told me he wasn’t sure how much longer he and Kinvara would be together, that the marriage was in trouble. He sounded tired, exhausted… unhappy.”

“You had no more contact until the thirteenth?”

“We had no contact even then,” Drummond reminded him. “I phoned Jasper, yes, but there was no answer. Izzy tells me—” He faltered. “She tells me that he was probably already dead.”

“It was early for a call,” said Strike.

“I… had information I thought he should have.”

“Of what kind?”

“It was personal.”

Strike waited. Drummond sipped his tea.

“It related to the family finances, which as I imagine you know, were very poor at the time Jasper died.”

“Yes.”

“He’d sold off land and remortgaged the London property, offloaded all the good paintings through me. He was right down to the dregs, at the end, trying to sell me some of old Tinky’s leavings. It was… a little embarrassing, actually.”

“How so?”

“I deal in Old Masters,” said Drummond. “I do not buy paintings of spotted horses by unknown Australian folk artists. As a courtesy to Jasper, being an old friend, I had some of it valued with my usual man at Christie’s. The only thing that had any monetary worth at all was a painting of a piebald mare and foal—”

“I think I’ve seen that,” said Strike.