“You didn’t tell us that at Chiswell House,” said Robin, looking up from her notes.

“Of course I didn’t, because the others were there. Dad said he didn’t want to ask Izzy. He was quite rude about her on the phone… he was an ungrateful shit, really he was,” said Raphael. “She worked her fingers to the bloody bone and you saw how he treated her.”

“What do you mean, rude?”

“He said she’d shout at Kinvara, upset her and make it worse or something. Pot and bloody kettle, but there you are. But the truth is,” said Raphael, “that he saw me as a kind of upper servant and Izzy as proper family. He didn’t mind me getting my hands dirty and it didn’t matter if I pissed off his wife by barging into her house and stopping her—”

“Stopping her what?”

“Ah,” said Raphael, “food.”

The dim sum placed on the table before them, the waitress retreated.

“What did you stop Kinvara doing?” Robin repeated. “Leaving your father? Hurting herself?”

“I love this stuff,” said Raphael, examining a prawn dumpling.

“She left a note,” persisted Robin, “saying she was leaving. Did your father send you down there to persuade her not to go? Was he afraid Izzy would egg her on to leave him?”

“D’you seriously think I could persuade Kinvara to stay in the marriage? Never having to lay eyes on me again would’ve been one more incentive to go.”

“Then why did he send you to her?”

“I’ve told you,” said Raphael. “He thought she was going to do something stupid.”

“Raff,” said Robin, “you can keep playing silly buggers—”

He corpsed.

“Christ, you sound Yorkshire when you say that. Say it again.”

“The police think there’s something fishy about your story of what you were up to that morning,” said Robin. “And so do we.”

That seemed to sober him up.

“How do you know what the police are thinking?”

“We’ve got contacts on the force,” said Robin. “Raff, you’ve given everyone the impression that your father was trying to stop Kinvara hurting herself, but nobody really buys that. The stable girl was there. Tegan. She could have prevented Kinvara from hurting herself.”

Raphael chewed for a while, apparently thinking.

“All right,” he sighed. “All right, here it is. You know how Dad had sold off everything that would raise a few hundred quid, or given it to Peregrine?”

“Who?”

“All right, Pringle,” said Raphael, exasperated. “I prefer not to use their stupid bloody nicknames.

“He didn’t sell off everything of value,” said Robin.

“What d’you mean?”

“That picture of the mare and foal is worth five to eight—”

Robin’s mobile rang. She knew from the ringtone that it was Matthew.

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

“No,” said Robin.

She waited until the phone had stopped ringing, then took it out of her bag.

“‘Matt,’” said Raphael, reading the name upside down. “That’s the accountant, is it?”

“Yes,” said Robin, silencing the phone, but it immediately began to vibrate in her hand instead. Matthew had called back.

“Block him,” suggested Raphael.

“Yes,” said Robin, “good idea.”

All that was important to her right now was keeping Raphael cooperative. He seemed to enjoy watching her block Matthew. She put the mobile back in her bag and said:

“Go on about the paintings.”

“Well, you know how Dad had offloaded all the valuable ones through Drummond?”

“Some of us think five thousand pounds worth of picture is quite valuable,” said Robin, unable to help herself.

“Fine, Ms. Lefty,” said Raphael, suddenly nasty. “You can keep sneering about how people like me don’t know the value of money—”

“Sorry,” said Robin quickly, cursing herself. “I am, seriously. Look, I’ve—well, I’ve been trying to find a room to rent this morning. Five thousand pounds would change my life right now.”

“Oh,” said Raphael, frowning. “I—OK. Actually, if it comes to that I’d leap at the chance of five grand in my pocket right now, but I’m talking about seriously valuable stuff, worth tens and hundreds of thousands, things that my father wanted to keep in the family. He’d already handed them on to little Pringle to avoid death duties. There was a Chinese lacquer cabinet, an ivory workbox and a couple of other things, but there was also the necklace.”

“Which—?”

“It’s a big ugly diamond thing,” said Raphael, and with the hand not spearing dumplings he mimed a thick collar. “Important stones. It’s come down through five generations or something and the convention was that it went to the eldest daughter on her twenty-first, but my father’s father, who as you might have heard was a bit of a playboy—”

“This is the one who married Tinky the nurse?”

“She was his third or fourth,” said Raphael, nodding. “I can never remember. Anyway, he only had sons, so he let all his wives wear the thing in turn, then left it to my father, who kept the new tradition going. His wives got to wear it—even my mother got a shot—and he forgot about the handing on to the daughter on her twenty-first bit, Pringle didn’t get it and he didn’t mention it in his will.”

“So—wait, d’you mean it’s now—?”

“Dad called me up that morning and told me I had to get hold of the bloody thing. Simple job, kind of thing anyone would enjoy,” he said, sarcastically. “Bust in on a stepmother who hates my guts, find out where she’s keeping a valuable necklace, then steal it from under her nose.”

“So you think your father believed that she was leaving him, and was worried that she was going to take it with her?”

“I suppose so,” said Raphael.

“How did he sound on the phone?”

“I told you this. Groggy. I thought it was a hangover. After I heard he’d killed himself,” Raphael faltered, “… well.”

“Well?”

“To tell you the truth,” said Raphael, “I couldn’t get it out of my head that the last thing Dad wanted to say to me in this life was, ‘run along and make sure your sister gets her diamonds.’ Words to treasure forever, eh?”

At a loss for anything to say, Robin took another sip of wine, then asked quietly:

“Do Izzy and Fizzy realize the necklace is Kinvara’s now?”

Raphael’s lips twisted in an unpleasant smile.

“Well, they know it is legally, but here’s the really funny thing: they think she’s going to hand it over to them. After everything they’ve said about her, after calling her a gold-digger for years, slagging her off at every possible opportunity, they can’t quite grasp that she won’t hand the necklace over to Fizzy for Flopsy—damn it—Florence—because,” he affected a shrill upper-class voice, “‘Darling, even TTS wouldn’t do that, it belongs in the family, she must realize she can’t sell it.’