nails, so I’d brought a hammer and chisel and a saw, and before Malcolm’s astonished gaze proceeded to dig a hole through the plywood and cut out a head-high, body-wide section instead. Much quicker, less sweat.
‘You didn’t think of all this since yesterday, did you?’ he asked.
‘No. On the plane. There were a lot of hours then.’
I freed the cut-out section and put it to one side, and we went inton the playroom. Nothing had changed in there. Malcolm fingered the bicycles when his eyes had adjusted to the partial light, and I could see the sorrow in his body.
It was by that time nine-thirty. If Joyce by any chance phoned the right person first, the earliest we could have a visitor was about half past ten. After that, anything was possible. Or nothing.
Malcolm had wanted to know what we would do if someone came.
‘All the family have keys to the outside kitchen door,’ I said. ‘We never had the locks changed, remember? Our visitor will go into the kitchen that way and we will go round and… er…’
‘Lock him in,’ Malcolm said.
‘Roughly, yes. And then talk about confessing. Talk about what to do with the future.’
I went round myself to the kitchen door and made sure it did still unlock normally, which it did. I locked it again after a brief look inside. Still a mess in there, unswept.
I returned to the playroom and from the bags produced two stick-on mirrors, each about eight inches by ten.
‘I thought you’d brought champagne,’ Malcolm grumbled. ‘Not saws and bloody looking-glasses.’
‘The champagne’s there. No ice.’
‘It’s cold enough without any bloody ice.’ He wandered aimlessly round the playroom, finally slumping into one of the armchairs. We had both worn layers of the warmest clothes we had, leaving the suitcases in the Ritz, but the raw November air looked as if it would be a match for the Simpson’s vicuna overcoat and my new Barbour, and the gloves I had bought for us in the same shop the day before. We were at least out of the wind which swirled round and through the house, but there was no heat but our own.
I stuck one of the mirrors onto the cut-out piece of plywood, and the other at the same height onto the wall which faced the playroom door, the side wall of the staircase: stuck it not exactly opposite the door but a little further along towards the hall.
‘What are you doing?’ Malcolm asked.
‘Just making it possible for us to see anyone come up the drive without showing ourselves. Would you mind sitting in the other chair, and telling me when the mirrors are at the right angle? Look into the one on the stair wall. I’ll move the other. OK?’
He rose and sat in the other chair as I’d asked, and I moved the plywood along and angled it slightly until he said, ‘Stop. That’s it. I can see a good patch of drive.’
I went and took his place and had a look for myself. It would have been better if the mirrors had been bigger, but they served the purpose. Anyone who came to the house that way would be visible.
If they came across the fields we’d have to rely on our ears.
By eleven, Malcolm was bored. By eleven-thirty, we’d temporarily unbolted and unlocked the door at the end of the passage and been out into the bushes to solve the problem posed by no plumbing. By twelve, we were into Bollinger in disposable glasses (disgusting, Malcolm said) and at twelve-thirty ate biscuits and pâté.
No one came. It seemed to get colder. Malcolm huddled inside his overcoat in the armchair and said it had been a rotten idea in the first place.
I had had to promise him that we wouldn’t stay overnight. I thought it unlikely anyway that someone would choose darkness rather than daylight for searching for a small piece of paper that could be anywhere in a fairly large room, and I’d agreed to the chauffeur returning to pick us up at about six. Left to myself, I might have waited all night, but the whole point of the exercise was that Malcolm himself should be there. We would return in the morning by daybreak.
He said, ‘This person we’re waiting for… you know who it is, don’t you?’
‘Well… I think so.’
‘How sure are you, expressed as a percentage?’
‘Um… ninety-five.’
‘That’s not enough.’
‘No, that’s why we’re here.’
‘Edwin,’ he said. ‘It’s Edwin, isn’t it?’
I glanced across at him, taking my gaze momentarily