commiserating platitudes came out with his true opinions.
‘Anyone who carries a fully-wired explosive device from place to place is raving mad. You don’t connect the battery until the device is where you want it to go off. If you’re me, you don’t insert the detonator, either. You keep them separate.’
I don’t suppose she meant to drop it,’ I said.
‘Mind you, she was also unlucky,’ Mr Smith said judiciously, it is possible, but I myself wouldn’t risk it, to drop ANFO with a detonator in it and have it not explode. But maybe dropping it caused the clock wires to touch.’
‘Have you found the clock?’ I asked.
‘Patience,’ he said, and went back to looking.
A policeman fending away a few sensation seekers told us that Superintendent Yale had been detained, and couldn’t meet us there: please would we go to the police station. We went, and found him in his office.
He shook hands. He offered sympathy.
He asked if we knew why Serena had gone to Quantum with a second bomb, and we told him. Asked if we knew why she should have killed Moira and tried to kill Malcolm. We told him my theories. He listened broodingly.
‘There will be an inquest,’ he said. ‘Mr Ian can formally identify the remains. You won’t need to see them… her… again, though.
The coroner’s verdict will be death by misadventure, I’ve no doubt. You may be needed to give an account of what happened. You’ll be informed of all that in due course.’ He paused. ‘Yesterday, we went to Miss Pembroke’s flat and conducted a search. We found a few items of interest. I am going to show you some objects and I’d be glad if you’d say whether you can identify them or not.’
He reached into a carton very like the one Serena had been carrying, which stood on his desk. He brought out a pile of twenty or thirty exercise books with spiral bindings and blue covers and after that a tin large enough to contain a pound of sweets, with a picture on top.
‘The Old Curiosity Shop,’ Malcolm said sadly.
‘No possibility of doubt,’ Yale nodded. ‘The title’s printed across the bottom of the picture.’
‘Are there any detonators in it?’ I asked.
‘No, just cotton wool. Mr Smith wonders if she used more than one detonator for each bomb, just to make sure. He says amateurs are mad enough to try anything.’
I picked up one of the notebooks and opened it.
‘Have you seen those before, sirs?’ Yale asked.
‘No,’ I said, and Malcolm shook his head.
In Serena’s looping handwriting, I read:
‘Daddy and I had such fun in the garden this morning. He was teaching the dogs to fetch sticks and I was throwing the sticks. We picked a lot of beautiful daffodils and when we went indoors I put them all in vases in all the rooms. I cooked some lamb chops for lunch and made mint sauce and peas and roast potatoes and gravy and for pudding we had ice-cream and peaches. Daddy is going to buy me some white boots with zips and silver tassels. He calls me his princess, isn’t that lovely? In the afternoon, we went down to the stream and picked some watercress for tea. Daddy took his socks off and rolled up his trousers and the boys no the boys weren’t there I won’t have them in my stories it was Daddy who picked the watercress and we washed it and ate it with brown bread. This evening I will sit on his lap and he will stroke my hair and call me his little princess, his little darling, and it will be lovely.’
I flicked through the pages. The whole book was full. Speechlessly I handed it to Malcolm, open where I’d read.
‘All the notebooks are like that,’ Yale said. ‘We’ve had them all read right through. She’s been writing them for years, I would say.’
‘But you don’t mean… they’re recent?’ I said.
‘Some of them are, certainly. I’ve seen several sets of books like these in my career. Compulsive writing, I believe it’s called. These of your sister’s are wholesome and innocent by comparison. You can’t imagine the pornography and brutality I’ve read. They make you despair.’
Malcolm, plainly moved, flicking over pages, said, ‘She says I bought her a pretty red dress… a white sweater with blue flowers on it… a bright yellow leotard - I hardly know what a leotard is. Poor girl. Poor girl.’
‘She bought them herself,’ I said. ‘Three or four times a week.’