Echo

'Oh, that Christie,' said his partner solemnly.

The live-in nurse was an attractive Irish woman with soft grey hair and a buxom figure. She opened the kitchen door to Deacon's tap and invited them in with a warm smile of welcome. 'I recognize you from your photographs,' she told Deacon, wiping floury hands on her apron. 'You're Michael.' She shook his hand. 'I'm Siobhan O'Brady.'

'How do you do, Siobhan?' He turned to Terry who was skulking in his shadow. 'This is my friend Terry Dalton.'

'I'm pleased to meet you, Terry.' She put an arm around the boy's shoulder and drew him inside before shutting the door. 'Will you take a cup of tea after your journey?'

Deacon thanked her, but Terry seemed to find her mothering instincts overpowering and was bent on extricating himself as soon as he decently could from her embrace. 'I need a piss,' he said firmly.

'Through the door to your right, then first left,' said Deacon, hiding a smile, 'and mind your head as you go. There isn't a doorway in this house higher than six feet.'

Siobhan busied herself with the kettle. 'Is your mother expecting you, Michael? Because she hasn't said a word to me if she is. She's a little forgetful these days, so it may have slipped her mind, but there's nothing to worry about. I can find a little extra to feed you and the lad.' She chuckled happily. 'How did we manage before the deep freeze? That's what I'm always asking myself. I remember my own mother pickling eggs to tide us over the lean periods, and nasty-looking things they were, too. There were fourteen of us and it was a struggle to make any of us eat them.'

She paused to spoon tea into the pot and Deacon seized the opportunity to answer her first question. She was a garrulous woman, he thought, and wondered how his mother, who was the opposite, put up with her. 'No,' he said, 'she's not expecting me. And please don't worry about lunch. She may refuse to speak to me, in which case Terry and I will leave immediately.'

'We'll keep our fingers crossed, then, that she does no such thing. It would be a shame to come so far for so little.'

He smiled. 'Why do I get the feeling that you were expecting me?'

'Your sister mentioned the possibility. She said if you came at all it would be unannounced. I think she was afraid I'd ring the police first and ask questions later.' She poured boiling water onto the tea leaves and took some mugs from a cupboard. 'You'll be wanting to know how your mother is. Well, she's not as fit as she was-who is at her age?-but, despite what she's claiming, she's nowhere near death's door. She has impaired vision, which means she can't read, and she has difficulty walking because one of her legs is packing up. She needs constant supervision because her increasing immobility has caused her to take shortcuts on her diet, which of course means she could pass out with hypoglycemia at any moment.'

She poured a cup of tea and passed it to him with a jug of milk and the sugar bowl. 'The obvious place for her is some sort of nursing home, where she can retain her independence and be given round-the-clock care, but your mother is very resistant to the idea. We have all tried to explain to her that she could live for another ten years, but she has a bee in her bonnet about being gone in a couple of months and is determined to die here.' She fixed him with a knowing eye. 'I can see from your expression that you're wondering what business this is of mine-why is the nurse siding with Emma and Hugh, you're thinking, when they're only after getting shot of their debts-but, my dear, the truth is I can't bear to see a patient of mine so unhappy. She sits day after day in her sitting room, with no one to visit her and no one to care, and her only companion is a talkative, middle-aged Irish woman with whom she has nothing in common. It breaks my heart to watch her struggling to be civil to me in case I up my stumps and leave. Almost anything would be preferable to that. Would you not agree, Michael?'

'I would, yes.'

'Then you'll try to persuade her to be sensible?'

He smiled apologetically and shook his head. 'No. If her mind's all right, then she's capable of making her own decisions. I'm damned if I'll interfere. I wouldn't begin to know what's sensible and what's not. I can't even make rational judgments for myself, let alone for someone else. Sorry.'

Siobhan seemed less troubled by this answer than he expected. 'Shall we find out if your mother will see you, Michael? Either she will or she won't, and there's little sense in putting it off.'

Cynically (and accurately) he guessed that Siobhan's complacency was based on her knowledge that Penelope Deacon would do the exact opposite of anything her son suggested.

*15*

Amanda Powell's elderly neighbor looked up from where she was preparing lunch and was alarmed to see a man fiddling with the lock on Mrs. Powell's garage. She knew the house was empty because Amanda had told her earlier that morning that she was spending the Christmas holiday with her mother in Kent. Shortly afterwards, she had driven away. The woman hurried through to the sitting room to alert her husband, but by the time they returned to the kichen window the man had gone.

Her husband sallied forth-somewhat reluctantly it must be said-to discover where the would-be intruder had gone. He tried the garage door, but it was firmly locked. The same was true of the front door. He glanced up and down the quiet road, then with a shrug rejoined his wife. 'Are you sure you didn't imagine it, darling?'

'Of course I didn't imagine it,' she said crossly. 'I'm not senile. He'll have nipped across the gardens at the back, and be trying somebody else's house by now. There'll be quite a few of them empty this weekend. You must ring the police.'

'They'll want a description.'

She paused in her peeling and stared out of the window, picturing the scene. 'He was about six feet tall, thin, and he had on a dark coat.'

Muttering that it seemed unkind to trouble the police on Christmas Eve, and anyway every house had an alarm system, her husband nevertheless made the call. But as he put down the telephone after receiving an assurance that a patrol car would be sent to check the house, it occurred to him that he had seen a man fitting that description once before.

When he had stood outside Mrs. Powell's garage and watched the police lay a dead tramp on a