dynamic. Thomas…' I paused. 'Thomas was absolutely desperate, but for peace in his house, not for the money itself. Berenice has made him deeply ineffective. He's got a long way to go, to climb back. He seemed to me incapable almost of tying his shoelaces, let alone making a time-bomb, even if he did invent the wired-up clocks.'
'Go on,' Malcolm said.
'Berenice is obsessed with herself and her desires, but her grudge is against Thomas. Money would make her quieter, but it's not money she really wants, it's a son. Killing Moira and you wouldn't achieve that.'
'And Gervase?'
'He's destroying himself. It takes all his energies. He hasn't enough left to go around killing people for money. He's lost his nerve. He drinks. You have to be courageous and sober to mess with explosives. Ursula's desperation takes her to churches and to lunches with Joyce.'
He grunted in his throat, not quite a chuckle.
Joyce had been thanked by us on the telephone on the Saturday night when we'd come back exhausted. She'd been devastated to the point of silence about what had happened and had put the phone down in tears. We phoned her again in the morning.
'I got Serena first,' she said sorrowfully. 'She must have gone out and bought all the stuff… I can't bear it. That dear little girl, so sweet when she was little, even though I hated her mother. So awful.'
'Go on, then,' Malcolm said. 'You keep stopping.'
'It couldn't have been Alicia or Vivien, they're not strong enough to carry you. Alicia's new boyfriend would be, but why should he think Alicia would be better off with you dead? And I couldn't imagine any of them constructing a bomb.'
'And Ferdinand?'
'I really couldn't see it, could you? He has no particular worries. He's good at his job. He's easy-going most of the time. Not him. Not Debs. That's the lot.'
'So did you come to Serena just by elimination?' He turned from the window, searching my face.
'No,' I said slowly. 'I thought of them all together all their troubles and heart-aches. To begin with, when Moira died, I thought, like everyone else did, that she was killed to stop her taking half your money. I thought the attacks on you were for money, too. It was the obvious thing. And then, when I'd seen them all, when I understood all the turmoils going on under apparently normal exteriors, I began to wonder whether the money really mattered at all… And when I was in New York, I was thinking of them all again but taking the money out… and with Serena… everything fitted.'
He stirred restlessly and went to sit down. 'It wouldn't have convinced the police,' he said.
'Nor you either,' I agreed. 'You had to see for yourself.'
We fell silent, thinking what in fact he had seen, his daughter come to blast out the kitchen rather than search it for a notepad.
'But didn't you have any proof? 'he said eventually.'I mean, any real reason to think it was her? Something you could put your finger on.'
'Not really. Nothing that would stand up in court. Except that I think it was Serena who got Norman West to find you in Cambridge, not Alicia, as West himself thought.'
He stared. 'Why do you think that?'
'Alicia said she hadn't done it. Both West and I thought she was lying, but I think now she was telling the truth. Do you remember the tape from my telephone answering machine? Do you remember Serena's voice? 'Mummy wants to know where Daddy is. I told her you wouldn't know, but she insisted I ask.' That's what she said. Alicia told me positively that she herself hadn't wanted to know where you were. If Alicia's telling the truth, it was Serena who wanted to know, and she wanted to know because she'd lost us after failing to run you over. Lost us because of us scooting up to London in the Rolls.'
'My God,' he said. 'What happened to the tape? I suppose it got lost in the rubble.'
'No, it's in a box in the garage at Quantum. A few things were saved. Several of your gold-and-silver brushes are there too.'
He waved the thought away, although he was pleased enough. 'I suppose Serena did sound like Alicia on the telephone. I sometimes thought it was Alicia, when she phoned. Breathless and girlish. You know. Norman West just got it wrong.'
'She did call herself Mrs Pembroke,' I pointed out. 'Just to confuse matters. Or maybe she said Ms and he didn't hear clearly.'
'It doesn't much matter.' He was quiet for a while. 'Although it was terrible yesterday, it was the best thing, really. We'll grieve and get over this. She couldn't have borne to be locked up, could she, not with all that energy… not in drab clothes.'
On that Sunday morning also, we began telephoning to the family to tell them what had happened. I expected to find that Joyce had already told them, but she hadn't. She'd talked to them all the day before, they said, but that was all.
We left a lot of stunned silences behind us. A lot of unstoppable tears.
Malcolm told Alicia first, and asked if she'd like him to come to see her, to comfort her. When she could speak, she said no. She said Serena didn't kill Moira, Ian did. Everything was Ian's fault. Malcolm put the receiver down slowly, rubbed his hand over his face, and told me what she'd said.
'It's very hard,' he said, excusing her, 'to face that you've given birth to a murderer.'
'She helped to make her a murderer,' I said.
I spoke to my four brothers and to Lucy. Malcolm told Vivien last. They all asked where we were: Joyce had told them we were in Australia. In London, we said, but didn't add where. Malcolm said he couldn't face having them all descend on him before he was ready. By the end, I was dropping with fatigue and Malcolm had finished off half a bottle. Long before bedtime, we were asleep.
We went back to Quantum on Monday, as we'd promised the police, and found Mr Smith poking around like old times.
All physical signs of Serena had mercifully been taken away, and all that remained were the torn flaps of black plastic that hadn't been near her.
Mr Smith shook hands with us dustily and after a few 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.
