Today, when I looked, it was empty. He must have taken at least a dozen.”

“But how can you possibly know that? Didn’t the doctor ask about the pills?”

“No. It wasn’t the same doctor that gave him the prescription—that one left the district, and this is a new man who hadn’t seen him before.”

“So what DID he say?”

“He thought it was a heart attack. I told him he had been warned by the other doctor about his heart.”

“Had he?”

The strain touched her lips now, making them veer and tremble. “I told the doctor he had.”

Paul didn’t speak for a moment; he was pondering. Presently he said: “I’m still puzzled—I can’t see that you’ve any reason to draw the conclusion you do. When and where did you last see the bottle with pills in it?”

“On his bedside table. It was nearly full. I was taking him a cup of tea before breakfast. A few days ago—perhaps a week.”

“Then how can you be certain about what happened this morning? Any time during the past week he could have—”

“But he wouldn’t, unless he had an attack, and he hadn’t had one since —oh, months.”

“How do you know THAT?”

“He’d have told me, or else I’d have noticed. He always coughed so much and it left him weak afterwards. It’s not something you can hide from people in the same house.”

“That may be, but I still say there’s no proof that he took all those pills this morning.”

“I think he MUST have.”

“But WHY? Surely you don’t WANT to think so? And if the doctor was satisfied—he was, wasn’t he?”

“Yes—after I talked to him. He wrote out a certificate, but I don’t think he would have if he’d seen the empty bottle.”

He said sharply: “What did you do with the bottle?”

“That’s why I’m glad we didn’t go to Glendalough. I broke it into little pieces and buried them in the garden.”

“You DID? Let’s hope you were lucky and nobody saw you… And don’t you ever tell anyone else about all this.”

“Oh, I won’t. But there’s something I haven’t told even you—yet.” She went over to the roll-top desk and opened it. “This was the Irish grammar he worked from, and the pencil and exercise-book he used. They were on the chair by the side of the bath, and there was a note clipped to the book, written on a torn page. Here it is. Nobody else has seen it.”

She took it out of the pocket of her skirt and unfolded it. Paul read the carefully pencilled script:

“DEAR CAREY—I know now it was a mistake ever to come to Ireland but I did it to please your mother and I pretended to be happy here, but I’m not, and actually I never have been. It’s a terrible thing when all at once you realize you’re learning a language that bores you and going to a church you don’t really believe in. I turned Catholic too, you know, to please her. They don’t like me at the office, they don’t like my English accent, they have a nickname for me—they call me Fitzpomp. It’s odd how all sorts of things can go on and on for years and you can stand them, and then suddenly you feel you can’t stand a single one of them for another minute. Well, why should you? There’s a line in some Latin writer—Seneca, I think—that says: ‘We cannot complain of life, for it keeps no one against his will’. So I don’t complain, and this letter, though it may tell you more about me than you have ever suspected, is really no more than a… “

The letter ended at that, and had no signature; it was as if the writer had been seized with illness in mid-sentence.

Paul was wondering why she had not shown him the letter at the beginning; it would have saved so much argument. The detached part of his mind caused him to pick up the exercise-book and compare the writing in it with the note; they were the same, there was no doubt of that. He saw her watching him make the test, but he could not guess what she was thinking.

He said at length: “How old were you when your mother married again?”

“Twelve.”

“And your real father… you remember him?”

“I was ten when he died… We lived in Kildare near the Curragh. He used to hunt with the cavalrymen—oh, you should have seen him on a horse. We had a farm, but it never paid… such wonderful times, though—and every Christmas he took me to the Theatre Royal to see the pantomime.