The Man Who Inherited My Husband's Secret

with a casserole, which is how Ruth

as new. Since Emeric died she had knocked every time, as if the flat had become somebody else's house. She stood on the landing in her good came

k," she said. "I

k the dish from her so s

the casserole, watch. Ruth was a terrible liar, and I'd always loved her for it. She blushed fro

e asked about the lab, and I told her about the ledger, the merchant, the tide-line lifting off like breath from a mirror. She asked if I was sleep

its polyester sleeve, with the letter folded in the drawer beneath. I hadn't planned to

ast of the leek onto her fork, "I'm sorr

aughed, a little too brightly. "I

en, you

en." She waved her

k you about t

dding ring she'd never taken off, though Dad had been gone thirteen years.

aid, "a client's na

too, the way you practise a lift. "It isn't a client's name. It's Linden For

that might ring. Her thumb found the band on her left hand and began to tu

rvoir now. Walter's father had something to do with the water authority." She said it in a thin, ev

ever li

You know I was. We had the library on the green."

slid to the dresser behind my shoulder, and the sleeve

I said. "He said Emeric

at

e's Cass

ing s

t all. A stranger who turns up two years after-who says he has something of Emeric's-you don't know what he is. He could be anyone. He could

r asked me f

t must

d not, in all my life, asked me to keep away from a single thing. She'd let me take up knife-edged tools at n

ently as I could, "

voice was almost a whisper.

k to me she said, in a voice so bright it hurt, "Oh, I forgot, Mrs Pell's niece is getting engaged, I said I'd ring." And she dried her hands and fetched he

stationery," she said. "He n

e down forty-four stairs in her good shoes, and I heard the

old her it

the envelope was

oal coat. Then I went to clear the table, because there is nothing to be done in a crisis e

idth. The drawer in wh

ck on the right. I opened it now with one finger and looked at the letter inside, folded in thirds, lying exactly as I'd left

hrough t

going to be a nursery and had become a place where I kept things. Nothing missing. Nothing broken. The cushions were as I'd left them. Th

tered them

d a single bead of water from

ed brown leather armchair beside the bookcase, where he'd done his crosswords with his feet tucked under him like a boy, had been left

ng on the

e pages fell open as they do when a book has been opened often in one place, and there it was, the last grid he'd ever started. Half the clues filled

NDE

the bo

out, and under it, faintly, the radio still playing in the kitchen. Someone had been here. Someone had stood where

mber for the police, then over my mother's, then over a numb

eport with a date that didn't fit. I had every reason on earth not t

work. And whoever had been in my flat tonight had known where I k

d Cassi

d on the f

Mer

stranger's, flat and quick. "Not forced. Not

aid. "Lock the door. Stay in a li

id, without

agreed, a

as if he'd run the last of the stairs, and when I opened it he looked first not at me but at the

the line of his shoulders under the coat, the

pitting. No tool marks. It wasn't pick

people ha

tell m

ld a fact steady. "My mother. Emeric. My landlord, Mr Danesh, but he's in Karachi until January." Three. I li

till co

as in the air, and

d just told us. Four keys. One dead. One in Karachi. One my mother's. And one in the pocket of a gentle old man with g

ped cou

irst moment I understo