Hatherley rested his glass on his knee.
"Your grandfather, Charles Harcourt, had two sons by his first wife. Benjamin and Robert. Your father was born after Charles remarried."
"I know about Robert."
"Ben was already abroad by then."
"That doesn't explain why nobody mentioned him."
"There was a quarrel. Charles disowned him."
"Because of the smuggling?"
"No. That came later."
"What was the quarrel about?"
"I don't know."
"You know a great deal about my family for someone who doesn't know that."
"I know what Ben told me. Adrian knew more."
Relf opened his notebook.
"Why was Bull interested in him?"
"Ben told him something in Hong Kong. Early eighties."
"What?"
"That the arrangements he used weren't his own. The routes, the contacts, the way people were passed from one place to another. He'd inherited them."
"How old were they?"
"Ben didn't know."
"So Bull tried to find out."
Hatherley nodded.
"Is that what brought him to the Marsh?" Eleanor asked.
"Eventually."
"And the bells?"
"I don't know."
Relf watched him.
"You've already denied knowing things you plainly knew."
Hatherley looked down at his glass.
"Some of these conversations were with clients."
"Was Bull your client?"
"No."
"Ben?"
Hatherley did not answer immediately.
"Is he dead?" Relf asked.
"I believe so."
"When did you last see him?"
"1998."
"In Hong Kong?"
"Dungeness."
Eleanor looked up. Before any of this had happened, Dungeness had been somewhere she intended to visit: the shingle, the lighthouses, the houses facing the sea. She had marked it on her map.
"Why did you meet there?" Relf asked.
"Ben had come back to England. He wanted advice about property."
"What property?"
"That wasn't the part of the conversation Adrian became interested in."
"Then tell us about that part."
Hatherley shifted in his chair.
"Ben asked a hypothetical question. If a man had disappeared twenty years earlier, then lived under another name, what offence would he commit by returning under his original identity?"
Relf stopped writing.
"Who was the man?"
"He wouldn't say."
"Did you know?"
"No."
"Did you believe the question was hypothetical?"
"Not entirely."
Eleanor thought of Wycliffe. The dates did not fit neatly, but the question did.
"When did you tell Adrian?" she asked.
"About three years ago."
"Why then?"
"We were talking about Ben. I mentioned it."
"And his research changed?"
"He began looking at disappearances. He thought the Marsh might have been used to move people out, as well as bring goods in."
"Criminals?" Relf asked.
"Some."
"Who else?"
"Ben didn't give me a list."
"Witnesses? Refugees? People hiding from someone?"
"Possibly."
"Did Ben distinguish between them?"
"He accepted money to arrange their disappearance."
Relf made a note.
Eleanor returned to the question Hatherley had avoided.
"What did you tell Adrian about the bells?"
"That was his discovery."
"But he came here on Monday to ask you about Ben."
"Yes."
"What did he want to know?"
Hatherley looked towards the window.
"Whether Ben had ever spoken about how the messages were passed."
"And had he?"
"Not to me."
Relf let the silence continue. Hatherley picked up his whisky and finished it.
They left after ten.
This time he stood in the doorway while they walked to the car.
For several miles, Eleanor watched the road without speaking.
"Are you all right?" Relf asked.
"I don't know."
He waited.
"My father never mentioned another brother. Neither did my grandmother."
"We need to check what Hatherley told us."
She turned towards him.
"You don't believe him?"
"I haven't decided."
"The photograph is real."
"Yes."
"Margaret recognised Ben."
"She recognised a man Adrian called Ben. Hatherley supplied the surname."
Eleanor looked ahead again.
"He knew my name before we showed him the photograph."
"Yes."
"He could have found out about my family."
"He could."
She thought back to the first interview. Hatherley had known her profession too, then offered two different explanations for it.
"Why invent a connection?"
"I don't know. That's another reason to check it."
"And if it's true?"
"Then we'll have to find out why your family never told you."
She sat back. There were records they could examine. Someone might still be alive who remembered Charles Harcourt's first marriage. She did not have to accept the whole account tonight.
"Do you believe anything he said?"
"Some of it. I'd like to know which parts he expected us to follow."
At eleven thirty, Relf telephoned Margaret Bull.
She went back to the photographs. Twelve minutes later she called him with another inscription.
Ben H. — Macau, 1983
He passed it on to Eleanor.
Still no surname.
She wrote the words beneath her notes from the interview, then closed the notebook. Hatherley might be right, but she could leave that question until morning.