Dead Men's s Boots

But it came on the back of a lot of other problems. Most of them, I have to say, psychological. A nervous breakdown at the age of fifty-two, which he never fully recovered from, and occasional bouts of dementia since.

‘He’d had a very happy – almost blessed – life up until then, but it all came apart very quickly. That was when he first hired me to look after the day-to-day workings of the estate.’

‘Before the breakdown?’ I asked. ‘Or after?’

The blond man looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes narrowing very slightly.

‘Before,’ he said. ‘A year or so before, I suppose. I was still relatively new when all that stuff happened. Why do you ask?’

I didn’t even know myself. ‘Just wondering about the legal situation,’ I said glibly, remembering John Gittings’s Alzheimer’s and the doubts it might have cast on his changed will. ‘If he took you on when he wasn’t in his right mind . . .’

Covington shrugged. ‘There’s a trust,’ he said. ‘They’re the real decision-makers as far as Lionel’s investments are concerned.

I’m just an administrator. And a sort of personal assistant. I deal with the running of the house, sort and answer the mail, liaise with the medical staff here. That sort of thing. The trustees manage the investment portfolio and pay me my salary.’

‘Who looks after the crematorium?’ I asked.

Covington held open an oak-panelled door, and I walked through into what was evidently one of the family rooms. I smelled the smell of understated luxury: leather and fresh-cut flowers and old, old wood.

A sixty-inch TV stood against one wall of the room and tried in vain to dominate it. The carpet underneath my shoes swallowed the sound of my footsteps. The curtains had a pattern of fleurde-lis, and you could have played a game of five-a-side football on the black leather settee. There was a bar, too: the full deal, with wall-mounted optics and a gleaming chrome soda syphon.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Covington asked, derailing the conversation. ‘Whisky? Brandy?’

‘Whisky. Thanks.

’

‘Straight, or on the rocks?’

‘Straight.’

He went behind the bar and fixed the drinks, moving unhurriedly and wit»rrip hh practised ease, as though serving in a pub was where his real strengths lay rather than managing an estate. The whisky was Springbank Local Barley, 1966, which didn’t surprise me in the least but did make my heart quicken just a little. Covington poured two generous measures and passed one across the bar-top to me on a folded serviette.