Free A Ghost at the Door by Michael Dobbs

of despair she placed on parade was entirely genuine. ‘Stop! We must stop. I feel . . .’ She waved a forlorn hand in front of her face that was flushing
more deeply with every breath. ‘I need to rest.’
    ‘Miss Ranelagh, I’ve come such a long way to see you. Please.’
    ‘No!’
    Her sudden forcefulness startled them both. He dragged his eyes away from her and gazed around the room in frustration. It was meticulously tidy with expensive prints and oils hung on the wall,
a collection of fine Irish crystal glass in a corner cabinet, the bookcases filled with hardbacks of some of the finest novels of the last fifty years, many of which Harry recognized as
collectors’ items, and a long and intricately carved piece of whalebone portraying the world of ancient sailors rested on a stand of polished cedar. Everything about this woman was
old-fashioned but tasteful and expensive. It was also more than a little lonely. Every corner, every cranny of free space, was filled with old photos and mementoes, every inch of this place was
hers yet hers alone, rarely shown and never shared with anyone else. It suggested stubbornness, that she did things her way, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to shift her. And, as he
stared back into her darting, anxious eyes, he knew she was lying.
    She, too, knew that she couldn’t simply dismiss him, send him away empty-handed, for he was his father’s son and he would only return. Anyway, a curt dismissal would do nothing but
antagonize him and raise his suspicions. Play for time, Susannah, play for time! And get some help.
    ‘I’m sorry, Mr Jones, truly I am,’ she began again in a far more emollient tone. ‘I would like to help you, of course I would, but . . .’ – she shook her
head, the grey hair falling across her face once again – ‘now isn’t the time. I’ll tell you everything I know about your father’ – there was more! –
‘so why not come back around this same time tomorrow? I’ll collect my thoughts. And make sure I have a proper breakfast.’ A little joke. She was regaining control. The thin bones
of her fingers brushed at the stray fronds of hair, putting everything back in order. ‘You will come back tomorrow, won’t you?’
    ‘I promise I will.’
    She smiled weakly as he got up. This man had come crawling through her past and now threatened everything she had set out for her future. His bloody father, he’d been a nightmare, too.
Tell the son all she knew about Johnnie? Never. Anything but that.

    Alexander McQuarrel had responded immediately, if a little stuffily, to Jemma’s e-mail. ‘It would be an honour to meet the fiancée of Harry Jones,’ he
had replied. ‘As it happens, I shall be in London tomorrow with a diary that is not overly full and is flexible. I would be delighted to meet with you . . .’
    Jemma was allowed an hour’s lunch break from the primary school where she taught. There was no wiggle room, so they agreed to meet on a bench overlooking the Thames in Battersea Park. When
she arrived the river was low, leaving banks of glistening mud. A common shag perched on a navigation sign and preened itself while hooligan pigeons scuttled around her feet and hopped in
impatience. McQuarrel, when he arrived shortly after her, was tall, upright, elegant, his stride long and confident despite the fact that by her reckoning he was well the other side of seventy. He
wore an expensively tailored blue suit that clung to his lean frame and his complexion talked of fresh air and country living. The eyes were blue and bright, the hair like a blanket of snow and
parted carefully with a comb. He seemed to recognize her and extended a hand in greeting.
    ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked, curious, as he sat beside her.
    ‘If you’ll allow me the indiscretion of age,’ he said, and paused as though not to take her for granted, ‘you’re the most naturally beautiful woman I’ve seen
all morning.’
    ‘I’m in a