Deanna's studio consisted firstly of a reception area with a staircase on one side leading upwards. A young girl sitting behind the reception desk looked up and brightened when I pushed open the glass entrance door and stepped onto some thick grey carpet, but lost interest when I asked for Serena, explaining I was her brother.
"Back there," she said. "She's taking class at the moment."
Back there was through white-painted double doors. I went through and found myself in a windowless but brightly lit and attractive area of small tables and chairs, where several women sat drinking from polystyrene cups. The air vibrated with the pulse of music being played somewhere else, and when I again asked for Serena and was directed onwards, I came to its source.
The studio itself ran deeply back to end in a wall of windows overlooking a small strip of garden. The floor was of polished wood, sprung somehow so that it almost bounced underfoot. The walls were white except for the long left-hand one, which was entirely of looking-glass. The music, warm and insistent, invited rhythmic response.
Serena herself danced with her back to the mirror. Facing her, three spread-out rows, was a collection of clients, all female, bouncing in unison on springy ankles, arms and legs swinging in circles and kicks. On every face, concentration and sweat.
"Go for the bum," Serena commanded, looking happy, and her class with an increase of already frenetic energy, presumably went.
"Great, ladies, that's great," Serena said eventually, stopping jumping and switching off the music machine which stood in a corner near where I'd come in. She gave me an unfriendly glance but turned with radiance back to the customers. "If any of you want to continue, Sammy will be here within a minute. Take a rest, ladies."
A few of the bodies stayed. Most looked at the clock on the wall and filed panting into a door marked "changing rooms".
Serena said, "What do you want?"
"Talk."
She looked colourful but discouraging. She wore a bright pink long- sleeved body-stocking with white bouncing shoes, pink and white leg-warmers and a scarlet garment like a chopped off vest.
"I'll give you five minutes," she said.
She was hardly out of breath. A girl who was apparently Sammy Higgs came in in electric blue and started taking charge, and Serena with bad grace led me back through the refreshment area and the entrance hall and up the stairs.
"There are no classes up here just now. Say what you've come for and then go."
Upstairs, according to a notice on the wall, Deanna offered ballroom dancing tuition, also "ballet and posture". Serena stood with her hands on her skinny pink hips and waited.
"Malcolm wants me to find out who bombed Quantum," I said.
She glowered at me. "Well, I didn't."
"Do you remember the day old Fred blew up the tree stump?"
"No," she said. She didn't bother to think, hadn't tried to remember.
"Thomas gave you a ride on his shoulders out of the field, and the blast of the explosion knocked old Fred over."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Why are you so hostile?"
"I'm not. Where is Daddy.
"With friends," I said. "It saddens him that you' re hostile."
She said bitterly, "That's a laugh. He's rejected all of us except you. And I'll bet you killed Moira."
"He hasn't rejected you," I said. "And I didn't."
"He kicked us all out. I loved him when I was little." Tears appeared suddenly in her eyes and she shook them angrily away. "He couldn't wait to get rid of me."
"He tried to keep you, but Alicia wouldn't have it. She fought him in the courts for custody, and won."
"He didn't want me," she said fiercely. "He only said so to spite Mummy, to make her suffer. I know all about it."
"Alicia told you?"
"of course she did. Daddy couldn't wait to get rid of us, to get rid of Mummy, to get married again, to… to… throw everything about us out of the house, to tear out all the pretty rooms… blot us out." She was deeply passionate with the old feelings, still smouldering after twenty years. I remembered how upset I'd been when Alicia tore out my own mother's kitchen, how I'd felt betrayed and dispossessed. I had been six, as Serena had been, and I still remembered it clearly.
"Give him a chance," I suggested.
"I did give him a chance. I offered to help him after Moira died and he still didn't want me. And look at the way he's behaving," she said. "Throwing money away. If he thinks I care a tuppenny damn about his stupid scholarships, he's a fool. You can toady up to him all you like, but I'm not going to. He can keep his damned money. I can manage without it."
She looked hard-eyed and determinedly stubborn. The old man in all of us, I thought.
"You've had your five minutes," she said. She side-stepped me in swift movements and made for the stairs. "See you at the funeral."
"Whose funeral?" I asked, following her.
"Anyone's," she said darkly, and ran weightlessly down the stairs as if skimming were more normal than walking.
When I reached the entrance hall, she was vanishing through the white double doors. it was pointless to pursue her.
I left Deanna's studio feeling I had achieved nothing, and with leaden spirits went back to the car and drove to Wokingham to call on Ferdinand.
I half-hoped he wouldn't be in, but he was. He came to the door frowning because I had interrupted him at his compute rand grudgingly let me in.
"We've nothing to say, "he said, but he sounded more resigned than forbidding; half-relaxed, as he'd been in my flat.
He led the way into the front room of the bungalow he and Debs had bought on the road to Reading. The front room was his office, a perfectly natural arrangement to Ferdinand, since Malcolm's office had always been at home.
The rest of the bungalow, which I'd visited two or three times before, was furnished sparsely in accordance with Debs' and Ferdinand's joint dislike of dirt and clutter. One of the three bedrooms was completely empty, one held a single bed and a chest of drawers (for Serena's visits), and in the third, the couple's own, there was a mattress on a platform and a wall of cupboards and enclosed shelves that Ferdinand had put together himself. The sitting-room held two chairs, a standard lamp, a lot of floor cushions and a television set. In the tidy kitchen, there was a table with four stools. All visible life was in the office, though even there, in direct contrast to Malcolm's comfortable shambles, a spartan order of neatness ruled.
Ferdinand's computer bore a screenful of graphics. He glanced at it and then looked with some impatience back to me.
"What do you want?" he asked. "I've a lot to do after being away on a course."
"Can't you save all that," I gestured to the screen, "or whatever it is you do? Record it, and come out to a pub for lunch."
He shook his head and looked at his watch. Then, in indecision, said, "I suppose I have to eat," and fiddled about with the computer. "All right. Half an hour, max."
I drove us to the town centre and he pointed out a pub with a car- park. The bar was full of business people similarly out for lunch breaks, and I bought scotch and sandwiches after a good deal of polite elbowing. Ferdinand had secured a table from which he was clearing the past customer's detritus with a finicky expression.
"Look," I said, handing him his drink as we sat down, "Malcolm wants me to find out who's trying to kill him."
"it isn't me," he said. He took a swallow, unconcerned.
"Do you remember old Fred blowing up the tree roots, that time? When we were about twelve or thirteen? When the blast blew old Fred flat?"
He stared. "Yes, I do," he said slowly, "but that's years ago. it can't have anything to do with the house."
"Why not?" I asked. "That bang made a big impression on us. Memories last more or less for ever, they just need digging up. The explosives expert working at Quantum asked if I knew what cordite was, and I remembered old Fred."