'Oh, he was like a dog with two tails, Drake was, by the sound of him!' Mr Hibbert could not have looked more proud if it had been his own son he was talking of.
Di Salis leaned suddenly forward, even presuming, despite cautionary glances from Connie, to jab his pen in the old man's direction. 'So after Leningrad: what did they do with him then?'
'Why, he came back to Shanghai, naturally,' said Mr Hibbert with a laugh. 'And promoted, he was, after the learning he'd acquired, and the standing: a shipbuilder, Russian taught, a technologist, an administrator! Oh, he loved those Russians! Specially after Korea. They'd machines, power, ideas, philosophy. His promised land, Russia was. He looked up to them like -' His voice, and his zeal, both died. 'Oh dear,' he muttered, and stopped, unsure of himself for the second time since they had listened to him. 'But that couldn't last for ever could it? Admiring Russia: how long was that fashionable in Mao's new wonderland?
Doris dear, get me a shawl.'
'You're wearing it,' Doris said.
Tactlessly, stridently, di Salis still bore in on him. He nothing now except the answers: not even for the notebook open on his lap.
'He returned,' he piped. 'Very well. He rose in the hierarchy. He was Russian trained, Russia oriented. Very well. What comes next?'
Mr Hibbert looked at di Salis for a long time. There was no guile in his face, and none in his gaze. He looked at him as a clever child might, without the hindrance of sophistication. And it was suddenly clear that Mr Hibbert didn't trust di Salis any more and, indeed, that he didn't like him.
'He's dead, young man,' Mr Hibbert said finally, and swivelling his chair, stared at the sea view. In the room it was already half dark, and most of the light came from the gas fire. The grey beach was empty. On the wicket gate a single seagull perched black and vast against the last strands of evening sky.
'You said he still had his crooked arm,' di Salis snapped straight back. 'You said you supposed he still had. You said it about now! I heard it in your voice!'
'Well now, I think we have taxed Mr Hibbert quite enough,' said Connie brightly and, with a sharp glance at di Salis, stooped for her bag. But di Salis would have none of it.
'I don't believe him!' he cried in his shrill voice. 'How? When did Nelson die? Give us the dates!'
But the old man only drew his shawl more closely round him, and kept his eyes to the sea.
'We were in Durham,' Doris said, still looking at her knitting, though there was not the light to knit by. 'Drake drove up and saw us in his big chauffeur-driven car. He took his henchman with him, the one he calls Tiu. They were fellow crooks together in Shanghai. Wanted to show off. Brought me a platinum cigarette lighter, and a thousand pounds in cash for Dad's church and flashed his OBE at us in its case, took me into a corner and asked me to come to Hong Kong and be his mistress, right under Dad's nose. Bloody sauce! He wanted Dad's signature on something. A guarantee. Said he was going to read law at Gray's Inn. At his age, I ask you! Forty-two! Talk about mature student! He wasn't, of course. It was all just face and talk as usual. Dad said to him: How's Nelson? and -'
'Just one minute, please,' Di Salis had made yet another ill-judged interruption. 'The date? When did all this happen, please? I must have dates!'
'Sixty-seven. Dad was almost retired, weren't you, Dad?'
The old man did not stir.
'All right, sixty-seven. What month? Be precise, please!'
He all but said 'be precise, woman', and he was making Connie seriously anxious. But when she again tried to restrain him, he ignored her.
'April,' Doris said after some thought. 'We'd just had Dad's birthday. That's why he brought the thousand quid for the church. He knew Dad wouldn't take it for himself because Dad didn't like the way Drake made his money.'
'All right. Good. Well done. April. So Nelson died pre-April sixty-seven. What details did Drake supply of the circumstances? Do you remember that?'
'None. No details. I told you. Dad asked, and he just said dead as if Nelson was a dog. So much for brotherly love. Dad didn't know where to look. It nearly broke his heart and there was Drake not giving a hoot. I have no brother. Nelson is dead. And Dad still praying for Nelson, weren't you, Dad?'
This time the old man spoke. With the dusk, his voice had grown considerably in force.
'I prayed for Nelson and I pray for him still,' he said bluntly. 'When he was alive I prayed that one way or another he would do God's work in the world. I believed he had it in him to do great things. Drake, he'd manage anywhere. He's tough. But the light of the door at the Lord's Life Mission would not have burned in vain, I used to think, if Nelson Ko succeeded in helping to lay the foundation of a just society in China. Nelson might call it Communism. Call it what he likes.
But for three long years your mother and I gave him our Christian love, and I won't have it said, Doris, not by you or anyone, that the light of God's love can be put out forever. Not by politics, not by the sword.' He drew a long breath, 'And now he's dead, I pray for his soul, same as I do for your mother's,' he said, sounding strangely less convinced. 'If that's popery, I don't care.'
Connie had actually risen to go. She knew the limits, she had the eye, and she was scared of the way di Salis was hammering on. But di Salis on the scent knew no limits at all.
'So it was a violent death, was it? Politics and the sword, you said. Which politics? Did Drake tell you that? Actual killings were relatively rare, you know. I think you're holding out on us!'
Di Salis also was standing, but at Mr Hibbert's side, and he was yapping these questions downward at the old man's white head as if he were acting in a Sarratt playlet on interrogation.
'You've been so very kind,' said Connie gushingly to Doris. 'Really we've all we could possibly need and more. I'm sure it will all go through with the knighthood,' she said, in a voice pregnant with message for di Salis. 'Now away we go and thank you both enormously.'
But this time it was the old man himself who frustrated her.
'And the year after, he lost his other Nelson too, God help him, his little boy,' he said. 'He'll be a lonely man, will Drake. That was his last letter to us, wasn't it, Doris? Pray for my little Nelson, Mr Hibbert, he wrote. And we did. Wanted me to fly over and conduct the funeral. I couldn't do it, I don't know why. I never much held with money spent on funerals, to be honest.'
At this, di Salis literally pounced: and with a truly terrible glee. He stooped right over the old man, and he was so animated that he grabbed a fistful of shawl in his feverish little hand.
'Ah! Ah now! But did he ever ask you to pray for Nelson senior? Answer me that.'
'No,' the old man said simply. 'No, he didn't.'
'Why not? Unless he wasn't really dead, of course! There are more ways than one of dying in China, aren't there, and not all of them are fatal! Disgraced: is that a better expression?'
His squeaky words flew about the fire-lit room like ugly spirits.
'They're to go, Doris,' the old man said calmly to the sea. 'See that driver right, won't you, dear? I'm sure we should have taken out to him, but never mind.'
They stood in the hall, making their goodbyes.
The old man had stayed in his chair and Doris had closed the door on him. Sometimes, Connie's sixth sense was frightening.
'The name Liese doesn't mean anything to you, does it, Miss Hibbert?' she asked, buckling her enormous plastic coat. 'We have a reference to a Liese in Mr Ko's life.'
Doris's unpainted face made an angry scowl.
'That's Mum's name,' she said. 'She was German Lutheran. The swine stole that too, did he?'
With Toby Esterhase at the wheel, Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis hurried home to George with their amazing news. At first, on the way, they squabbled about di Salis's lack of restraint. Toby Esterhase particularly was shocked, and Connie seriously feared the old man might write to Ko. But soon the import of their discovery overwhelmed their apprehensions, and they arrived triumphant at the gates of their secret city.