"I have."
"Then you have your answer, and I should like mine."
Laurence closed the door. He did not sit. He went to the fireplace and stood with one hand on the cold marble of the mantel, under the portrait of his father on a grey hunter, and he said, "Before I give you anything, sir, I want to ask you about Samuel Wren."
He saw the old man's back stiffen. It was very slight. A man less familiar with that back would have missed it.
"Wren is a year dead."
"I know when he died. I want to know how."
"You know how. There was an inquest. You might have attended it, had you been in a condition to attend anything." Sir Roland turned from the window. His face was composed and grave. "He rode out in fog, in the night, in drink, and went over the edge of the lime pit on the Wold road. His mare was found grazing at the rim in the morning. It was a wretched business. I took the depositions myself, to spare you. The verdict was misadventure. There is nothing more to know."
"Where is my flask?"
The fire hissed in the grate. A log settled. Sir Roland's face did not change, exactly, but something went out of it, some last reserve of ease, and he looked suddenly every one of his sixty-four years.
"So," he said quietly. "She is here."
Laurence said nothing.
"She told you about the drawer. Of course she did. She has her father's patience and her mother's temper, and God help any man who stands between her and something she has decided she is owed." He crossed slowly to the desk and put both hands flat upon it, as if he needed it. "Very well. I have it. Thorne brought it to me on the morning of the twelfth. He found it in Wren's coat pocket when he found Wren."
"And you said nothing."