Jeremy and Jane drove down from London. It was one of those grey afternoons when the clouds are low and a seeping vapour comes out of the ground to meet them. It wasn’t a fog yet, but there was no saying when it might take a turn that way. They ran through Cliff just after four, and out on the other side within sight and hearing of the sea. Jeremy was looking to his right, watching, as he had watched before, for the pair of tall stone pillars which marked the entrance to Cliff House. As they came in sight, weather-beaten and damaged, the one topped by an eagle, the other with the bird and half the capital gone, he slowed down.

“I’m taking you to tea with Jack Challoner.”

Jane said, “Oh!” in rather a startled manner, and then, “Why?”

“He’s a pal of mine. I rang him up. He said, ‘Bring her along to tea,’ and I said, ‘Right you are!’-just like that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want you to say no. It’s a mouldy old place, but I’d rather like to see it. Jack’s a good chap.”

“Isn’t Inspector Abbott staying there?”

“Yes. He’s some sort of cousin. I don’t suppose he’ll be there. Anyhow we’re not suspects.”

They had passed between the pillars and were pursuing a long, neglected drive with a tangled shrubbery on either side, windswept and stunted. The house when they reached it was gaunt and forbidding-a square, bare eighteenth-century block with the same neglected look as the drive.

An old man admitted them to an icy cavern of a hall, took them across it, and down a passage to a small room with a blazing fire, curtains already drawn, and two oil lamps giving out plenty of light, heat, and smell. A red-haired young man with rather a flat, freckled face heaved himself out of a shabby armchair and clapped Jeremy on the shoulder.

“Hullo, hullo! How do you do, Miss Heron? It’s frightfully good of you to come-it really is. I get the pip when I’m here by myself. Frank’s out chasing murderers, and I don’t suppose he’ll be back for tea, so you and Jeremy are probably going to save my life. Do you like muffins? Matthews always keeps them going because he likes them himself. I say, these lamps do stink, don’t they? That’s me, I’m afraid. Matthews always tells me not to turn them up, and then I forget and they smell to heaven. Of course, what this place wants is about ten thousand pounds spent on it. Nothing’s been done for donkeys’ years. My great-greatgrandfather ruined himself playing cards with the Prince Regent, and nobody’s had a penny ever since. He married an heiress and got rid of every farthing she had. Fun whilst it lasted!”

He was pulling chairs round as he spoke. The one Jane got had a broken spring. The curtains were Victorian-maroon velvet gone the colour of old blood, with a ball fringe ripped and hanging in loops. The carpet looked unswept, but that may have been merely an effect of age and decay. Jane thought how grim it would be to be saddled with a house like this. Jack Challoner seemed to bear up, but she felt sorry for his wife when he married.

As if her thought reached him, he laughed and said,

“What we want is another heiress-only I’d have to keep her carefully away from the place till it’s too late to draw back. No girl in her senses would take on a mouldy old ruin like this. I mean, she’d have to be frightfully in love, wouldn’t she? And I’m not the sort that girls fall frightfully in love with. Look here, would you like to see how bad it is? Jeremy said he’d like to-I can’t imagine why.”

Jeremy hadn’t sat down. He was leaning against the mantelpiece looking down into the fire. He turned now and said,

“Tales of my grandfather. His mother used to tell him stories about your people. It was Sir Humphrey Challoner in her time- somewhere in the eighteen-forties. I’d like to see the family portraits, you know.”

“All right. But we’d better go now, or there won’t be any light. “ He turned to Jane. “What about you? Wouldn’t you rather stay by the fire? I say, I do call you Jane, don’t I? I’ve known Jeremy for centuries.”

He was about the same age as Jeremy, but he seemed younger. He reminded Jane of a large friendly puppy.

They went back through the icy hall to a stark dining-room full of dreadful Victorian furniture. Above a massive sideboard hung the portrait of a gloomy gentleman in a stock and side-whiskers.

“That’s old Humphrey,” said Jack Challoner. “What sort of stories did your great-grandmamma hand down about him? He was my great-grandfather.”

Jeremy said slowly,

“He disinherited his son, didn’t he?”

“Yes-his eldest son, Geoffrey. Nasty family scandal. Geoffrey took after his grandfather, the old boy who ruined us-went the pace-was mixed up in some smuggling affray and got himself bumped off. After which everyone breathed more freely, and my grandfather, John, came in for the title and the place.”

Jeremy said, “My grandfather said his mother used to talk about Geoffrey.”

Jack Challoner laughed.

“I suppose she would! I’m afraid it was your Taverner lot that led him astray. By all accounts the Catherine-Wheel was a regular Smugglers’ Arms. There’s a portrait of Geoffrey upstairs. Like to see it?”

They went up the big stairway, Jack Challoner carrying a tall candelabrum with twisted arms and candles which must have been in it since before the war, they were so dusty and yellow.

The silver had probably not been cleaned since then either. Jack tapped it with a laugh.

“Only Sheffield plate, or it would have gone up the spout long ago.”

Jane said quickly, “It might still be worth quite a lot.” Then, catching herself up and colouring, “My grandfather had an antique shop.”

She got a cheerful shake of the head.

“Drop in the bucket. It’ll have to be the heiress.”

They went on up the stairs. There was still daylight of the sort which doesn’t do very much to a dark corner. Geoffrey Challoner’s portrait hung in a very dark corner indeed-the black sheep tidied away out of sight. Jane wondered in an odd fleeting way whether anyone had been used to come and look at it there. His mother might have, if she had been alive. She wondered.

Jack Challoner set the candelabrum on the floor, produced matches from a bulging pocket, lighted the five discoloured candles, and lifted it high.

“You can’t see in this corner even in the morning. That’s why I brought the contraption,” he said. “Well, there’s our black sheep. Painted before the scandal of course, when he was twenty-one. Coming of age of the heir, and all that.”

The candlelight fell on a young man in a shooting-jacket carrying a gun under his arm and holding a brace of pheasants. The birds were very well painted, the iridescent feathers still bright. Geoffrey Challoner looked out from the canvas, very much the proud, goodlooking young man with the world before him. The chance shot in the dark which was to come as a relief to his family was still a couple of years away.

Jack Challoner said, “If you’re looking for a family likeness you won’t find one. It was my grandmother who brought the red hair into the family, and we shall probably never be able to get rid of it. She had eight daughters, all carroty.”

“No,” said Jane, “there isn’t any likeness, is there?”

And as she said it she knew it wasn’t true. There was a likeness, and a strong one, but it wasn’t the likeness that it ought to have been. She looked at Jeremy, and looked away quickly. Lengthen his hair, give him those little side whiskers just coming down on to the cheeks, put him into those clothes, and he might have sat for the portrait. She was aware of something, some tension. She couldn’t risk a second look.

Jack Challoner said, “He’s more like Jeremy than me, isn’t he?”

They went downstairs and ate muffins out of a cracked Worcester dish, and drank tea from a solid hideous Victorian teapot all curves and bulges. It had a silver strawberry on the lid, and had probably served the red-haired Lady Challoner and her eight carroty daughters.