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shed a tear. And then we thought we’d mourn him with his own music.’
    Wexford doubted very much if Dora, a placid and eminently sensible woman, had expressed these extravagant sentiments. He picked up the record sleeve. Mozart, Concerto for Flute and Harp, K 229; the English Chamber Orchestra, conductor, Raymond Leppard; flute, Manuel Camargue; harp, Marisa Roblès.
    ‘We actually heard him once,’ said Dora. ‘Do you remember? At the Wigmore Hall it was, all of thirty years ago.’
    ‘Yes.’
    But he could scarcely remember. The pictured face on the sleeve, too sensitive, too mobile to be handsome, the eyes alight with a kind of joyous humour, evoked no image from the past. The movement came to an end and now the music became bright, liquid, a singable tune, and Camargue, who was dead, alive again in his flute. Sheila wiped her eyes and got up to kiss her father. It was all of eight years since he and she had lived under the same roof. She had become a swan since then, a famous lady, a tele-face. But she still kissed him when he came and went, putting her arms around his neck like a nervous child. Wryly, he liked it.
    He sat down, listening to the last movement while Dora finished her row in the fair Isle and went to get his supper. Andrew’s regular evening phone call prevented Sheila from getting full dramatic value out of her memorial to Camargue, and by the time she came back into the room the record was over and her father was eating his steak-and-kidney pie.
    ‘You didn’t actually know him, did you, Sheila?’
    She thought he was reproaching her for her tears. ‘I’m sorry, Pop, I cry so easily. It’s a matter of having to learn how, you know, and then not being able to unlearn.’
    He grinned at her. ‘Thus on the fatal bank of Nile weeps the deceitful crocodile? I didn’t mean that, anyway. Let me put it more directly. Did you know him personally?’
    She shook her head. ‘I think he recognized me in church. He must have known I come from round here.’ It was nothing that she should be recognized. She was recognized wherever she went. For five years the serial in which she played the most beautiful of the air hostesses had been on television twice a week at a peak-viewing time. Everybody watched Runway , even though a good many said shamefacedly that they ‘only saw the tail-end before the news’ or ‘the kids have it on’. Stewardess Curtis was famous for her smile. Sheila smiled it now, her head tilted reflectively. ‘I know his wife-that-was-to-be personally,’ she said. ‘Or I used to. We were at school together.’
    ‘A young girl?’
    ‘Thank you kindly, father dear. Let’s say young to be marrying Sir Manuel. Mid-twenties. She brought him to see me in The Letter last autumn but I didn’t talk to them, he was too tired to come round afterwards.’
    It was Dora who brought them back from gossip to grandeur. ‘In his day he was said to be the world’s greatest flautist. I remember when he founded that school at Wellridge and Princess Margaret came down to open it.’
    ‘D’you know what its pupils call it? Windyridge.’ Sheila mimed the blowing of a woodwind, fingers dancing. Then, suddenly, the tears had started once more to her eyes. ‘Oh, to die like that!’
    Who’s Who is not a volume to be found in many private houses. Wexford had a copy because Sheila was in it. He took it down from the shelf, turned to the C’s and read aloud:
    ‘Camargue, Sir Manuel, Knight. Companion of Honour, Order of the British Empire, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. British flute player. Born Pamplona, Spain, 3 June, 1902, son of Aristide Camargue and Ana Parral. Educated privately with father, then at Barcelona Conservatoire. Studied under Louis Fleury.
    ‘Professor of Flute, Madrid Conseratoire, 1924 to 1932. Fought on Republican side Spanish Civil War, escaped to England 1938. Married 1942 Kathleen Lister. One daughter. Naturalized British subject 1946. Concert flautist, has toured