‘Certainly. I remember father having all the papers and things to sign, and him fetching the money in casks on his car.’
‘Fetching it from where?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I forget. Some place near London.’
‘What should you say if I told you that you never had a Great-uncle Andrew, or that if there was such a person, he never left your father any money?’
‘But we went into mourning!’ said Teresa naïvely.
‘Possibly,’ said Richard.
‘Do you mean to say that poor father made it all up?’
‘With the greatest respect for your father, Miss Craig, I suspect that that was the case. I do not know for certain, but I suspect. Have you, too, not had suspicions? Answer that candidly.’
Teresa hesitated.
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I swear to you that I believed my father.’