We drove down in the early afternoon, and Jacqui used the time to brief me on the things I should avoid in conversation. “And whatever you do, don’t say anything nice about Calum MacCrae.”

“Not a problem. I haven’t a clue who that is.”

“You are joking.” She glanced at me. “Oh, right. You don’t watch television at all, do you? Calum’s a popular history presenter on BBC Four, and a bestselling author besides.”

“So a rival of Alistair Scott’s?”

“More than that. A usurper.” She said the word decidedly. “Alistair was a celebrity once, you understand. The champion of Scotland. He set out to write this tremendous great trilogy, and when the second book came out it struck that magic chord you always hope a book will strike. The stars aligned. The critics loved it, readers too. It hit the charts and stayed there. He was courted by the BBC, their darling boy, presented documentaries for years for them. Whenever they were after someone for a comment about anything to do with Scottish history, it was Alistair they called upon. Then Calum came along, and he was younger, smoother, bolder, with a brand-new book to peddle and a very clever publicist. And before you know it, he’d edged Alistair aside. The BBC stopped calling altogether.”

“That must have been upsetting for him.”

“Not as upsetting as seeing MacCrae’s books sell better than his and win all the awards.”

“Are they better books?”

Jacqui was fair in her judgments. “No. Calum’s all flash and good hair and tight trousers. His books are entertaining, but he’ll be the first to admit that he rarely goes back to the primary sources; he reworks what others have written before him and makes it more colorful, puts his own stamp on it. But because he doesn’t footnote, doesn’t give a bibliography, you have to take his research and the things he says on trust. And that drives Alistair completely mad. Alistair,” she said, “goes deep with his research, leaves no stone unturned, and keeps notes about everything.”

“My kind of man.”

“Yes, I think you’ll get on well. I hope that you do. This is such a huge thing for him, writing this book. For a few years he didn’t write anything, nearly gave up. Now he’s finally committed to writing the last of the trilogy. I think he views this as his chance to win back his crown, in a way.”

I was thinking of that for the rest of our drive into Ham, while I watched the passing sky. I knew that when the sky in mid-December was this clear and blue, it meant the air outside was freezing cold—a lesson Jacqui had apparently absorbed as well, for here, instead of dressing with an eye to fashion as she did in London, she was wrapped up in a warm but shapeless coat that looked about as old as I was, and as we stepped from the car she drew on woolly mittens and a hat.

“He’ll be outdoors,” was her reply when my expression couldn’t hide my curiosity. “He likes to walk, does Alistair. The last time I was here, last month, he had me on the towpath, walking all the way to Kingston. In the rain.”

There was no sign of rain today, and it appeared there were plenty of places for walking right here in the village. We’d parked near the Common, just steps from the start of the long and tree-lined avenue—now only for pedestrians and cyclists—that would have taken us straight to the ancient stately home of Ham House, if my memory of the map I’d looked at earlier this morning was correct. Instead, we turned the other way and crossed the quiet street to where a double row of trees, some newly planted in among the old, continued that same straight line of the avenue from Ham House, leading out onto the broad green of the Common.

Ham Common, I knew from my previous look at the map, was diverse and large—a mix of wilder wood and open green space, as it would have been from feudal times, when every peasant farming in the village for the lord who owned the manor had the right to let his livestock graze upon the common pastureland, or cut wood from the section of the forest that the lord allowed the villagers to share.

This north end of the Common, like a great expansive pie-shaped wedge of green, crossed by the shadows of the leafless trees that edged it, had been bordered on three sides by streets with elegant old houses that stood back a pace, behind their high brick walls and hedges, gazing out across the Common with an air of graceful permanence.

It was, I thought, the perfect postcard view of what an English village green should look like, right down to the pond at the far corner, with its trailing golden willows and its noisy scrambling ducks; the perfect setting for the white-haired man who stood a little distance off, smoking a pipe and throwing something for his dog to fetch. In his dark green wax jacket and a tweed flat cap, he looked the very picture of an English country gentleman.

Except his voice was anything but English.

“Och, ye numpty,” he was saying to the dog, with great affection, “it’s behind you.”

I had never seen that breed of dog before. Had it been a different color, I’d have said it was a setter, only I’d never seen a setter that wasn’t Irish red or English speckled white-and-brown. This one was black. Its wavy coat was marked with chestnut brown on legs and throat and muzzle, with two small brown marks above its eyes that looked like eyebrows. Turning round and round again in search of the dropped object, it snuffed the ground halfheartedly before it caught our scent instead and with a panting grin of welcome came across to greet us.

“Hello, Hector.” Jacqui liked dogs well enough, but didn’t pat them. Hector had to come to me for that, and when I scratched his ears it set his feathered triangle of a tail in motion.