He came across an address for someone called Tilda Ridgeway, which Martin had given him as an additional contact when his parents split up. She was a friend of Martin's maternal grandmother and understood the family history, at least as far as the divorce. When Ray called on her, she painted a graphic picture of a young man obsessed with the mystery of Celtic heads. She mentioned he had seemed very tense and troubled and that she was worried about his bleeding eye, which had ruined her antimacassar.
"I couldn't get the blood out," she told Ray as he drank a second cup of tea. "It burned right through the material."
He had looked in astonishment at the length of cloth she held up to show him.
His visit to Tilda made Ray even more perplexed. The image of Martin she’d presented didn’t acco
