Borrowed Time

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sophie Marsden had told me her husband was in the agricultural machinery business and I knew from their telephone number that they lived in or near Ludlow. That led me, without the need of much deduction, to Salop Agritechnics Ltd. of Weeping Cross Lane, Ludlow. And a telephone conversation on Friday morning with its managing director, Howard Marsden.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Timariot? We spoke at the time of that blasted Benefit of the Doubt programme, I remember, but-”

“I’m hoping you’ll agree to meet me, Mr. Marsden. To discuss a matter of considerable urgency. It concerns your relationship with Louise Paxton.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I really have no alternative. And I’m sure you’d agree it’s a subject best discussed face to face.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Louise Paxton was a friend of my wife. That’s the only basis on which I knew her.” But there was an undertone of defeatism in his voice. He must already have despaired of seeing me off with a blustering denial.

“In that case, your display of grief last time we met was rather excessive, wasn’t it?” I waited for him to reply. But he said nothing. Several silent moments passed. Then I pressed on. “Butterbur Lane, Kington, Mr. Marsden. Twenty-seventh of July, nineteen ninety. You nearly drove into me.”

There was a heavily pregnant pause. Eventually, he said: “What’s this about, Mr. Timariot?”

“It’s about Louise.”

“I can’t help you. You’d do better speaking to my wife. She-”

“I’ve already spoken to your wife. Now I need to speak to you.”

Another pause, perhaps the longest. Then he gritted out the words I wanted to hear. “Very well.”

“I can come to Ludlow, if that suits you. I imagine you’re a busy man. I also imagine you’d prefer to leave it until after the weekend.” He didn’t query the remark. We both knew what I meant. A discreet slot in his working day didn’t require explaining to Sophie, whereas… “What about Monday?”

“Impossible.”

“Surely not. Name a time.”

“Well… it would have to be very early.”

“No problem. I’ll drive up the night before.”

“You’ll stay at the Feathers?”

“If you recommend it.”

“It’s the best you’ll find. All right, Mr. Timariot. I’ll call at the Feathers at eight o’clock on Monday morning. Not too early for you, I hope?”

“Not at all,” I replied, determined to give no ground. “See you then.”

Manoeuvring Howard Marsden into meeting me was one thing. Gaining something of value from such a meeting was, of course, a different matter. I spent most of the long drive up to Ludlow on Sunday turning over in my mind how best to approach the subject of his affair with Louise. That they’d had an affair I didn’t seriously doubt. The tears I’d seen streaming down his face in Butterbur Lane hadn’t been the tears of a platonic friend. And Sophie’s story about Louise’s “perfect stranger” made no sense in any other context. The real question was: had the affair still been going on in July 1990? If not, Howard wasn’t going to be much help to Bella. Fortunately, though, she hadn’t been in touch with me since my return from Bristol. So, if it turned out I was wasting my time, at least she needn’t know.

Not that it was destined to be a complete waste, whatever happened. These days away from the office, arranged at short notice and without explanation, were beginning to prey on Adrian’s mind. He clearly suspected I was playing a deep and devious game. And with his trip to Sydney looming on the horizon, it was no bad thing to let him go on doing so. I felt he richly deserved just as much anxiety as I could contrive to generate for him.

The deep silence of a windless Sunday night was settling on Ludlow when I arrived. I instantly warmed to its steepling streets and cobbled alleys, its timber-framed jumble of old houses and ancient inns. The Feathers was an ideally if not idyllically comfortable hotel of the kind I’d thought English market towns long since bereft. If I’d been looking for a rest cure in a soothing backwater, I’d have chanced on the perfect location. Unfortunately, that wasn’t why I was there.

To prove it, I was still munching a slice of toast and sipping coffee next morning after an early enough breakfast to have caught the kitchen on the hop when word came that a visitor was waiting for me in reception. Howard Marsden evidently hadn’t got wherever he was in the world of agricultural machinery by being late for an appointment.

He didn’t look anything like as forlorn as I remembered. He’d put on a bit of weight and gone magisterially white at the temples. He was on his home ground too, which always bolsters self-confidence. Altogether, in his pin-stripe suit, cashmere overcoat and battered racing felt, he looked about as easy to move to tears as one of the wooden faces carved beneath the gables at the front of the hotel. But what I’d seen I’d seen.

“Shall we take a stroll?” I asked, donning my coat. He nodded in agreement. Neither of us seriously thought we’d do any talking where we could be overheard.

We went out into the empty street and headed towards the centre of town. It was a chilly bright autumn morning, a sharp breeze blowing trails of leaves across the pavements in front of us, sunlight glinting and glaring at us between the rooftops. A butcher arranging sausages in his window looked up and touched his boater at the sight of my companion. “Good morning, Mr. Marsden,” he called, getting little more than a grunt in response.

“You’re well known hereabouts?”

“It’s a small town. And we’re a big employer.”

“Have you always lived here?”

“No. I was in the Navy for twenty years before-” He broke off and looked round at me. “You’re not interested in my autobiography, Mr. Timariot. Why don’t you come to the point?”

“All right. I will. You know quite a lot of people think Shaun Naylor didn’t murder Louise?”

He snorted. “People like Nick Seymour, you mean. Mountebanks, the lot of them.”

“Perhaps. But it seems they may be right. A man’s come forward and confessed.”

“What?”

“The real murderer’s owned up-three years late.”

“Good God.” He pulled up sharply and turned to stare at me. “Surely not.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Who is he?”

“It wouldn’t be fair to name him until the police have investigated his claim.”

“His claim? You mean there’s some doubt about it?”

“Not much. But we’d all like to disbelieve it, wouldn’t we? If we could.”

His frown of astonishment melted slowly into one of utter confusion. “You’re saying Naylor’s innocent? And this… other man… committed the murders?”

“Apparently so.”

“My God.” He plucked thoughtfully at his lower lip, then squinted at me suspiciously. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I think you may be holding back valuable information about Louise’s movements that day. Information the police have no cause to suspect you possess. They don’t know you were in love with her, you see. But I do.” He flinched and took half a pace back, as if I’d made to strike him. “You had an affair with Louise Paxton, didn’t you?”

“I most certainly did not.”

“Come on. You nearly drove into me that day because you were so upset. And your wife more or less admitted-”

“What? What did she admit?”

“That she knew something was going on between you and Louise. But the state of your marriage is none of my concern. I’m only-”

“Damn right it’s none of your concern!”

“Listen,” I said, holding up my hands to placate him. “I’m not here to judge or condemn anybody. I simply want to know whether you met Louise in Kington the day she died.”

His anger seemed to subside. His hostile glare crumpled into an exasperated scowl. “You think she went there to meet me?”

“She’d walked out on her husband. Who else would she have been meeting?”

“She’d left Keith?”

“It seems likely.”

“Oh, bloody hell.” He sighed and started walking again, more slowly than before. “If only you were right,” he muttered. “If only I’d known.”

“Didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “Of course not.”

“But-”

“There was nothing between us. Never had been. She wouldn’t let there be. Sophie’s well aware of that, damn her.”

We came to the market-place, where traders were already erecting their stalls and setting out their wares amidst a cacophony of clattering poles, flapping tarpaulins and good-humoured banter. Marsden trudged gloomily down one side of the square, oblivious to the bustling scene. And I tagged along.

“Since you seem to know so much, you might as well know it all. At least then you’ll get it right. I was in love with Louise. Still am, in a way. She never gave me any encouragement, though. Nothing ever happened. I wanted it to, God knows. I’d have walked out on Sophie without a backward glance if only-” He sighed. “She’d have preferred that, I sometimes think. Louise’s rejection of me was more of a blow to Sophie’s pride than an affair or even a divorce would have been. The knowledge that her best friend had turned her nose up at me-at her husband-and must have realized as a result what a sick joke our marriage was…” A weary shake of the head seemed to sum up more years of discontent and dissatisfaction than he cared to count. “I worshipped Louise. I would have done anything for her. But she didn’t want to know. I was an embarrassment to her. Sophie found that humiliating and unforgivable. Which I suppose it was.”

As one piece of the puzzle fell into place, another fell out. If Howard Marsden was telling the truth-as I felt sure he was-then he’d played no part whatever in Louise’s decision to leave Sir Keith. But somebody must have done. Not Oscar Bantock, as Paul had initially suspected. He seemed more likely to have been her pander than her lover. Nor Naylor, since she’d only met him when she had by chance. Who, then? There was no answer. But hovering at the margin of my thoughts was the “perfect stranger” Sophie had spoken of. I’d never quite convinced myself she’d invented him. And now my willingness to do Bella’s bidding revealed itself in my mind for what it truly was. Not an attempt to prove or disprove Paul’s confession. But a pursuit of the most elusive figure in Louise’s life. Who was straying more and more into mine.

“You know as much about Louise’s movements the day she died as I do, Mr. Timariot. Perhaps more. You met her, after all, I didn’t. I have no information-for you or the police.”

“No. I see that now.”

“I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

We’d reached the other side of the square and were standing at the top of a wide street that led down towards the river. Marsden surveyed the view for a moment, then turned to me and said: “The man who’s confessed. Is there any doubt of his guilt?”

“Not really.”

“Which means Naylor was telling the truth all along?”

“Yes.”

“About Louise? About how they met? And why?”

I didn’t need to answer. The look we exchanged said it all. Each of us wanted to cling to our own memory of Louise. But neither of us was going to be allowed to.

“This will destroy her reputation,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I said, unable to offer him the slightest comfort. “I’m very much afraid it will.”

I was careful to leave Howard Marsden with the impression that I’d be heading back to Petersfield straightaway. But I had no intention of quitting Ludlow without running Sophie to earth first. For reasons I certainly couldn’t explain to her husband.

I’d got their address from the telephone directory at the hotel. Frith’s End, Ashford Carbonell, turned out to be an impressively appointed black-and-white house in a well-to-do village a few miles south of Ludlow. The overall effect was one of prosperity neither flaunted nor hidden, but robustly declared. I arrived just after half past nine, reckoning Sophie would be up but not yet out by then. And so she was, though the pink silk bathrobe, casually sashed over not very much, suggested I could safely have delayed my visit by another hour at least.

She must have been surprised to see me, but only a momentary widening of her eyes revealed the fact. “Robin!” she said with a flashing smile. “Won’t you come in?”

I followed her into a large and elegantly furnished drawing-room, parts of which seemed familiar from her Benefit of the Doubt interview-or else from glossy interior design magazines leafed through over the years in dentists’ waiting-rooms. French windows gave onto a gently sloping lawn, recently mown and sparkling with dew. Beyond, trees turning to varying shades of gold lined a long curving reach of the river. While indoors everything was tastefully immaculate: a soothing mix of gleaming walnut and glittering brass; plump-cushioned sofas and thick-piled rugs; fat-bellied urns and slim-stemmed vases.

I watched Sophie as she crossed the room in front of me, the inviting lines and soft folds of the bathrobe drawing half-forgotten images to the surface of my thoughts. She knew I was watching her, of course. The knowledge pleased her. Her movements were probably designed for an audience even when she was alone. A newspaper, some letters and an empty breakfast cup stood on a low table by an armchair that faced the television, on which two figures mouthed silently to each other in a studio. Sophie must have zeroed the sound when she heard the doorbell. Now, stooping to tap a key on the remote control that lay ready on the arm of the chair, she switched off the picture as well-and turned to face me.

“I don’t like being pestered, Robin. But I don’t like to be neglected, either. I think you might have been in touch before now.”

“What happened in London-” I began, eager to erect a line of defence before it could be crossed.

“Was a mistake? A misunderstanding? An unfortunate and never to be repeated lapse?” Her eyes mocked me. “You can do better than that. You did at the time, as I recall.”

“It isn’t going to happen again.”

“You think I want it to?” She sat down in the chair and studied me with a puzzled frown. “You’re no different from most men, you know. Arrogant enough to believe that what you want is all-important. Pusillanimous enough to deny what it is you really want.”

“What I want is the truth about Louise Paxton.”

“No it isn’t. It’s the exact reverse. You want me to validate your fantasies about her. To say ‘Yes, what you wish she’d been is what she truly was.’ Well, I can do that.” She crossed her legs, artfully judging just how much thigh the bathrobe would fall open to reveal. “If you think it’ll add to the excitement.”

“I’m not here for excitement.”

“Really? All this way for a dry debate about verity and falsity? You disappoint me. You also fail to convince me.”

“Why did you make up that story about Louise meeting a man on Hergest Ridge and planning to run away with him?”

“I didn’t. I’d hardly have suggested you were the secret man in her life if I’d invented him in the first place, would I? That would have been absurd.”

So it would. Which left room for only one conclusion. That there had indeed been such a man. And Sophie had mistaken me for him. “It wasn’t me, Sophie. As God’s my witness, it wasn’t me.”

“No?” Her frown softened. “Well, perhaps not. Even I can make mistakes. Though one I never make is to regret them. But if it wasn’t you…”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I felt so sure at first. I felt so certain the mystery of her death would draw him out. That’s why half of me still suspects you, Robin. Still fears you could be cleverer than you seem. There’s something about you. Some impression she left on you, that’s too strong and enduring to explain. Unless you were her lover.”

“I wasn’t.”

“So you say. So you say.” She rose, moved to the window and gazed out for a moment. I saw her flex her shoulders and arch her neck. She tightened the sash around her waist, then turned and walked slowly across to where I stood. “But I don’t quite believe it. And neither do you.”

“It was somebody else.”

“Or nobody else.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Just like the man who was so… insatiable… that afternoon in Bayswater… wasn’t you?” Her eyes took their measure of me. As the mind behind them judged whether the distance between us could or should be bridged. “Is that what you mean?”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Then why do you keep coming back?”

“I won’t. This will be the last time.”

“I don’t think so. I’m the closest you can get to Louise now. And you just can’t leave her alone, can you? Even in death. Now why should that be? Unless I was right all along.”

“I don’t know. But you’re not right.”

“And not entirely wrong?” She moved closer, smiled and raised one hand to her mouth, slipping first one finger, then two, between her teeth. She bit down gently, then slowly removed them. “Do you want to stay? Or go?”

I wanted to do both, of course. But I knew I couldn’t. If I succumbed a second time, there’d be a third and a fourth and a fifth. Her claws would sink into me, deeper and deeper. Her lies would become mine, her husband my victim as well as hers. How like her had Louise really been? I wondered. Much more so than I could bring myself to admit? Or much less than Sophie cared to pretend? There had to be an answer. But I’d never find it in Sophie’s arms. “I must go,” I said, taking half a step backwards.

“Must and will aren’t the same.”

“This time they are.”

“And next time?”

“Like I told you. There won’t be one.”

But she didn’t believe me. Or perhaps she just wasn’t prepared to let me have the last word. As I walked from the room, she flung a parting remark at me with the conviction of a prophetess. “Be seeing you, Robin.”

I drove south down the A49 to Leominster. As far as Leominster, I could tell myself I meant to keep to the homeward route. But must and will, as Sophie had said, aren’t the same. From Leominster I took the Kington road and saw the hills I’d walked along more than three years before rising slowly on the horizon, darkened by shower-cloud and the massing of memories. Always I was drawn back, it seemed. To the point of intersection. The place of meeting and parting. The ridge of no return. But swifter now than before. For now I had a quarry as well as a quest.

I travelled fast, in hopes I should

Outrun that other. What to do

When caught, I planned not. I pursued

To prove the likeness, and, if true,

To watch until myself I knew.

Who was he? There was no way to tell. He wasn’t waiting at the Harp Inn, where I lunched alone and watched a rainbow form beyond the squall-line over Radnor Forest. He didn’t tap me on the shoulder as I stood by the cairn on Hergest Ridge where Louise and I had sat together that lost summer’s evening of long ago. I came and I went. But nobody joined me. The sun shone feebly as the wind honed its solitary edge. And the rain came in hastening gusts, blurring the edges of sight, smearing the margins of perception. There was nothing to give him a name. Or to deny him mine. There was only the doubt, as there had always been. And the still unanswered question. “Can we really change anything, do you think? Can any of us ever stop being what we are and become something else?” Or someone else. Perhaps that’s what she’d really meant. Perhaps that’s what she’d been trying to tell me. All along.

I’m not sure what stopped me driving up to Whistler’s Cot. Stealth? Caution? A touch of dread? Something of all three, perhaps. Something, at all events, that made me park at the bottom of the lane and walk up from there.

Rainwater draining from the fields ran in curling rivulets down to meet me as I went. Sunlight glistened on moisture-beaded leaves and wet slate roofs. The truth, I sensed, retreated ahead of me, out of sight though never far off. Over the hedge, perhaps, where Paul had hidden that day. Or round the corner. Always just beyond the next encounter. Like the one awaiting me at Whistler’s Cot.

A car stood half in and half out of the garage, its boot raised on several box-loads of mops, brushes, soapflake cartons, polish tins and aerosol cans. Just about every window in the house was open, red-and-white check curtains billowing out in the breeze. And the frantic whirr of a washing machine in its spin cycle could be heard from within above the growl of a vacuum cleaner.

If I’d realized what all this activity implied, I think I’d have turned and fled. But I was so distracted by the half-grasped meanings of other less commonplace occurrences that I simply stared in bemusement. And then it was too late. Because Henley Bantock had emerged from the rear of the house clutching a well-filled black plastic refuse sack-and pulled up at the sight of me.

“Mr. Timariot!” He peered at me round the tuft his fastening of the sack had created. “Good heavens, it is you. What an unexpected pleasure.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know… That is…”

“Don’t be sorry. This is just the excuse Muriel and I need to take a break. You find us in the midst of the end-of-season clear-out. The last of the holidaymakers left at the weekend. But they didn’t take all their rubbish with them.” He grinned and plonked the sack down in front of him. “Why don’t you step in and have a cup of tea?”

Tea with the Bantocks in a sitting-room smelling of beeswax and air freshener was a salutary if depressing experience. Muriel was a twitteringly attentive hostess full of apologies for her housekeeping kit of tennis shirt and tracksuit bottoms. She was also an alarmingly affectionate wife, given to squeezing Henley’s knee in mid-conversation and casting him long and loving looks. Henley, meanwhile, coped with the antagonism he must have detected in me by pretending we were the most civilized of rival theorists, who’d simply agreed to disagree. It was as if the angry letter I’d sent him after the publication of Fakes and Ale and his sarcastic reply to it had never been written.

It might have been different if Whistler’s Cot had still resembled Oscar Bantock’s home in anything more than the dimensions of its rooms. But it didn’t. Everything from those years had been swept away. Along with any ghosts that might have lingered. In the studio, where Oscar had lain dead beneath his easels, a pool table stood, flanked by conservatory chairs. The walls around us, where his pictures had hung thick and vibrantly, were filled with insipid hunting prints and reproduction maps of Olde Herefordshire. While in the bedroom… I didn’t like to ask. But even there, I felt sure, the process would have been the same. It was exorcism by disinfection. And its effectiveness was undeniable.

“Fakes and Ale will be coming out in paperback next spring,” Henley announced through a mouthful of custard cream. “We’re very pleased, of course.” For some reason he seemed to think I’d also be pleased. “And the hardback should do well over Christmas, I think, don’t you, Muriel?”

“Oh yes, dear.”

“What happens,” I couldn’t stop myself saying, “if it’s overtaken by events?”

Henley frowned. “How do you mean?”

“Well, the book follows a certain line about the murders, doesn’t it? Ties them in with your uncle’s art fraud. What would you do if that was shown to be incorrect?”

“But it’s not incorrect, Mr. Timariot. It’s clearly what happened.”

“Mr. Maitland went into it very thoroughly,” said Muriel in a tone of deep awe.

“No doubt he did. But it doesn’t amount to proof positive, does it?”

“Not legally, perhaps,” said Henley. “But we can’t expect it to, can we? Not at this late date.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You never know what might come to light.”

My persistence was beginning to worry Henley-as it was meant to. “You have… something specific in mind?”

“No, no. Just… stray thoughts. For instance… have you ever wondered whether there might have been something between Oscar and Lady Paxton?”

It was a question designed as much to mislead as to goad. I never expected any useful information to come my way as a result. But, as so often, my expectations were to be confounded. “No need to wonder,” said Henley with a chortle. “I can absolutely rule it out.”

“But your uncle’s reputation as a ladies’ man surely-”

“Led me to assume something of the kind long ago. But when I was rash enough to hint at it to Uncle Oscar, he nearly boxed my ears for my trouble. ‘She’s far too good for me, boy,’ I remember him saying. ‘And far too good a patron to risk losing for half a chance of some slap and tickle.’ ”

“Well, you wouldn’t expect him to admit it, would you?”

“Oh, but I would. Uncle Oscar never stopped boasting about his conquests. If Lady Paxton had been one of them, I’d have heard about it, you can be sure.”

“It was purely a business relationship, then?”

“I didn’t say that. He relied on her support. What she asked for in return may not have been so businesslike. I believe she brought Naylor here that night. So do Barnaby Maitland and Nick Seymour, for that matter. The question is: why? In its way, it’s an ideal place… for what she seems to have planned. And perhaps the night of the murders wasn’t the first time she’d done it. Perhaps Uncle Oscar regularly absented himself when she required him to. He may have thought it was a price worth paying.”

Yes. That was what they would say. It was what Seymour had implied in his TV programme. And it fitted the facts. Better than Seymour or Henley yet knew.

“Unless you think that theory too might be… overtaken by events?”

“No,” I said, resisting the impulse to tell him that very soon it would not be overtaken but vindicated by events. Events that would nevertheless scupper the paperback edition of Fakes and Ale. But it seemed only fair not to forewarn him of his modest share in the disaster to come. After all, he’d done as much as I had to bring it about. “I shouldn’t think so,” I concluded with a smile. “Like you say, it’s probably too late for anything of the kind.”

“More tea, Mr. Timariot?” asked Muriel.

“Thank you, but no. I think it’s probably too late for that as well.”

“Off so soon?” said Henley as I rose from my chair.

“I’m afraid I must be.”

“But you haven’t explained yet what brought you here.”

“Goodbye,” I said, smiling broadly and ignoring Henley’s remark too brazenly for him to protest. “It’s been a pleasure.”

The showers blew themselves out as I drove east. Hergest Ridge and its surrounding peaks fell away behind in the rear-view mirror. The truth drew back to watch me from its hidden vantage-ground. The stranger merged with the twilight. His unseen face dissolved into the dusk. And only my reflection looked back at me. I travelled alone. But in company.

I reached Bristol at nightfall, diverted to Clifton and found Sarah at home. It was a relief to have someone to share my unguarded thoughts with. A friend to see and set them in proportion. I was beginning to curse Bella for starting me down this road. The road back into a mystery I’d walked away from. But couldn’t escape.

“It seems Howard Marsden harboured an unrequited passion for your mother for many years,” I explained. “She and Sophie both knew that. It’s what Sophie most keenly resented: the fact that it was unrequited.”

“Hence her eagerness to blacken Mummy’s character.” Sarah shook her head in dismal recognition of Sophie’s motives. “What a sad petty-minded woman she must be. To think I’ve known her all these years without realizing that. I can’t help feeling sorry for Howard. She must make his life hell.”

“Yes,” I said, careful not to imply I had any specific knowledge of the subject. “I think she may do.”

“But you believe her about this… other man… in Mummy’s life?”

“It sounded like the truth. The question is…”

“Who was he?”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah rose and crossed to the mantelpiece, returning with the framed photograph of her and Rowena with their mother. “Taken on her fortieth birthday. She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“She certainly was.” Louise Paxton smiled delphically at me from the faintly blurred snapshot. Her beauty was preserved in the developer’s emulsion, but something else was lost. Like the sepia smear left by a moving figure on an early Victorian photograph, the secret of her soul had bequeathed an unfocused ambiguity to her gaze, a perpetual uncertainty about what or who beyond the camera she was really looking at.

“The further into the past her death slips,” said Sarah, “the more mysterious her life seems to become. I’ve wondered if this man, whoever he was, deserted her at the last moment. Didn’t turn up where he was supposed to be. Left her in the lurch. I’ve wondered if that’s why she encouraged Naylor. But unless you find him, we’ll never know, will we?”

“How can I find him? There are no clues left to follow.”

“I know. That’s why I think the question will never be answered. Unless Naylor knows. I mean, she may have said something to him. Given him a clue. Nobody’s ever asked him, have they? Nobody’s ever thought to. But we’ll get the chance soon enough.”

“When he’s released, you mean?”

“Yes. When he’s released.” The words were spoken almost as a sigh. She took the photograph back to the mantelpiece, positioned it carefully between a carriage clock and a china rabbit, then looked round and smiled wryly at me. “None of which helps get you off the hook with Bella, of course.”

I shrugged. “Can anything do that?”

“I doubt it. She wants you to disprove something you and I-and probably she-believe to be true. And that’s a game you can’t win, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is.”

“But one you’ll go on playing?”

“I’m afraid I have to.” Now I too summoned a smile. “At least for a little longer.”

Sarah offered me a bed for the night, but I insisted I’d better press on home. It occurred to me, flogging across Salisbury Plain through the inky blackness as rain spat at the windscreen, that the offer might just possibly have been more than a friendly gesture. But then I dismissed the thought. In the prevailing circumstances, Sarah needed a friend far more than she needed an aspiring lover. And so did I.

Besides, my relations with the Paxton family were already quite complicated enough. As the three recorded messages from Bella on my answering machine testified. Each one ended with the same promise: “I’ll call again.” Early the following morning, when I was still only half awake, she did so. And it was immediately obvious the hour didn’t agree with her temper.

“You’ve turned up nothing?”

“It’s not for the want of trying, Bella.”

“Then you’ll just have to try harder.”

“But how? There’s nobody left to ask.”

“This postcard Mrs. Bryant remembers…”

“Thinks she remembers.”

“And thinks was sent from Chamonix. Where Paul claims he never went.”

“Not from Chamonix, according to Paul. Chambéry. A station on the main line from Lyon. It was a ruse. A deliberate blind.”

“Or else his explanation’s the blind. I went to the pension he says he stayed in here in Biarritz yesterday. Showed his photograph to the landlady. She’s never seen him before in her life.”

“You mean she didn’t recognize him.”

“Same difference.”

“No it isn’t, Bella. He spent a few days there more than three years ago. Did you seriously expect her to remember him?”

“The fact is she didn’t. But maybe somebody in Chamonix does.” I knew at once what she was going to say next. And I also knew what my answer was bound to be. “So you’re going to have to go there, Robin. Aren’t you?”