Death of an Expert Witness

BOOK FIVE The Clunch Pit

They were at Bowlem's Farm before first light. Mrs. Pridmore had begun her baking early. Already two large earthenware bowls covered with humped linen stood on the kitchen table, and the whole cottage was redolent with the warm, fecund smell of yeast. When Dalgliesh and Massingham arrived Dr. Greene, a squat broad-shouldered man with the face of a benevolent toad, was folding his stethoscope into the depths of an old-fashioned Gladstone bag. It was less than twelve hours since Dalgliesh and he had last met, since, as police surgeon, he had been the first doctor to be called to Stella Mawson's body. He had examined it briefly and then pronounced:

"Is she dead? Answer: yes. Cause of death? Answer: hanging. Time of death? About one hour ago. Now you'd better call in the expert and he'll explain to you why the first question is the only one he's at present competent to answer."

Now he wasted no time on civilities or questions but nodded briefly to the two detectives and continued talking to Mrs. Pridmore.

"The lass is fine. She's had a nasty shock but nothing that a good night's sleep hasn't put right. She's young and healthy, and it'll take more than a couple of corpses to turn her into a neurotic wreck, if that's what you're frightened of. My family has been doctoring yours for three generations and there's none of you gone off your heads yet." He nodded to Dalgliesh. "You can go up now."

Arthur Pridmore was standing beside his wife, his hand gripping her shoulder. No one had introduced him to Dalgliesh; nor was there need.

He said:

"She hasn't faced the worst yet, has she? This is the second body.

What do you think life in the village will be like for her if these two deaths aren't solved?"

Dr. Greene was impatient. He snapped shut his bag. "Good grief, man, no one's going to suspect Brenda! She's lived here all her life. I brought her into the world."

"That's no protection against slander, though, is it? I'm not saying they'll accuse her. But you know the fens. Folk here can be superstitious, un forgetting and unforgiving. There's such a thing as being tainted with bad luck."

"Not for your pretty Brenda, there isn't. She'll be the local heroine, most likely. Shake off this morbid nonsense, Arthur. And come out to the car with me. I want a word about that business at the Parochial Church Council." They went out together. Mrs. Pridmore looked up at Dalgliesh. He thought that she had been crying. She said:

"And now you're going to question her, make her talk about it, raking it all up again."

"Don't worry," said Dalgliesh gently, "talking about it will help."

She made no move to accompany them upstairs, a tact for which Dalgliesh was grateful. He could hardly have objected, particularly as there hadn't been time to get a policewoman, but he had an idea that Brenda would be both more relaxed and more communicative in her mother's absence. She called out happily to his knock. The little bedroom with its low beams and its curtains drawn against the morning darkness was full of light and colour, and she was sitting up in bed fresh and bright-eyed, her aureole of hair tumbling around her shoulders.

Dalgliesh wondered anew at the resilience of youth. Massingham, halted suddenly in the doorway, thought that she ought to be in the Uffizi, her feet floating above a meadow of spring flowers, the whole sunlit landscape of Italy stretching behind her into infinity.

It was still very much a schoolgirl's room. There were two shelves of schoolbooks, another with a collection of dolls in national costumes, and a cork board with cut-outs from the Sunday supplements and photographs of her friends. There was a wicker chair beside the bed holding a large teddy bear. Dalgliesh removed it and placed it on the bed beside her, then sat down.

He said: "How are you feeling? Better?" She leaned impulsively towards him. The sleeve of her cream dressing-jacket fell over the freckled arm. She said:

"I'm so glad you've come. No one wants to talk about it. They can't realize that I've got to talk about it sometime and it's much better now while it's fresh in my mind. It was you who found me, wasn't it? I remember being picked up--rather like Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility-and the nice tweedy smell of your jacket. But I can't remember anything after that. I do remember ringing the bell, though."

"That was clever of you. We were parked in Hoggatt's drive and heard it, otherwise it might have been hours before the body was found."

"It wasn't clever really. It was just panic. I suppose you realize what happened? I got a puncture in my bike and decided to walk home through the new Lab. Then I got rather lost and panicked. I started thinking about Dr. Lorrimer's murderer and imagining that he was lying in wait for me. I even imagined that he might have punctured the tyres on purpose. It seems silly now, but it didn't then."

Dalgliesh said: "We've examined the bicycle. There was a lorry-load of grit passing the Lab during the afternoon and some of the load was shed.

You had a sharp flint in each tyre. But it was a perfectly natural fear. Can you remember whether there really was someone in the building?"

"Not really. I didn't see anyone and I think I imagined most of the sounds I heard. What really frightened me was an owl. Then I got out of the building and rushed in a panic across a field straight towards the chapel."

"Did you get the impression that anyone might be there alive in the chapel?"

"Well, there aren't any pillars to hide behind. It's a funny chapel, isn't it? Not really a holy place. Perhaps it hasn't been prayed in enough. I've only been there once before when Dr. Howarth and three of the staff from the Lab gave a concert, so I know what it's like. Do you mean he could have been crouched down in one of the stalls watching me? It's a horrible idea."

"It is rather. But now that you're safe, could you bear to think about it?"

"I can now you're here." She paused. "I don't think he was. I didn't see anyone, and I don't think I heard anyone. But I was so terrified that I probably wouldn't have noticed. All I could see was this bundle of clothes strung up on the wall, and then the face drooping down at me."

He didn't need to warn her of the importance of his next question.

"Can you remember where you found the chair, its exact position?"

"It was lying overturned just to the right of the body as if she had kicked it away. I think it had fallen backwards, but it might have been on its side."

"But you're quite sure that it had fallen?"

"Quite sure. I remember turning it upright so that I could stand on it to reach the bell-rope." She looked at him, bright-eyed.

"I shouldn't have done that, should I? Now you won't be able to tell whether any marks or soil on the seat came from my shoes or hers. Was that why Inspector Massingham took away my shoes last night? Mummy told me."

"Yes, that's why." The chair would be tested for prints, then sent for examination to the Metropolitan Laboratory. But this murder, if it were murder, had been premeditated. Dalgliesh doubted whether, this time, the killer would have made any mistakes.

Brenda said:

"One thing has struck me, though. It's odd, isn't it, that the light was on?"

"That's another thing that I wanted to ask you. You're quite sure that the chapel was lit? You didn't switch on the light yourself?"

"I'm quite sure I didn't. I saw the lights gleaming through the trees.

Rather like the City of God, you know. It would have been more sensible to have run for the road once I'd got clear of the new building. But suddenly I saw the shape of the chapel and the light shining faintly through the windows, and I ran towards it almost by instinct."

"I expect it was by instinct. Your ancestors did the same. Only they would have run for sanctuary to St. Nicholas's."

"I've been thinking about the lights ever since I woke up. It looks like suicide, doesn't it? I don't suppose people kill themselves in the dark. I know I wouldn't. I can't imagine killing myself at all unless I was desperately ill and lonely and in terrible pain, or someone was torturing me to make me give them vital information. But if I did, I wouldn't switch the lights off. I'd want to see my last of the light before I went into the darkness, wouldn't you? But murderers always want to delay discovery of the body, don't they? So why didn't he turn off the light and lock the door?"

She spoke with happy unconcern. The illness, the loneliness and the pain were as unreal and remote as was the torture. Dalgliesh said:

"Perhaps because he wanted it to look like suicide. Was that your first thought when you found the body, that she'd killed herself?"

"Not at the time. I was too frightened to think at all. But since I've woken up and started considering it all--yes, I suppose I do think it was suicide."

"But you're not sure why you think that?"

"Perhaps because hanging is such a strange way of killing someone. But suicides often do hang themselves, don't they? Mr. Bowlem's previous pig man did--in the tithe-barn. And old Annie Makepiece. I've noticed that, in the fens, people usually shoot themselves or hang themselves. You see, on a farm, there's always a gun or a rope."

She spoke simply and without fear. She had lived on a farm all her life. There was always birth and death, the birth and death of animals and of humans too. And the long nights of the fen winters would bring their own miasma of madness or despair. But not to her. He said:

"You appall me. It sounds like a holocaust."

"It doesn't happen often, but one remembers when it does. I just associate hanging with suicide. Do you think this time I'm wrong?"

"I think you could be. But we shall find out. You've been very helpful."

He spent another five minutes talking to her, but there was nothing that she could add. She hadn't gone with Inspector Blakelock to Chief Inspector Martin's office when he set the night alarms, so couldn't say whether or not the key to the chapel was still on its hook. She had only met Stella Mawson once before at the concert in the chapel, when she had sat in the same row as Angela Foley, Stella Mawson, Mrs.

Schofield and Dr. Kerrison and his children.

As Dalgliesh and Massingham were leaving, she said: "I don't think Mum and Dad will let me go back to the Lab now. In fact I'm sure they won't. They want me to marry Gerald Bowlem. I think I would like to marry Gerald, at least, I've never thought of marrying anyone else, but not just yet. It would be nice to be a scientist and have a proper career first. But Mum won't have an easy moment if I stay at the Lab. She loves me, and I'm all she's got. You can't hurt people when they love you."

Dalgliesh recognized an appeal for help. He went back and sat again in the chair. Massingham, pretending to look out of the window, was intrigued. He wondered what they would think at the Yard if they could see the old man taking time from a murder investigation to advise on the moral ambiguities of Women's Lib. But he rather wished that she had asked him. Since they had come into the room she had looked only at Dalgliesh. Now he heard him say:

"I suppose a scientific job isn't easy to combine with being a farmer's wife."

"I don't think it would be fair to Gerald."

"I used to think that we can have almost anything we want from life, that it's just a question of organization. But now I'm beginning to think that we have to make a choice more often than we'd like. The important thing is to make sure that it's our choice, no one else's, and that we make it honestly. But one thing I'm sure of is that it's never a good thing to make a decision when you're not absolutely well.

Why not wait a little time, until we've solved Dr. Lorrimer's murder anyway. Your mother may feel differently then."

She said: "I suppose this is what murder does, changes people's lives and spoils them."

"Changes, yes. But it needn't spoil. You're young and intelligent and brave, so you won't let it spoil yours."

Downstairs, in the farmhouse kitchen, Mrs. Pridmore was sandwiching fried rashers of bacon between generous slices of crusty bread. She said gruffly:

"You both look as if you could do with some breakfast. Up all night, I daresay. It won't hurt you to sit down and take a couple of minutes to eat these. And I've made fresh tea."

Supper the previous night had been a couple of sandwiches fetched by a constable from the Moonraker and eaten in the ante chapel Not until he smelt the bacon did Massingham realize how hungry he was. He bit gratefully into the warm bread to the oozing saltiness of home-cured bacon, and washed it down with strong, hot tea. He felt cosseted by the warmth and friendliness of the kitchen, this cosy womb-like shelter from the dark fens. Then the telephone rang. Mrs. Pridmore went to answer it. She said:

"That was Dr. Greene ringing from Sprogg's Cottage. He says to tell you that Angela Foley is well enough to speak to you now."

Angela Foley came slowly into the room. She was fully dressed and perfectly calm, but both men were shocked by the change in her. She walked stiffly, and her face looked aged and bruised as if she had suffered all night a physical assault of grief. Her small eyes were pale and sunken behind the jutting bones, her cheeks were unhealthily mottled, the delicate mouth was swollen and there was a herpes on the upper lip. Only her voice was unchanged; the childish, unemphatic voice with which she had answered their first questions.

The district nurse, who had spent the night at Sprogg's Cottage, had lit the fire. Angela looked at the crackling wood and said:

"Stella never lit the fire until late in the afternoon. I used to lay it in the morning before I went to the Lab, and she'd put a match to it about half an hour before I was due home."

Dalgliesh said: "We found Miss Mawson's house-keys on her body. I'm afraid we had to unlock her desk to examine her papers. You were asleep, so we weren't able to ask you."

She said, dully: "It wouldn't have made any difference, would it? You would have looked just the same. You had to."

"Did you know that your friend once went through a form of marriage with Edwin Lorrimer? There wasn't a divorce; the marriage was annulled after two years because of non-consummation. Did she tell you?"

She turned to look at him, but it was impossible to gauge the expression in those small, pig-like eyes. If her voice held any emotion, it was closer to wry amusement than to surprise.

"Married? She and Edwin? So that's how she knew ..." She broke off.

"No, she didn't tell me. When I came to live here it was a new beginning for both of us. I didn't want to talk about the past and I don't think she did either. She did sometimes tell me things, about her life at university, her job, odd people she knew. But that was one thing she didn't tell me."

Dalgliesh asked gently: "Do you feel able to tell me what happened last night?"

"She said that she was going for a walk. She often did, but usually after supper. That's when she thought about her books, worked out the plot and dialogue, striding along in the darkness on her own."

"What time did she go?"

"Just before seven."

"Did she have the key of the chapel with her?"

"She asked me for it yesterday, after lunch, just before I went back to the Lab. She said she wanted to describe a seventeenth-century family chapel for the book, but I didn't know that she meant to visit it so soon. When she hadn't come home at half past ten, I got worried and went to look for her. I walked for nearly an hour before I thought of looking in the chapel."

Then she spoke directly to Dalgliesh, patiently, as if explaining something to an obtuse child:

"She did it for me. She killed herself so that I could have the money from her life assurance. She told me that I was her only legatee. You see, the owner wants to sell this cottage in a hurry; he needs the cash. We wanted to buy it, but we hadn't enough money for the deposit.

Just before she went out, she asked me what it was like to be in local authority care, what it meant to have no real home. When Edwin was killed, we thought that there might be something for me in his will.

But there wasn't. That's why she asked me for the key. It wasn't true that she needed to include a description of the chapel in her book, not this book anyway. It's set in London, and it's nearly finished. I know. I've been typing it. I thought at the time that it was odd that she wanted the key, but I learned never to ask Stella questions.

"But now I understand. She wanted to make life safe for me here, where we'd been happy, safe for ever. She knew what she was going to do. She knew she'd never come back. When I was massaging her neck to make her headache better, she knew that I should never touch her again."

Dalgliesh asked: "Would any writer, any writer who wasn't mentally ill, choose to kill herself just before a book was finished?"

She said dully: "I don't know. I don't understand how a writer feels."

Dalgliesh said: "Well, I do. And she wouldn't."

She didn't reply. He went on gently: "Was she happy, living here with you?" She looked up at him eagerly, and, for the first time, her voice became animated, as if she were willing him to understand.

"She said that she had never been as happy in all her life. She said that was what love is, knowing that you can make just one other person happy, and be made happy by them in return."

"So why should she kill herself? Could she really have believed that you'd rather have her money than herself? Why should she think that?"

"Stella always underrated herself. She may have thought that I'd forget her in time, but the money and the security would go on forever. She may even have thought that it was bad for me to be living with her--that the money would somehow set me free. She once said something very like that."

Dalgliesh looked across at the slim, upright figure, sitting, hands folded in her lap, opposite to him in the high winged chair. He fixed his eyes on her face. Then he said quietly:

"But there isn't going to be any money. The life assurance policy had a suicide clause. If Miss Mawson did kill herself, then you get nothing."

She hadn't known. He could be certain of that at least. The news surprised her, but it didn't shock. This was no murderess balked of her spoils.

She smiled and said gently: "It doesn't matter."

"It matters to this investigation. I've read one of your friend's novels. Miss Mawson was a highly intelligent writer, which means that she was an intelligent woman. Her heart wasn't strong and her life assurance premiums weren't cheap. It can't have been easy to meet them. Do you really think that she didn't know the terms of her policy?"

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Miss Mawson knew, or thought she knew, who had killed Dr. Lorrimer, didn't she?"

"Yes. She said so. But she didn't tell me who it was."

"Not even whether it was a man or a woman?"

She thought. "No, nothing. Only that she knew. I'm not sure that she said that, not in so many words. But when I asked her, she didn't deny it."

She paused, and then went on with more animation: "You're thinking that she went out to meet the murderer, aren't you? That she tried to blackmail him? But Stella wouldn't do that! Only a fool would run into that kind of danger, and she wasn't a fool. You said so yourself. She wouldn't voluntarily have gone alone to face a killer, not for any money. No sane woman would."

"Even if the murderer were a woman?"

"Not alone and at night. Star was so small and fragile, and her heart wasn't strong. When I put my arms round her it was like holding a bird." She looked into the fire and said, almost wonderingly:

"I shall never see her again. Never. She sat in this chair and pulled on her boots, just as she always did. I never offered to go with her in the evenings. I knew that she needed to be alone. It was all so ordinary, until she got to the door. And then I was frightened. I begged her not to go. And I shall never see her again. She won't ever speak again, not to me, not to anyone. She'll never write another word. I don't believe it yet. I know that it must be true or you wouldn't be here, but I still don't believe it. How shall I bear it when I do?"

Dalgliesh said: "Miss Foley, we have to know if she went out on the night Dr. Lorrimer was killed."

She looked up at him. "I know what you're trying to make me do. If I say that she did go out, then the case is finished for you, isn't it?

It's all nicely tied up; means, motive, opportunity. He was her ex husband and she hated him because of the will. She went to try to persuade him to help us with money. When he refused, she seized the first weapon to hand and struck him down."

Dalgliesh said: "He may have let her into the Laboratory, although it's unlikely. But how did she get out?"

"You'll say that I took the keys from Dr. Howarth's security safe and lent them to her. Then I put them back next morning."

"Did you?" She shook her head.

"You could only have done that if you and Inspector Blake lock were in this together. And what reason has he for wishing Dr. Lorrimer dead?

When his only child was killed by a hit and-run driver, the evidence of the forensic scientist helped secure an acquittal. But that was ten years ago, and the scientist wasn't Dr. Lorrimer. When Miss Pridmore told me about the child we checked. That evidence was to do with paint particles, the job of a forensic chemist, not a biologist. Are you telling me that Inspector Blakelock lied when he said that the keys were in the security cupboard?"

"He didn't lie. The keys were there."

"Then any case we might seek to build against Miss Mawson weakens, doesn't it? Could anyone really believe that she climbed out of a third-floor window? You must believe that we're here to find the truth, not to fabricate an easy solution."

But she was right, thought Massingham. Once Angela Foley had admitted that her friend had left Sprogg's Cottage that night, it would be difficult to bring home the crime to anyone else. The solution she had propounded was neat enough and, whoever was brought to trial for Lorrimer's murder, the defence would make the most of it. He watched his chief's face. Dalgliesh said:

"I agree that no sane woman would go out alone at night to meet a murderer. That's why I don't think she did. She thought she knew who had killed Edwin Lorrimer, and if she did have an assignation last night, it wasn't with him. Miss Foley, please look at me. You must trust me. I don't know yet whether your friend killed herself or was killed. But if I'm to discover the truth, I'll have to know whether she went out the night Dr. Lorrimer died."

She said dully: "We were together all the evening. We told you." There was a silence. It seemed to Massingham to last for minutes. Then the wood fire flared and there was a crack like a pistol shot. A log rolled out on the hearth. Dalgliesh knelt and with the tongs eased it back into place. The silence went on. Then she said:

"Please tell me the truth first. Do you think Star was murdered?"

"I can't be sure. I may never be able to prove it. But yes, I do."

She said: "Star did go out that night. She was out from half past eight until about half past nine. She didn't tell me where she'd been, and she was perfectly ordinary, perfectly composed, when she got home. She said nothing, but she did go out."

She said at last:

"I'd like you to go now, please."

"I think you should have someone with you."

"I'm not a child. I don't want Mrs. Swaffield or the district nurse or any of the village do-gooders. And I don't need a policewoman. I haven't committed a crime, so you've no right to force yourselves on me. I've told you everything I know. You've locked her desk, so no one can get at Stella's things. I shan't do anything foolish--that's the expression people use when they're trying to ask tactfully if you're planning to kill yourself, isn't it? Well, I'm not. I'm all right now. I just want to be left alone."

Dalgliesh said: "I'm afraid we shall need to force ourselves on you later again."

"Later is better than now." She wasn't trying to be offensive. It was a simple statement of fact. She got up stiffly and walked towards the door, her head held rigidly high as if only the body's discipline could hold intact the fragile integrity of the mind. Dalgliesh and Massingham exchanged glances. She was right. They couldn't force comfort or company where neither was wanted. They had no legal authority either to stay or to compel her to leave. And there were things to do.

She went over to the window and watched from behind the curtains as the car rounded Sprogg's Green and accelerated towards the village. Then she ran into the hall and dragged out the telephone directory from its shelf. It took only a few seconds of feverishly leafing to find the number she wanted. She dialled, waited and then spoke. Replacing the receiver she went back into the sitting-room. Slowly, with ceremony, she lifted the French sword from the wall and stood very still, holding out her arms, the weapon resting across her palms. After a few seconds she curled her left hand round the scabbard, and with her right slowly and deliberately withdrew the blade. Then she took her stand just inside the sitting room door, naked sword in her hand, and measured the room with her eyes, regarding the disposition of furniture and objects, intent as a stranger calculating her chances in some coming trial.

After a few minutes she moved into the study, and again stood silently surveying the room. There was a Victorian button-backed chair beside the fireplace. She dragged it to the study door and hid the naked sword behind it, the tip resting against the floor; then slid the scabbard under the chair. Satisfied that neither could be seen she returned to the sitting-room. She took her seat beside the fire and sat motionless, waiting for the sound of the approaching car.

If Claire Easterbrook was surprised, on her arrival at the Laboratory just before nine o'clock, to be asked by Inspector Blakelock to see Commander Dalgliesh immediately, she concealed it. She changed first into her white coat, but otherwise did not delay in obeying the summons more than was strictly necessary to assert her independence. When she went into the Director's office, she saw the two detectives, the dark head and the red, quietly conferring together at the window almost, she thought, as if their business was ordinary, their presence unremarkable. There was an alien file on Dr. Howarth's desk, and a plan of the Laboratory and an Ordnance Survey map of the village laid open on the conference table, but otherwise the room seemed unchanged.

Dalgliesh moved to the desk and said:

"Good morning, Miss Easterbrook. You heard what happened last night?"

"No. Should I have? I was at the theatre after dinner, so people couldn't reach me, and I've spoken to no one but Inspector Blakelock. He hasn't told me anything."

"Stella Mawson, Miss Foley's friend, was found hanged in the chapel."

She frowned as if the news were personally offensive, and said with no more than polite interest:

"I see. I don't think I've met her. Oh yes, I remember. She was at the concert in the chapel. Grey-haired, with remarkable eyes. What happened? Did she kill herself?"

"That's one of two possibilities. It's unlikely to have been an accident."

"Who found her?"

"Miss Pridmore."

She said with surprising gentleness: "Poor child."

Dalgliesh opened the file, picked up two transparent exhibit envelopes, and said:

"I'd like you to have a look at these four hairs urgently for me.

There's no time to get them to the Met Lab. I want to know, if possible, if the dark hairs came from the same head."

"It's easier to say whether they don't. I can have a look under the microscope but I doubt whether I can help you. Hair identification is never easy, and I can't hope to do much with only three samples. Apart from microscopic examination, we'd normally use mass spectrometry to try to identify differences in the trace elements, but even that isn't possible with three hairs. If these were submitted to me, I'd have to say that I couldn't give an opinion."

Dalgliesh said: "I'd be grateful, all the same, if you'd take a look.

It's just a hunch, and I want to know whether it's worth following up."

Massingham said: "I'd like to watch, if you don't mind." She gazed at him.

"Would it make any difference if I did?" Then minutes later she lifted her head from the comparison microscope and said:

"If we're talking of hunches, mine, for what it's worth, is that they came from different heads. The cuticle, cortex and medulla are all significantly different. But I think they're both male. Look for yourself."

Massingham bent his head to the eyepiece. He saw what looked like the sections of two logs, patterned and grained. And beside them were two other logs, their barks shredded.

But he could see that they were different logs, and that they came from different trees. He said:

"Thank you. I'll let Mr. Dalgliesh know."

There was nothing he could put between himself and that shining, razor-sharp blade. He thought wryly that a bullet would have been worse; but then he wondered. To use a gun at least required some skill, a preliminary aim. A bullet could go anywhere, and if her first shot was wide he could at least have ensured that she got no second chance. But she had three feet of cold steel in her hand and, in this confined space, she had only to lunge or slash and he would be cut to the bone. He knew now why she had shown him into the study. There was no room here to manoeuvre; no object within his range of sight which he could seize and hurl. And he knew that he mustn't look round, must keep his eyes firmly and without fear on her face. He tried to keep his voice calm, reasonable; one nervous smile, one hint of hostility or provocation and it might be too late to argue. He said:

"Look, don't you think we ought to talk about this? You've got the wrong man, believe me."

She said: "Read that note. The one on the desk behind you. Read it out loud."

He didn't dare turn his head, but reached back and fumbled on the desk.

His hand encountered a single sheet of paper. He read:

"You'd better check on the cannabis exhibits when Detective Inspector Doyle's around. How do you think he managed to afford his house?"

"Well?"

"Where did you get this?"

"From Edwin Lorrimer's desk. Stella found it and gave it to me. You killed her because she knew, because she tried to blackmail you. She arranged to meet you last night in the Wren chapel and you strangled her."

He could have laughed at the irony of it, but he knew that laughter would be fatal. And at least they were talking. The longer she waited, the greater his chances.

"Are you saying that your friend thought that I killed Edwin Lorrimer?"

"She knew you didn't. She was out walking the night he died and I think she saw someone she recognized leaving the Laboratory. She knew that it wasn't you. She wouldn't have risked meeting you alone if she'd thought that you were the murderer. Mr. Dalgliesh explained that to me. She went to the chapel thinking that she was safe, that she could come to some arrangement with you. But you killed her.

That's why I'm going to kill you. Stella hated the thought of shutting people away in prison. I can't bear the thought of her murderer ever being free. Ten years in exchange for Stella's life. Why should you be alive when she's dead?"

He had no doubt that she meant what she said. He had dealt with people pushed over the brink of endurance into madness, had seen before that look of dedicated fanaticism. He stood very still, poised on the soles of his feet, waiting for the first instinctive tightening of the muscles before she struck. He tried to keep his voice low, calm, with no trace of facetiousness.

"That's a reasonable point of view. Don't think that I'm against it.

I've never understood why people are squeamish about killing a convicted murderer instantaneously and resigned to killing him slowly over twenty years. But at least they have been convicted. There's the little matter of a trial. No execution without due process. And believe me, Miss Foley, you've got the wrong man. I didn't kill Lorrimer, and luckily for me I can prove it."

"I don't care about Edwin Lorrimer. I only care about Stella. And you killed her."

"I didn't even know that she was dead. But if she was killed yesterday any time between half past three and half past seven, then I'm in the clear. I've got the best possible alibi. I was at Guy's Marsh police station most of the time being interrogated by the Yard. And when Dalgliesh and Massingham left, I was there for another two hours. Ring them. Ask anyone. Look, you can lock me away in a cupboard --somewhere I can't escape--while you telephone Guy's Marsh. For God's sake, you don't want to make a mistake, do you? You know me. Do you want to kill me, messily, horribly, while the real murderer escapes? An unofficial execution is one thing; murder's another."

He thought that the hand holding the sword lost some of its tension.

But there was no change in the taut, white face. She said:

"And the note."

"I know who sent the note--my wife. She wanted me to leave the Force, and she knew that there'd be nothing like a little official harassment to push me into resigning. I had a spot of trouble with the Force about two years ago. The disciplinary committee exonerated me, but I damn nearly resigned then. Can't you recognize feminine spite when you see it? That note proves nothing except that she wanted me disgraced and out of the Force."

"But you have been stealing cannabis, substituting an inert substance?"

"Ah, that's a different question. But you're not killing me for that.

You won't be able to prove it, you know. The last batch of cannabis exhibits I was concerned with had a destruction authorization from the court. I helped burn them myself.

Just in time, luckily; the incinerator broke down immediately afterwards."

"And the court exhibits you burned, were they cannabis?"

"Some of them were. But you'll never prove I made the substitution, even if you decide to make use of that note, not now. But what does it matter? I'm out of the Force. Look, you know that I've been working on the clunch pit murder. Do you really suppose that I'd have been sitting at home at this time of day, free to drive over here as soon as you rang me merely to satisfy my curiosity, if I were on a murder case, if I hadn't been suspended or resigned? I may not be a shining example of probity to the Force, but I'm not a murderer, and I can prove it.

Ring Dalgliesh and ask him."

There was no doubt about it now, her grip on the sword had relaxed. She stood there, very still, no longer looking at him, but with her gaze fixed out of the window. Her face didn't change, but he saw that she was crying. The tears were streaming out of the tight little eyes to roll unimpeded down her cheeks. He moved quietly forward and took the sword from her unresisting hand. He placed an arm on her shoulders.

She didn't flinch. He said:

"Look, you've had a shock. You shouldn't have been left here on your own. Isn't it time we had a cup of tea? Show me where the kitchen is and I'll make it. Or better still, have you anything stronger?"

She said dully:

"There's whisky, but we keep that for Stella. I don't drink it."

"Well, you're going to drink it now. It'll do you good. And, by God, I need it. And then you'd better sit down quietly and tell me all about it."

She said: "But if it wasn't you, who did kill Stella?"

"My guess is, the same person who killed Lorrimer. A couple of murderers loose in one small community is too much of a coincidence.

But look, you've got to let the police know about that note. It can't hurt me, not now, and it might help them. If your friend found one incriminating piece of information in Lorrimer's desk, then she may have found another. She didn't use that note. She probably knew how little it was worth. But what about the information she did use?"

She said dully: "You tell them, if you want to. It doesn't matter now." But he waited until he had made the tea. The tidiness and the good order of the kitchen pleased him, and he took trouble over the tray, setting it in front of her on a low table which he drew up before the fire. He replaced the sword above the fireplace, standing back to make sure that it hung correctly. Then he made up the fire. She had shaken her head when he had offered her the whisky, but he poured himself a generous measure and sat opposite to her on the other side of the fire. She didn't attract him. Even in their brief encounters at the Laboratory he had given her no more than a passing dismissive glance. It was unusual for him to put himself out for a woman from whom he wanted nothing, and the sensation of disinterested kindness was unfamiliar but agreeable. Sitting opposite to her in silence, the traumas of the day faded, and he felt a curious peace. They had some quite decent stuff in the cottage, he decided, looking around at the cosy, cluttered sitting-room. He wondered whether it was all coming to her.

It was ten minutes before he went out to telephone. When he returned the sight of his face roused her from her benumbed misery. She said:

"What is it? What did he say?"

He moved into the room, frowning. He said: "He wasn't there. He and Massingham weren't at Guy's Marsh or at the Lab. They're at Muddington. They've gone to the clunch pit."

They drove again over the route they had followed the previous night when they had heard the three clangs from the chapel bell, the mile and a half to the junction of Guy's Marsh Road and then right through the main street of the village. Neither spoke. Massingham had taken one look at his chiefs face and had decided that silence would be prudent.

And it was certainly no time for self congratulation. They still lacked proof, the one clinching fact that would break the case open.

And Massingham wondered if they would ever get it. They were dealing with intelligent men and women who must know that they had only to keep their mouths shut and nothing could be proved.

In the village street, the first Saturday morning shoppers were making their appearance. The gossiping groups of women turned their heads to glance briefly at the car as it passed. And now the houses were thinning and Hoggatt's field, with the new building, was on their right.

Massingham had changed down to turn into the drive of the Old Rectory when it happened. The blue and yellow ball bounced out into the road in front of them, and after it, red Wellingtons flashing, ran William.

They were driving too slowly for danger, but Massingham cursed as he swerved and braked. And then came two seconds of horror.

Afterwards it seemed to Dalgliesh that time was suspended so that he saw in memory the whole accident like a film run slowly. The red Jaguar leaping and held suspended in the air; a blaze of blue from the terrified eyes; the mouth gaping in a soundless scream; the white knuckles wrenching at the wheel. Instinctively he cradled his head and braced himself for the impact. The Jaguar crashed the rear bumper of the Rover, ripping it away in a scream of torn metal. The car rocked wildly and spun round. There was a second of absolute silence. Then he and Massingham were out of their seat-belts and rushing across to the opposite verge to that small, motionless body. One boot lay in the road, and the ball trickled slowly towards the grass verge.

William had been tossed into a heap of hay left on the verge after the late summer scything. He lay spreadeagled, so relaxed in his perfect stillness that Massingham's first horrified thought was that his neck was broken. In the couple of seconds in which he was resisting the impulse to sweep the boy into his arms, and turning instead to telephone from the car for an ambulance, William recovered his wind and began struggling against the prickling dampness of the straw.

Bereft both of dignity and his ball he began to cry. Domenica Schofield, hair streaming across her bleached face, stumbled up to them.

"Is he all right?" Massingham ran his hands over William's body, then took the boy in his arms.

"I think so. He sounds all right." They had reached the drive of the Old Rectory when Eleanor Kerrison came running down the path towards them. She had obviously been washing her hair. It lay now in dank, dripping swathes across her shoulders. William, seeing her, redoubled his crying. As Massingham strode towards the house she ran clumsily beside him, clutching his arm. Drops of water sprayed from her hair to lie like pearls on William's face.

"Daddy's been called to a body. He said he'd take William and me to lunch at Cambridge when he got back. We were going to buy a grownup bed for William. I was washing my hair specially. I left William with Miss Willard. He's all right, isn't he? Are you sure he's all right?

Oughtn't we to take him to the hospital? What happened?"

"We didn't see. I think he was caught and tossed by the front bumper of the Jaguar. Luckily he landed on a heap of straw."

"He could have been killed. I warned her about the road. He isn't supposed to play in the garden on his own. Are you sure we oughtn't to get Dr. Greene?"

Massingham went straight through the house to the drawing-room and laid William on the sofa. He said:

"It might be as well, but I'm sure he's all right. Just listen to him."

William, as if he understood, cut off his bawling instantaneously and struggled upright on the couch. He began hiccuping loudly but, apparently undistressed by the paroxysms which were jerking his body, he regarded the company with interest, then fixed his stare consideringly on his bootless left foot. Looking up at Dalgliesh he asked sternly:

"Where's William's ball?"

"At the edge of the road, presumably," said Massingham. "I'll fetch it. And you'll have to do something about fixing a gate for that drive."

They heard footsteps in the hall, and Miss Willard stood, fluttering uneasily in the doorway. Eleanor had been sitting beside her brother on the sofa. Now she stood up and confronted the woman with a silent contempt so unmistakable that Miss Willard blushed. She glanced round the watching faces and said defensively:

"Quite a little party. I thought I heard voices."

Then the girl spoke. The voice, thought Massingham, was as arrogant and cruel as that of a Victorian matron dismissing a kitchen maid.

The confrontation would have been almost comic if it hadn't been at once pathetic and horrible.

"You can pack up your bags and get out. You're dismissed. I only asked you to watch William while I washed my hair. You couldn't even do that. He might have been killed. You're a useless, ugly, stupid old woman. You drink and you smell and we all hate you. We don't need you anymore. So get out. Pack your beastly, horrible things and go.

I can look after William and Daddy. He doesn't need anyone but me."

The silly, ingratiating smile faded on Miss Willard's face. Two red weals appeared across her cheeks and forehead as if the words had been a physical whiplash. Then she was suddenly pale, her whole body shaking. She reached for the back of a chair for support and said, her voice high and distorted with pain:

"You! Do you think he needs you? I may be middle-aged and past my best but at least I'm not half-mad. And if I'm ugly, look at yourself!

He only puts up with you because of William. You could leave tomorrow and he wouldn't care. He'd be glad. It's William he loves, not you.

I've seen his face, I've heard him and I know. He's thinking of letting you go to your mother. You didn't know that, did you? And there's something else you don't know. What do you think your precious daddy gets up to when he's drugged you into sleep? He sneaks off to the Wren chapel and makes love to her."

Eleanor turned and looked at Domenica Schofield. Then she spun round and spoke directly to Dalgliesh.

"She's lying! Tell me she's lying! It isn't true." There was a silence. It could only have lasted a couple of seconds while Dalgliesh's mind phrased the careful answer. Then, as if impatient to forestall him, not looking at his chief's face, Massingham said clearly:

"Yes, it's true." She looked from Dalgliesh to Domenica Schofield.

Then she swayed as if she were about to faint. Dalgliesh went towards her, but she backed away. She said in a voice of dull calm:

"I thought he did it for me. I didn't drink the cocoa he made for me.

I wasn't asleep when he came back. I went out and watched him in the garden, burning the white coat on the bonfire. I knew that there was blood on it. I thought he'd been to see Dr. Lorrimer because he was unkind to William and me. I thought he did it for me, because he loves me."

Suddenly she gave a high despairing wail like an animal in torment, and yet so human and so adult that Dalgliesh felt his blood run cold.

"Daddy! Daddy! Oh no!" She put her hands to her throat and pulling the leather thong from beneath her sweater, struggled with it, twisting like a creature in a trap. And then the knot broke. Over the dark carpet they scattered and rolled, six newly polished brass buttons, bright as crested jewels.

Massingham stooped and carefully gathered them up into his handkerchief. Still no one spoke. William propelled himself off the sofa, trotted over to his sister and fastened his arms around her leg.

His lip trembled. Domenica Schofield spoke directly to Dalgliesh.

"My God, yours is a filthy trade."

Dalgliesh ignored her. He said to Massingham: "Look after the children. I'll ring for a W.P.C. and we'd better get Mrs. Swaffield.

There's no one else I can think of. Don't leave her until they both arrive. I'll see to things here."

Massingham turned to Domenica Schofield. "Not a trade. Just a job.

And are you saying that it's one you don't want done?"

He went up to the girl. She was trembling violently. Dalgliesh thought that she would cringe away from him. But she stood perfectly still. With three words he had destroyed her. But who else had she to turn to? Massingham took off his tweed coat and wrapped it round her.

He said gently without touching her:

"Come with me. You show me where we can make some tea. And then you'll have a lie down and William and I will stay with you. I'll read to William."

She went with him as meekly as a prisoner with a gaoler, without looking at him, the long coat trailing on the floor. Massingham took William's hand. The door closed after them.

Dalgliesh wished never to see Massingham again. But he would see him again and, in time, without even caring or remembering. He never wanted to work with him again; but he knew that he would. He wasn't the man to destroy a subordinate's career simply because he had outraged susceptibilities to which he, Dalgliesh, had no right. What Massingham had done seemed to him now unforgivable. But life had taught him that the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

It was possible to do police work honestly; there was, indeed, no other safe way to do it. But it wasn't possible to do it without giving pain.

Miss Willard had groped her way to the sofa. She muttered, as if trying to explain it to herself:

"I didn't mean it. She made me say it. I didn't mean it. I didn't want to hurt him."

Domenica Schofield turned to go. "No, one seldom does."

She said to Dalgliesh: "If you want me, you know where I'll be."

"We shall want a statement."

"Of course. Don't you always? Longing and loneliness, terror and despair, all the human muddle, neatly documented, on one and a half sheets of official paper."

"No, just the facts." He didn't ask her when it had begun. That wasn't really important; and he thought that he didn't need to ask.

Brenda Pridmore had told him that she had sat in the same row as Mrs.

Schofield and Dr. Kerrison and his children at the concert in the chapel. That had been held on Thursday, 2 6th August. And early in September, Domenica had broken with Edwin Lorrimer.

At the door she hesitated and turned. Dalgliesh asked: "Did he telephone you the morning after the murder to let you know that he'd replaced the key on Lorrimer's body?"

He never telephoned me. Neither of them did, ever. That was our arrangement. And I never rang him." She paused and then said gruffly:

"I didn't know. I may have suspected, but I didn't know. We weren't--what's your expression? --in it together. I'm not responsible. It wasn't because of me."

"No," said Dalgliesh. "I didn't suppose it was. A motive for murder is seldom so unimportant."

She fixed on him her unforgettable eyes. She said: "Why do you dislike me?"

The egotism which could ask such a question, and at such a time, astounded him. But it was his own self-knowledge which disgusted him more. He understood only too well what had driven those two men to creep guiltily like randy schoolboys to that rendezvous, to make themselves partners in her erotic, esoteric game. Given the opportunity, he would, he thought bitterly, have done the same.

She was gone. He went over to Miss Willard. "Did you telephone Dr.

Lorrimer to tell him about the burnt candles, the numbers on the hymn-board?"

"I chatted to him when he drove me to Mass the Sunday before last. I had to talk about something on the journey; he never did. And I was worried about the altar candles. I first noticed that someone had lit them when I went to the chapel at the end of September. On my last visit they were burnt even lower. I thought that the chapel might be being used by devil-worshippers. I know it's been de consecrated but it's still a holy place. And it's so secluded. No one goes there.

The fen people don't like to walk out after dark. I wondered if I ought to talk to the Rector or consult Father Gregory. Dr. Lorrimer asked me to go to the chapel again next day and let him know the numbers on the hymn-board. I thought it was an odd thing to ask, but he seemed to think that it was important. I hadn't even noticed that they'd been altered. I could ask for the key, you see. He didn't like to."

But he could have taken it without signing for it, thought Dalgliesh.

So why hadn't he? Because of the risk that he might be seen? Because it was repugnant to his obsessional, conformist personality to break a Laboratory rule? Or, more likely, because he couldn't bear to enter the chapel again, to see with his own eyes the evidence of betrayal?

She hadn't even bothered to change their meeting-place. She had still used the same ingenious code to fix the date of the next assignation.

Even the key she had handed to Kerrison had been Lorrimer's key. And none better than he had known the significance of those four numbers.

The twenty-ninth day of the tenth month at six-forty. He said:

"And you waited together last Friday in the shelter of the trees?"

"That was his idea. He needed a witness, you see. Oh, he was quite right to be worried. A woman like that, quite unsuitable to be a stepmother to William. One man after another, Dr. Lorrimer said.

That's why she had to leave London. She couldn't leave men alone. Any man would do. He knew about her, you see. He said the whole Lab knew.

She'd even made advances to him once. Horrible. He was going to write to Mrs. Kerrison and put a stop to it. I couldn't tell him the address. Dr. Kerrison's so secretive about his letters and I'm not sure that even he knows exactly where his wife is. But we knew that she'd run away with a doctor, and we knew his name. It's quite a common name, but Dr. Lorrimer said he could trace them from the Medical Directory."

The Medical Directory. So that was why he had wanted to consult it, why he had opened the door so quickly when Bradley rang. He had only had to come from the Director's office on the ground floor. And he had been carrying his notebook. What was it that Howarth had said? He hated scraps of paper. He used the book to note down anything of importance. And this had been important. The names and addresses of Mrs. Kerrison's possible lovers.

Miss Willard looked up at him. Dalgliesh saw that she was crying, the tears streaking her face and dropping unimpeded over the twisting hands. She said:

"What will happen to him? What will you do to him?"

The telephone rang. Dalgliesh strode across the hall and into the study and lifted the receiver. It was Clifford Bradley. His voice sounded as high and excited as a young girl's. He said:

"Commander Dalgliesh? They said at the police station you might be there. I have to tell you at once. It's important. I've just remembered how I knew that the murderer was still in the Lab. I heard a sound as I got to the Lab door. I heard the same sound again two minutes ago coming downstairs from the bathroom. Sue had just finished telephoning her mother. What I heard was someone replacing the telephone receiver."

It was no more than confirmation of what he had long ago suspected. He returned to the drawing-room and said to Miss Willard:

"Why did you tell us that you overheard Dr. Kerrison making that nine o'clock telephone call from his study? Did he ask you to lie for him?"

The blotched face, the tear-stained eyes looked up at him. "Oh, no, he'd never do that! All he asked was whether I'd happened to hear him. It was when he came back to the house after he'd been called to the body. I wanted to help him, to make him pleased with me. It was such a little, unimportant lie. And it wasn't really a lie. I thought that perhaps I did hear him. You might have suspected him, and I knew that he couldn't have done it.

He's kind, and good and gentle. It seems such a venial sin to protect the innocent. That woman had got him into her clutches, but I knew he could never kill."

He had probably always intended to telephone the hospital from the Laboratory if he wasn't back home in time. But, with Lorrimer lying dead, it must have taken nerve. He could hardly have put down the receiver before he heard the approaching footsteps. And what then?

Into the darkroom to watch and wait? That must have been one of his worst moments, standing there rigidly in the darkness, breath held, his heart thudding, wondering who could be arriving at this late hour, how they could have got in. And it could have been Blakelock; Blakelock who would have rung at once for the police, who would have made an immediate search of the Lab.

But it had only been a terrified Bradley. There had been no telephone call, no summons for help, only the echo of panicking feet down the corridor. And now all he had to do was to follow, make his way quietly out of the Lab and home through the new Lab the way he had come. He had put out the light and reached the front door. And then he had seen the head lights of Doyle's car swinging into the drive and backing to park among the bushes. He no longer dared leave by that door. The way was barred. And he couldn't wait for them to drive off.

There was Nell at home who might wake and ask for him. There was the return telephone call at ten o'clock. He had to get back.

But he had still kept his head. It had been a clever move to take Lorrimer's keys and lock the Laboratory. The police investigation would inevitably concentrate on the four sets of keys and the limited number of people who had access to them. And he knew the one way he could get out and had the skill and nerve to do it. He had put on Middlemass's jacket to protect his clothes; he knew how fatal a torn thread of cloth could be. But there had been no tear. And in the early hours of the morning a light rain had washed away any evidence on walls or windows which could have betrayed him.

He had reached home safely and made an excuse to call in on Miss Willard, establishing his alibi more firmly. No one had telephoned for him; no one had called. And he knew that, next day, he would be among the first to examine the body. Howarth had said that he had stood by the door while Kerrison made his examination. It must have been then that he had slipped the key into Lorrimer's pocket. But that had been one of his mistakes. Lorrimer carried his keys in a leather pouch, not loose in his pocket.

There was the crunch of tyres on the gravel of the drive. He looked out of the window and saw the police car with Detective Sergeant Reynolds and two women police constables in the back. The case had broken; except that it was never the case that broke, only the people.

And now he and Massingham were free for the last interview, the most difficult of all.

At the edge of the clunch field a boy was flying a red kite. Tugged by the freshening wind it soared and dipped, weaving its convoluted tail against an azure sky as clear and bright as on a summer day. The clunch field was alive with voices and laughter. Even the discarded beer-cans glinted like bright toys and the waste paper bowled along merrily in the wind. The air was keen and smelt of the sea. It was possible to believe that the Saturday shoppers trailing with their children across the scrubland were carrying their picnics to the beach, that the clunch field led on to dunes and marram grass, to the child-loud fringes of the sea. Even the screen, which the police were fighting to erect against the wind, looked no more frightening than a Punch-and-Judy stand with a little group of curious people standing patiently at a distance, waiting for the show to begin.

It was Superintendent Mercer who came first up the slope of the clunch pit towards them. He said:

"It's a messy business; the husband of the girl who was found here on Wednesday. He's a butcher's assistant. Yesterday he took home one of the knives and came here last night to cut his throat. He left a note confessing to her murder, poor devil. It wouldn't have happened if we'd been able to arrest him yesterday. But Lorrimer's death and Doyle's suspension held us up. We only got the blood result late last night. Who is it you want to see?"

Mercer looked at Dalgliesh keenly, but he said only: "Dr. Kerrison."

"He's finished here now. I'll let him know." Three minutes later Kerrison's figure appeared over the rim of the clunch pit and he walked towards them. He said:

"It was Nell, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

He didn't ask how or when. He listened intently as Dalgliesh spoke the words of the caution, as if he hadn't heard them before and wanted to commit them to memory. Then he said, looking at Dalgliesh:

"I'd rather not go to Guy's Marsh police station, not yet. I want to tell you about it now, just you, no one else. There won't be any difficulty. I'll make a full confession. Whatever happens, I don't want Nell to have to give evidence. Can you promise me that?"

"You must know that I can't. But there's no reason why the Crown should call her if you intend to plead guilty."

Dalgliesh opened the door of the car, but Kerrison shook his head. He said without a trace of self-pity:

"I'd rather stay outside. There'll be so many years of sitting when I shan't be able to walk under the sky. Perhaps for the rest of my life.

If it were only Lorrimer's death, I might have hoped for a verdict of manslaughter. His killing wasn't premeditated. But the other was murder."

Massingham stayed by the car while Dalgliesh and Kerrison walked together round the clunch pit. Kerrison said:

"It started here, at this very spot, only four days ago. It feels like an eternity. Another life, another time. We'd both been called to the clunch pit murder, and afterwards he drew me to one side and told me to meet him that evening at eight-thirty at the Laboratory. Not asked; told. And he told me, too, what he wanted to talk about. Domenica."

Dalgliesh asked: "Did you know that he was her lover before you?"

"Not until I met him that night. She had never talked about him to me, never once mentioned his name. But when he poured out his stream of hate and envy and jealousy, then, of course, I knew. I didn't ask him how he'd found out about me. I think he was mad. Perhaps we were both mad."

"And he threatened to write to your wife and prevent your getting custody of the children unless you gave her up."

"He was going to write anyway. He wanted her back, and I think, poor devil, that he actually believed that it might be possible. But he still wanted to punish me. I've only once before known such hate. He was standing there, white faced, railing at me, taunting me, telling me that I'd lose the children, that I wasn't fit to be a father, that I'd never see them again. And suddenly it wasn't Lorrimer speaking. You see, I'd heard it all before from my wife. It was his voice, but her words. And I knew that I couldn't take any more. I'd been up for most of the night; I'd had a terrible scene with Nell when I got home; and I'd spent the day worrying what Lorrimer might have to tell me.

"It was then that the telephone rang. It was his father complaining about the television. He only spoke briefly, then he put down the receiver. But when he was speaking I saw the mallet. And I knew that I had gloves in my coat pocket. The call to his father seemed to have sobered him. He told me there was nothing else he wanted to say. It was when he turned his back on me dismissively that I seized the mallet and struck. He fell without a sound. I put the mallet back on the table, and it was then I saw the open notebook with the names and addresses of three doctors. One of them was my wife's lover. I tore out the page and crumpled it in my pocket.

Then I went to the telephone and made my call. It was just nine o'clock. The rest, I think, you know."

They had circled the clunch pit, pacing together, their eyes fixed on the bright grass. Now they turned and retraced their steps. Dalgliesh said:

"I think you'd better tell me." But there was nothing new to learn. It had happened just as Dalgliesh had reasoned. When Kerrison had finished describing the burning of the coat and the page from the notebook, Dalgliesh asked:

"And Stella Mawson?"

"She rang me at the hospital and asked me to meet her in the chapel at half past seven yesterday. She gave me an idea what it was about. She said that she had a draft letter which she wanted to discuss with me, one she'd found in a certain desk. I knew what it would say."

She must have taken it with her to the chapel, thought Dalgliesh. It hadn't been found in her desk, neither the original nor the copy. It seemed to him extraordinary that she had actually risked letting Kerrison know that she had the letter on her. How could he be sure, when he killed her, that she hadn't left a copy? And how could she be sure that he wouldn't overpower her and take it?

Almost as if he knew what was going through Dalgliesh's mind, Kerrison said:

"It wasn't what you're thinking. She wasn't trying to sell me the letter. She wasn't selling anything. She told me that she'd taken it from Lorrimer's desk almost on impulse because she didn't want the police to find it. For some reason which she didn't explain, she hated Lorrimer, and she bore me no ill will. What she said was: "He caused enough misery in his life. Why should he cause misery after his death?" She said another extraordinary thing. "I was his victim once.

I don't see why you should be his victim now." She saw herself as on my side, someone who'd done me a service. And now she was asking me for something in return, something quite simple and ordinary.

Something she knew that I'd be able to afford."

Dalgliesh said:

"The cash to buy Sprogg's Cottage, security for herself and Angela Foley."

"Not even a gift, merely a loan. She wanted four thousand pounds over five years at a rate of interest she could afford. She needed the money desperately, and she had to find it quickly. She explained to me that there was no one else she could ask. She was perfectly ready to have a legal agreement drawn up. She was the gentlest, most reasonable of blackmailers."

And she thought that she was dealing with the gentlest, most reasonable of men. She had been totally without fear, until that last hideous moment when he had drawn the cord from his coat pocket and she had realized that she was facing, not a fellow victim, but her murderer.

Dalgliesh said:

"You must have had the cord ready. When did you decide she had to die?"

"Even that, like Lorrimer's death, was almost chance. She had got the key from Angela Foley and she arrived at the chapel first. She was sitting in the chancel, in one of the stalls. She had left the door open, and when I went into the ante-chapel I saw the chest. I knew the cord was inside it. I'd had plenty of time to explore the chapel when I'd been waiting for Domenica. So I took it out and put it in my pocket. Then I went through to her, and we talked. She had the letter with her, in her pocket. She took it out and showed it to me without the least fear. It wasn't the finished letter; just a draft that he'd been working on. He must have enjoyed writing it, must have taken a lot of trouble getting it right.

"She was an extraordinary woman. I said that I'd lend her the money, that I'd have a proper agreement drawn up by my solicitor. There was a Prayer Book in the chapel, and she made me put my hand on it and swear that I'd never tell anyone what had happened between us. I think she was terrified that Angela Foley would get to know. It was when I realized that she, and only she, held this dangerous knowledge, that I decided that she must die."

He stopped walking. He turned to Dalgliesh and said:

"You see, I couldn't take a chance on her. I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm not even trying to make you understand. You aren't a father, so you never could understand. I couldn't risk giving my wife such a weapon against me when the custody case comes before the High Court. They probably wouldn't worry overmuch that I had a mistress; that wouldn't make me unfit to care for my children. If it did, what chance would most parents have of getting custody? But a secret affair which I'd concealed from the police with a woman whose previous lover was murdered, a murder for which I had only a weak alibi and a strong motive. Wouldn't that tip the balance? My wife is attractive and plausible, outwardly perfectly sane. That's what makes it so impossible. Madness isn't so very difficult to diagnose, neurosis is less dramatic but just as lethal if you have to live with it. She tore us apart, Nell and me. I couldn't let her have William and Nell. When I stood in the chapel and faced Stella Mawson, I knew it was their lives against hers. "And it was so easy. I slipped the double cord around her neck and pulled tight. She must have died at once. Then I carried her into the ante chapel and strung her up on the hook. I remembered to scrape her boots on the chair seat and leave the chair overturned. I walked back across the field to where I'd left my car.

I'd parked it where Domenica parks hers when we meet, in the shadow of an old barn on the edge of Guy's Marsh Road. Even the timing was right for me. I was due at the hospital for a medical committee meeting, but I'd planned to go into my laboratory first and do some work. Even if someone at the hospital noted the time when I arrived, there was only about twenty minutes unaccounted for. And I could easily have spent an extra twenty minutes on the drive."

They walked on in silence towards the car. Then Kerrison began speaking again:

"I still don't understand it. She's so beautiful. And it isn't only her beauty. She could have had any man she wanted. It was amazing that, for some extraordinary reason, she wanted me. When we were together, lying by candlelight in all the quietness of the chapel after we'd made love, all the anxieties, all the tensions, all the responsibilities were forgotten. It was easy for us, because of the dark evenings. She could park her car by the barn in safety. No one walks on Guy's Marsh Road at night, and there are only a few cars. I knew it would be more difficult in the spring with the long evenings.

But then, I didn't expect she would want me that long. It was a miracle that she wanted me at all. I never thought beyond the next meeting, the next date on the hymn-board. She wouldn't let me telephone her. I never saw or spoke to her except when we were alone in the chapel. I knew that she didn't love me, but that wasn't important. She gave what she could, and it was enough for me."

They were back at the car now. Massingham was holding open the door.

Kerrison turned to Dalgliesh and said:

"It wasn't love, but it was in its own way a kind of loving. And it was such peace. This is peace, too, knowing that there's nothing else I need do. There's an end of responsibility, an end of worry. A murderer sets himself aside from the whole of humanity forever. It's a kind of death. I'm like a dying man now, the problems are still there, but I'm moving away from them into a new dimension. I forfeited so many things when I killed Stella Mawson, even the right to feel pain."

He got into the back of the car without another word. Dalgliesh closed the door. Then his heart lurched. The blue and yellow ball came bounding across the clunch field towards him and after it, shouting with laughter, his mother calling after him, ran the child. For one dreadful second, Dalgliesh thought that it was William, William's dark fringe of hair, William's red Wellingtons flashing in the sun.