The Hellfire Club

Nora worked herself up the bed and watched Dart fussing to align the knife under his pillow. He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. Then he rolled his head sideways on the pillow and seemed to consider some troubling point. The rope bit into her ankles and wrists. 'What the fuck you care about the massy vault, anyhow?' Wind and rain thrashed against the kitchen windows.

'I like hearing you quote,' Nora said.

'Right. Worry not, I'll wake up in time.' He was asleep in seconds.97

Candlelight fell to the floor in a shifting, liquid pool. On the other side of the table, paler light filtered through the bathroom door. All else was formless darkness. Dick Dart began sending up soft, fluffy snores barely audible under the drumming on the roof. Her hands were falling asleep. Drunk and hurried, Dart had made the knots tighter than before, and the rope was cutting off her circulation. She made fists, flexed her fingers, slid her wrists up and down. A dangerous tingling began in her feet. With her eyes on the pool of light wavering across the smooth floor, Nora explored the knot with her fingers.

Dart's failure to include what her dream-father called 'the choke' meant that Nora could fight the rope without immobilizing her hands. If she could locate the end of the rope, slide it under the nearest strand, unwind it once around, and pass it beneath the next strand, the entire mechanism would collapse. But every time her fingers traced a strand, it disappeared back into the web. The first time she had escaped this knot, Dart had tied a single hand in front of her; with both hands tied behind her back, she would have to find the end of the rope with her fingers.

The shoulder beneath her ached, and her wrists were already complaining. Her feet continued their painful descent into oblivion. She rolled her eyes upward in concentration and found the darkness obliterated by the yellow afterimage of the candlelight. If she wanted to see anything at all, she would have to look away from the light.

Groaning, she swung up her knees and flipped onto her back. A flaring red circle blotted out the ceiling. Another shift of her body rolled her over to face Dart. His breath caught in his throat before erupting in a thunderous snore. Nora tried to force her wrists apart, and increased the pain. Again she closed her hands into fists, extended and stretched her fingers, slid her wrists from side to side. There was some give, after all. The tingling in her hands began to subside.

How much time did she have? Not even Maid Marian was desperate enough to run through a deluge to sleep with Norman Desmond, but Dart's vanity ignored storms. He expected eager Marian in something like twenty minutes. Even drunk, he was probably capable of waking up in time.

Nora folded her hands, rubbed the tips of her fingers over the web of rope, and felt only interlocking strands. She maneuvered herself back onto her other side and shifted toward the end of the bed. She swung her legs out and lowered her feet to the floor. They registered only a profound, painful tingling. Her fingers probed the knot without success. She had to increase the amount of rope she could reach, and the only way to do that was by sliding the whole structure closer to her hands.

If she could put it between her wrists and pull her hands up, the door-knob might work. She stamped her feet on the floor, and a red track burned all the way from her soles to her knees.

Time's running out, girl.

The first two fingers of her right hand plucked at a thread. The thread moved. Her heart surged, and her breathing accelerated. Something flapped above her head. She urged the thread up from the knot, and mingled terror and hope flared white hot in the center of her body. The thread jittered out of her fingers and slipped away. Another nonexistent being chattered from the kitchen counter. She fumbled for the thread and met only interlocking strands.

Move!

She planted her burning feet on the floor and stood up, biting her tongue against the pain. Her ankles dissolved, and she fell like a tower of blocks, in sections, her hips going one way, her knees another. A hip struck the floor, then a shoulder. Dart belched, coughed, resumed snoring. Nora adjusted to her new pains. A pair of happy red eyes gleamed at her from the bathroom door. Screw you. She considered sitting up and noticed that roughly three inches above and behind her, a brace ran from the bottom of the bed to its head. A brace was probably as good as a doorknob.

She curled her knees before her, grunted, and jerked herself up. Flattened under her legs, her feet continued to burn. She inched backwards until her forearms met the brace, twitched herself a few inches farther back, and settled the rope against the edge of the wood. Then she pushed down and groped for the loose thread. Nothing. Gasping, she pushed again. The knot slipped an eighth of an inch, and her fingers met the raised line of the thread. Sweat poured down her forehead. A soft, high-pitched sound seemed to leave her throat by itself. The thread crawled out and came free.

She closed her eyes and worked it around and under. The braided handcuffs went limp. She shook her wrists, and the knot fell away. Her feet slid from beneath her thighs. Panting, she bent over and sent her fingers prowling through the rope around her ankles. A push, a pull, an unthreading, and the rope tumbled to her feet.

She moved away from the bed on hands and knees, then got one foot beneath her. The foot didn't want to be there, but it was not in charge of this operation; it would do what it was told. She levered herself upright, took an experimental step forward, and managed not to fall. The storm, suspended since she had noticed the wooden brace, exploded back into life.

Where had Dart put the gun? She could not remember his putting it anywhere, so it was still in his jacket. She limped toward the closet. Feeling returned to her feet in stabs and surges, but her ankles held. She stretched out her hands, moved forward until she felt the fabric of Dart's suit, ran her fingers down to a pocket, and thrust in her hand to discover the keys. She took them out and reached into the empty pocket on the other side.

Gripping the keys in her left hand, she inched up alongside the bed. Dart had put the knives under his pillow; why not the gun, too? He smacked his lips. She extended a shaking hand, touched the edge of the pillowcase, and found a wooden handle. Beside it was another. Millimeter by millimeter her trembling hand slid them from beneath the pillow. Dart sighed and rolled away. She groped for the revolver and touched metal.

'What?' Dart said, and reached into the space where she should have been. Too frightened to think, Nora snatched up the carving knife and jabbed it into his back. For an instant, his skin resisted, and then the blade broke through and traveled in. He jerked forward, carrying the knife with him. Nora scrabbled beneath the pillow, and her hand closed on a metal cylinder. Dart twisted around and lunged toward her. The revolver in her hand, she pulled away and ran to the other side of the room.

He was staggering past the end of the bed. She yelled, 'Stop! I have the gun!' and tried to find the safety Dart Harwich had mentioned, but could hardly see the gun. 'I'll shoot you right now!'

'You stabbed me!' he yelled.

Nora ducked behind the second bed and moved her thumb over the plate behind the cylinder, Wasn't that where the damned thing was supposed to be? The pistol Harwich had given her had no cylinder; did that make a difference?

Dart stopped moving when he reached the table. Astoundingly to Nora, he laughed, shook his head, then laughed again. Although she could be only a vague suggestion in the darkness, he found her eyes with his.

'I have to say this hurts.'

He twisted his neck to look at the knife sagging from his back. 'I thought we were past this kind of bullshit.' He looked, sighed, and reached back. 'I may require the services of a nurse.' He closed his eyes as he pulled out the knife. 'Don't think I can overlook this matter. Serious breach of conduct.'

'Shut up and sit down,' Nora said. 'I'm going to tie you up. If you're still alive in the morning, I'll get you to a hospital. With a police escort.'

'Sweet. But since you already tried to kill me once, twice if we count Springfield, I tend to think Nora-pie doesn't actually have the big bad gun. If you did, you'd shoot me now.' He clamped a hand over his wound, tossed the knife into the darkness, and took a step past the table.

'Stop!' Nora shouted.

'Why don't I hear any noise?' He took another step.

Because she had not found the safety, Nora pulled the trigger in despair and panic, certain that nothing would happen. The explosion jerked her hand three feet off the bed and released a lick of flame and an enormous roar. Her ears closed.

Dart vanished into the darkness. She aimed where she thought he had gone and pulled the trigger again. The gun jumped, carrying her hand with it. She fired again, causing another explosion which yanked her hand toward the ceiling. Nora gripped the wrist of her right hand with her left and trained the revolver back and forth against the rear of the cottage. A vivid mental picture of Dick Dart crawling across the floor sent her backwards until her shoulder struck the wall.

With nowhere else to go, she crawled under the bed. An unimaginable distance away, candles she could not see burned on a table she could not see. She crawled forward and realized that she had left the keys on the floor. When she reached the other side of the bed, she slid out and sat up.

A huge shadow rose up in the middle distance and charged toward her. Nora clenched her teeth, clamped her left hand over her right wrist, and aimed without taking aim. She squeezed, not jerked, the trigger, this also being a lesson Dart Harwich had given her. Dirty-looking fire blew out of the barrel, and the gun jumped in her hands. The charging shadow disappeared. She felt but did not hear a body strike the floor.

Nora crawled back under the bed and waited for the floorboards to vibrate, a hand to snake toward her. Nothing happened. She moved forward, and her hand touched warm liquid. She slithered out and moved to the foot of the bed. A dark shape lay a few feet away.

With the gun straight out in front of her, Nora moved around the body in a wide circle. It did not move. She came closer. A ribbon of blood curled away from Dart's head and trailed glistening across the floor. She jabbed the barrel into his forehead and for what seemed a long time applied pressure to the trigger, released it, pressed it again. The idea of touching him made her stomach cramp.

She tottered to her feet, remembered to get the keys, and pulled on Marian Cullinan's coat, surprised to feel nothing but a dull acceptance. The demons had fled, and only numbness was left. The rest, whatever the rest was to be, would come later.

Her ears ringing, she rammed the revolver into the pocket of the red coat and thrust her feet into Tony's rubber boots. She unlocked the door. When she pushed it open, the storm wrenched it out of her hands and threw it back against the front of the cottage. All of Shorelands, maybe all of western Massachusetts, was like the center of a waterfall. For a moment she thought of staying inside until the storm ended; then she imagined the candles burning down and the two of them, she and Dart, waiting for the night to end.

She slapped Marian's hat on her head and heard a wheezy cough. Her heart froze. A vague shape pushed itself up on its knees, collapsed, hauled itself an inch forward. She fumbled the gun out of the pocket. The shape gathered into itself and surged ahead like a grub. The gun in her hand released another flare of light. The explosion yanked her hand three feet into the air, and something smacked into the kitchen cabinets. The grub stopped moving.

Then she was on the porch and moving toward the waterfall with no memory of having gone through the door. She thrust the gun into her pocket and ran off the porch.98

Her feet slithered away, and a fist of wind smacked her into the muck. Cold ooze embraced her legs and flowed into the coat. She scrambled to get up, but the ground slipped away beneath her hands, and for an eternity she crawled through gouting mud. At last grass which was half mud but still half grass met her hands. She struggled upright, and another endless wave of wind-driven rain sent her reeling.

Miraculously, in another few minutes she was no longer blind and deaf. The trunks of massive oaks framed her view. A few feet away the deluge continued to assault the sluggish river which had once been a path. The wind had thrown her into the woods, where the canopy of leaves and branches broke the rainfall. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and her heart banged. Behind her, the trees groaned. She turned toward Main House and took a step. Wasn't Main House off to her right, not her left? She took a step in what seemed the wrong direction as soon as she had taken it. An enormous branch cracked away above her and crashed to the ground ten feet in front of her. Deeper in the woods, another limb broke off and tumbled to earth.When she looked back she saw that she had managed to get only a little way beyond the cottage.

Dim light flickered in the doorway; a second later, the silhouette of a large male body filled the opening. Reflected yellow light glinted off a flat blade. She backed into a tree and yelped. The man jumped off the porch and vanished into the darkness. Nora plunged into the woods in what she hoped was the direction of Main House.

She stumbled over fallen branches and walked into invisible trees. Waist-high boulders jumped up at her; streaming deadfalls towered over her, branches smacked her forehead and thumped her ribs. She moved with her hands in front of her face; now and then, she set a foot on empty air and went skidding downhill until she could grasp a branch. She fell over rocks, over roots. The weapon in her pocket bruised her thigh, and the rocks and branches she struck in her falls bruised everything else. She had no idea how far she had gone, nor in what direction. The worst thing she knew was that Dick Dart, who should have been but was not dead, followed close behind, tracking her by sound.

She knew this because she could hear him, too. A minute or two after she had run from the sight of him leaping off the porch, she had heard him curse when a branch struck him. When she had taken a tumble over a boulder and landed in a thicket, she had heard the harsh bow-wow-wow of his laughter, faintly but distinctly, coming it seemed from all about her. He had not seen her, but out of the thousands of noises surrounding him, he had heard the sounds of her fall and struggle with the thicket and understood what they meant. He could probably hear her boots slogging through the mush. She ran with upraised arms, hearing behind her the phantom sound of Dart picking his way through the woods.

A few minutes later this ghostly sound still came to her through a renewal of the waterfall's booming; Nora pushed her way past nearly invisible obstacles and came to the reason for the noise. On the other side of a veil of trees, a curtain of water crashed down onto a black river. She had come to another path, which made it certain that she had run in the wrong direction: paths led to cottages, and there were no cottages in a direct line from Pepper Pot to Main House, Dart's ghost steps advanced steadily toward her.

Nora came up to the trees bordering the path, bent her head, and moved out into the deluge. Fighting for balance, she trudged forward, the boots sticking, slipping. At length the tide began to solidify underneath her feet, and she peered ahead at another wall of trees. The barrage diminished to heavy rainfall.

Nora looked back and thought she saw a pale form flickering through the woods on the other side of the path. She dodged into a gathering of oaks and began to work down a slight grade. The ground softened, then dropped away, and her feet went into a sliding skid. Instinctively, she crouched forward to keep her center of gravity in place and slipped down past the oak trees, skimming around rocks, tilting from side to side to stay upright. She stayed on her feet until a low branch struck her right ankle and sent her tumbling into a tree trunk. Sparks flared in front of her eyes, and her body slipped into a slow downhill cruise. When she came to rest, Marian's hat was gone, her head was pounding, and the lower half of her right leg seemed to be underwater. Her leg came out of the water when she crawled to her knees.

She was on open ground, and the storm had begun to slacken. At some point during the trip downhill, the wind had lessened. Dizzy and exhausted, she raised her right leg to pour water out of the boot. Her muscles ached and her head throbbed. The sky had grown lighter. More quickly than it had come, the storm was ending.

Before her a five-foot sheet of water moved swiftly from right to left. Rain dimpled and pocked the surface of the water. A river? Nora wondered how far she had come. Then she realized that fattened with rainwater and overflowing its banks, this was the little stream running through the estate. Behind her, some enormous object creaked, sighed, and surrendered to gravity. Dart was gaining on her. She had to hide from him until she could get to Main House.

Why didn't he just bleed to death like normal people?

She strode forward into the quickly moving water, and slick stones met the soles of the boots. The rain dwindled to a pattering of drops. Wind ruffled the surface of the water and flattened the coat against her body. Overhead, a solid mass of great woolen clouds glided along. With a shock, she realized that it was now a little past nine on an August night. Above the storm, the sun had only recently gone down. She climbed over the opposite bank of the stream and waded through the overflow into the fresh woods to conceal herself.

She heard laughter in the pattering rain and the hissing leaves.

Through the massed trunks Nora saw what looked like gray fog. She moved forward, and the fog became an overgrown meadow where grasses bent before the cool wind. On the other side of the meadow, high-pitched voices swooped and skirled, climbing through chromatic intervals, introducing dissonances, ascending into resolution, shattering apart, uniting into harmony again, dividing and joining in an endless song without pauses or repeats.

Singing?

For a second larger without than within, like the massy vault, Nora dropped through time and awakened to unearthly music in a bedroom on Crooked Mile Road in Westerholm, Connecticut, scrambling for a long-vanished pistol. Then she realized where she was. Instead of going south, she had run almost directly west. The meadow in front of her was the Mist Field, and the voices came from Monty Chandler's Song Pillars. Unable to hide, she pulled the gun from her pocket and whirled around to look for Dart. She ranged in front of the woods, jerking the gun back and forth. Dart did not show himself. She moved right, then left, then right again, waiting for him.

Then she understood what he had done. Dick Dart had half-followed, half-chased her across the stream and toward the Mist Field. He wanted her to cower in a hidey-hole and wait for him to move past. In the meantime, he was on his way to Main House.

'Oh, my God,' Nora said. She began to run along the edge of the meadow toward a point in the woods where she could wade back across the stream, cut past Honey House, and approach Main House from the west lawn. She stopped to pull off the clumsy boots. Bare-legged, the ground squashing beneath her feet, she started running again.

A pale figure emerged from the woods at the far corner of the Mist Field. Nora froze. The revolver wanted to slip out of her muddy hand. Maybe it was empty, maybe not. If not, maybe it would fire, maybe not. The figure moved toward her. She raised the gun, and the man before her called out her name and became a drenched Jeffrey Deodato.99

Nora let her arm fall. Jeffrey had lost his Eton cap. Covered with muddy streaks and smears, his raincoat clung to him like a wet rag. Other streaks adhered to his face. Because he was Jeffrey, his bearing suggested that he had deliberately camouflaged himself. He got close enough for her to see the expression in his eyes. Clearly she looked a good deal worse than he did.

'You came after all,' she said.

'It seemed like a good idea.' He looked down at the gun. 'Thanks for not shooting. Where's Dart?'

Apparently Jeffrey had learned a good deal since their telephone conversation. 'I killed him,' she said. 'But it didn't work.' She lifted the revolver and looked at it. 'I don't think there are any bullets left in this thing, anyhow.'

Jeffrey delicately took the gun from her. 'So you got away from him.'

'It started out that way. But I think after a while he was chasing me away. He wanted me out of his hair so he could enjoy himself with the women at Main House. Then he could come back and have all the fun of hunting me down. We can't stand around and talk, Jeffrey, we have to get moving.'

He snapped open the cylinder. 'You have one bullet left, but it's not in a very safe place, unless you want to shoot yourself in the leg.' He moved the cylinder, clicked it back into place, and handed her the revolver, grip first. 'Let's get out of here and find a phone.'

Frantic with impatience, Nora rammed the revolver back into her pocket. 'The phones don't work.' She looked around wildly. 'We have to get to Main House.' Jeffrey was still examining her. The spectacle she presented obviously did not inspire much confidence in her ability to deal with Dick Dart. Nora glanced down at the ruined coat and her streaky legs. She looked like an urchin pulled from a swamp.

'Main House?' Jeffrey asked.

She grabbed the sleeve of his coat and pulled him back toward the woods. 'If we don't, he'll murder everybody. Come on, if you're corning. Otherwise I'm going by myself.'

She saw him decide to humor her. 'We'll make better time if we stick to the edges of the path.' She started to say something, but he cut her off. 'I'll show you. All I need to know is where Main House is from here.'

'There.' She pointed into the woods.

Maddeningly, Jeffrey began jogging back in the direction from which he had come. She ran after him. 'We're going the wrong way!'

'No, we're not,' he said, unruffled.

'Jeffrey, you're lost.'

'Not anymore, I'm not.'

At the end of the meadow Jeffrey pointed to the strip of wet but solid ground directly in front of the trees. He was right. The path had turned into soup, but they could move along beside it without falling down. The faint light was fading, and Nora remembered what it was like to move through the woods in the dark. 'Okay?'

'Go,' she said.

So close to the trees that Nora could feel roots under her bare feet, they began to move at a steady trot. 'Too fast for you?' Jeffrey asked.

'I can run as well as you,' Nora said. 'What did you do after we talked?'

Waiting out the storm in the gas station, Jeffrey had grown increasingly uneasy. Nora's explanation of how she had come to Shorelands and her reasons for sending him back to Northampton seemed flimsy, her attitude unnatural. He had managed to coax the MG over the drowned roads to Shorelands and seen the Duesenberg in the parking lot. Just getting into his truck, Tony had ordered him off. Where is Mrs Desmond? Jeffrey had asked. Tony said. If you're a friend of that asshole Desmond's, you can go to hell. His roof leaked; he could make it to his sister's house in Lenox; he didn't care what happened to Jeffrey. Jeffrey had pleaded with him to call the police, and Tony said that he couldn't call the police even if he wanted to because the phones were out. Where is Pepper Pot? Tony had sworn at him and driven away. Jeffrey set off on foot through the storm. He passed Main House, moved up the path, found Pepper Pot empty, and entered the woods again. He realized that he had no idea where he was going. Then the storm relented, and he found himself at the edge of a field. Far off to his right he saw a muddy scarecrow, and the scarecrow pointed a gun at him.

'I guess Tony doesn't care much for Dick Dart,' he said. 'Tell me about what's going on in Main House.'

Before them, the bridge in front of Honey House arched up out of a flat, moving sheet of water. Nora walked out from under the dripping trees and waded into the flooded stream while Jeffrey kept pace beside her, the bottom of his coat floating behind him.

'I wish I knew. There are four women in there. Marian Cullinan, who works for the trust, Margaret Nolan, who runs the place, and two guides who used to work here in the old days.' On the opposite side of the streambed, they began trotting beneath the oaks again. 'He wants to kill them, I know that much. A normal psychopath would sneak into their bedrooms and take them one by one, but Dart wants to have a party. He's been chortling all afternoon.'

'A party?'

At the end of the avenue between the rows of oaks, Nora could make out the edge of the pond. 'He loves to talk, and he loves an audience. He'll want to get them all together and give himself some entertainment. He'd love the idea of making them watch while he kills them one by one.'

'I hate to say this, but wouldn't he want to get it over with as soon as possible so he can get away?'

'Dart feels protected. He assumes he'll be able to walk away, no matter how long he takes.'

Jeffrey considered this while they moved toward the pond and open ground. 'How much time has he had already?'

'My sense of time went south with my sense of direction.' She tried to work out how long she had flown through the woods. 'He really was chasing me at the start. He was in a rage. I stabbed him, and then I shot him.'

'You shot him? Where?'

'He was lying on his front, so all I could see was blood coming out of his head. He sure looked dead to me, but I couldn't see the wound. I would have checked his life signs, but I couldn't stand the idea of touching him. I guess I just grazed him, damn it. Anyway, I ran out, and about a minute later, he somehow got up and came after me. Hold on, Jeffrey, I want to do something.'

She trotted up to the lip of the pond, plunged her muddy hands into the water, and scrubbed them clean before running back to him. 'I don't want that blasted gun to slip out of my hands.'

He began gliding up the sodden lawn. 'Could he have had half an hour?'

Nora stopped moving. She stared at her wet hands, realizing that Dart had given them more time than they thought.

'Not that long. He probably spent at least ten minutes coming after me before he changed his mind. He made sure I knew he was close behind me, and then he started toward the house. That might have been twenty minutes ago. It would take him ten or fifteen minutes to get to the house, but he wouldn't start right away.'

Jeffrey scratched his forehead, leaving a muddy smear which increased the camouflage effect. 'Why not?'

She held up the hands she had washed in the pond. 'This guy is one of the most fastidious men on earth. The first thing he'd do when he got inside would be to clean himself up. There's a bathroom in a little office corridor downstairs. He may even have taken a shower. Everybody was upstairs, and he had plenty of time to clean himself up for his party.'

'This isn't a joke?'

'Jeffrey, this is a guy who goes crazy if he has to go a day without brushing his teeth. If he isn't presentable, he won't have half the fun he wants.'

Jeffrey clearly decided to believe her. 'I hope he doesn't have another gun.'

'No. But the last time I saw him, he was holding a cleaver, and the kitchen is full of knives.'

They looked up over the lawn to Main House. Real night had arrived, and the curving stone steps rose indistinctly to the terrace. Beyond the terrace, the big windows of the lounge blazed with light. As Marian had predicted, the power had been restored with astonishing speed.

Nora looked upward. All the second-floor windows were dark, but at the top left-hand corner of the house, the windows of Lily's and Marian's rooms showed light. 'Dart likes knives,' she said.

Jeffrey pointed at the windows of the lounge. 'Is that where you think he'd take these women?'

'He's in a mood to strut his stuff. He wants to use the best room in the house, and that's it.'

'If that's true, we'll be able to see what's going on.' Jeffrey unbuttoned his raincoat, yanked his arms out of the sleeves, and dropped the coat onto the grass. He broke into a businesslike jog across the lawn. When they had gone half the distance, they began moving in a quiet crouch.

Together they glided up to the terrace stairs and squatted in front of the bottom step. They glanced at each other, came to a wordless agreement, and went up side by side, bent low to stay out of sight. Four steps from the top, they peered across the terrace floor to the bottom of the lounge window. Nora saw only the white fringe of a carpet, the wooden floor, and the polished cylindrical legs of a table. She put her head closer to Jeffrey's and saw only a little more of the carpet.

Jeffrey crept up another two steps and leaned out onto the terrace. He looked back at Nora and shook his head, telling her to wait for him, then flattened out and began crawling slantwise across the terrace. Nora came up behind him and watched the soles of his shoes work across the wet tiles. When they were about six feet away, she lowered the top of her body to the floor and crawled after him, grating her knees and toes on the stone. The coat's metal clasps made a high-pitched sound of complaint against the terrace floor, and she scrabbled ahead on forearms and knees. Jeffrey slithered on before her with surprising speed and reached the window at the far end. Rain dripped steadily from the gutters.

For the first time Nora became conscious of the deep silence encasing the sound of raindrops pattering against the ground, the delicious freshness of every odor carried by the air. Even the rough tiles beneath her face sent up a vibrant smell, sharp and alive.

Jeffrey lengthened himself beneath the window, and she flattened out with her face next to his head, raised her neck, and looked into the lounge.

In a blue nightgown, Lily Melville sat lashed into a chair near the middle of the room. Another length of rope stretched from her ankles to her wrists, which had been pulled behind the back of the chair. Her head was bent nearly to her chest, and her shoulders were trembling. Facing the window, Margaret Nolan, still in the dress she had worn to dinner and similarly bound, was speaking to her, but Lily did not seem to hear what she was saying.

Margaret glanced over her shoulder, and Nora slid away from Jeffrey to be able to see the opening into the front hallway. Just appearing in the entrance was a hysterical Marian Cullinan, propelled from behind by Dick Dart. She looked as if she were trying to do pull-ups on the arm clamped around her neck. Dart held a long knife against her side with his other hand, and his face was alight with joy.100

Marian had put on a low-cut, black, sleeveless dress for her poetic encounter. Dart was naked and completely clean. Only slightly mussed, his freshly washed hair fell over a bloody strip of gauze taped to the side of his head. He dropped Marian into a chair facing Lily Melville, shifted to her side, and bent down. She bolted forward. Without even bothering to look at her. Dart thrust out his left hand, closed it around her throat, and pulled her to the floor. Marian's scream penetrated the window. Nora felt her body clench. Dart put down the knife and reached for something out of sight. Marian shot forward and flailed at him, and Dart pulled her off the floor by the neck, as if she were a kitten.

'What are we going to do?' Nora whispered to Jeffrey.

'I'm thinking about it,' he whispered back.

Shaking his head, Dart raised Marian until her feet were off the floor. Then he dropped her, caught her around the waist, and pinioned her arms. While she thrashed against him, he brought a hand holding a rope back into view. He carried Marian back to the chair and slammed her down.

She screeched again.

Margaret turned her head toward Dart and said something surprisingly measured. Ignoring her, he knelt behind Marian, passed the rope twice around her, and released his hold. She jumped up and tried to sprint away with the chair on her back. He pulled her back and passed the rope over her shoulder, down, under the seat of the chair, then duck-walked to the front of the chair. She kicked at him, and he snatched her ankles, looped the rope around them, and worked it back beneath the chair. He sliced through the rope and knotted it behind her back. Margaret spoke to him again. Whatever he said caused her face to quiver.

'Strong son of a bitch,' Jeffrey whispered.

Marian bucked in her chair, bucked again, then sagged back.

Dart jerked her chair into place and moved frowning past the three women, rubbing his chin. On either side of Margaret and a few feet in front of her, Marian and Lily sat facing each other. Dart came to a halt in front of them and stepped backwards toward the terrace. Considering the women, he gently fingered the gauze pad he had succeeded in taping over the wound in his back. His body winced, and a blotch of red at the center of the pad darkened and grew.

Jeffrey tilted his head toward Nora. 'Isn't there another woman?'

She pointed upward. 'Sick in bed.'

Dart wandered around the women, measuring the effect he had created. They watched him, Marian sullenly and Margaret in thoughtful concentration like Dart's own. Even the back of Lily's head expressed stunned terror. Marian flipped her hair and moved her lips in a sentence Nora could read: You hurt me. Dart went, behind Lily, shifted her a little way toward the window, and patted her head. Margaret clamped her mouth shut as Dart tugged her chair a few inches backwards. Marian spoke again: Norman, why are you doing this?'

Margaret uttered a brief sentence. Marian's body went rigid, and all emotion left her face.

Dart, whose real name had just been uttered, held out his arms and twisted from side to side, acknowledging imaginary applause.

'What are we waiting for?' Nora whispered.

'For him to tell us what to do.'

Dart swayed up to Marian and kissed her cheek. Talking, he went behind her chair and shook her hand. He stroked her arms, her hair, drew a finger along the line of her chin. Margaret watched this procedure without any demonstration of emotion. Marian closed her eyes and trembled. The freckles blazed on her face. Still talking. Dart went around the chair and kissed her. She jerked her head back, and Dart slapped her hard enough for the sound to carry through the window, then kissed her again. When he pulled away, the red mark on Marian's cheek obliterated her freckles.

Raising his hands as if to say, I'm a reasonable guy, Dart backed away from Marian and addressed all three women. He smiled and pointed at Marian. He put a question to the two older women. Margaret gave him an impassive stare, and Lily shook her head. Dart put his hand on his heart, he looked hurt. He bounced up to Lily and lifted her chin. Nora saw his mouth utter the words Lily, my darling, I love you. Then he sauntered over to Margaret and spoke to her. Margaret clearly said, No. He staggered back in mock disbelief. He was having the time of his life. For a time he wandered back and forth, engaged in some hypothetically puzzled debate. He waggled his head sadly. He walked over to the knife on the floor, pretended to be surprised to see it, and in glad astonishment picked it up.

Nora looked at Jeffrey. Jeffrey shook his head.

Dart strolled toward them across the carpet. First his head, then all of his body above his knees, disappeared behind the table. Jeffrey touched her hand: Don't move. She jerked her head toward her side: The gun? Jeffrey barely moved his head, telling her, Not now. Dart's legs spun around, and his feet padded away. When the rest of his body came into view, he was no longer holding the knife. He snapped his fingers and disappeared. Margaret's eyes moved, and Marian twisted her neck to watch him go. The women's faces registered Dart's reappearance, and when he sauntered into view he held the cleaver. He displayed it to the women, chopped the air, and padded toward the table.

Jeffrey somehow managed to flatten himself nearly to the lip of the sill below the French doors. Nora folded her arms over her head and held her breath. When she risked peeking at the window, Dart's hairy legs still bulged out below the table. He was aligning his tools. One of his feet slid sideways as he turned to look back at the women in the chairs. One of them must have asked him a question. 'The little woman?' he said, close enough to the window to be heard through it. 'When last seen, my former companion was charging in full flight through the forest primeval. At the moment, she cowers in a thicket waiting for me to give up the hunt.' He came up to the window. 'Nor-ma! Nor-ma! Come home, honey, the fun's just beginning! Can you hear me, sweetie?' He turned to the women and lowered his voice. 'Maybe she's hiding right outside! Let's see!'

Nora's heart stopped, and her body went cold. She sensed Jeffrey gathering himself to leap.

If Dart came through this window, his foot would land about three inches from Nora's elbow. She lifted her chin, peered in, and her heart started back into life with a massive thump. He was moving away from the table toward the other windows. In seconds, he passed out of view. Down the terrace a handle rattled, and the French door opened.

It was all part of the performance, a show for the ladies. In high good humor. Dart was demonstrating their helplessness. He leaned out and bellowed her name. 'Norma! Norma! Mrs Desmond!'

He must have looked back into the room. 'Hear anything, Marian?'

Softly, Marian said, 'No.'

He was still leaning out through the French door. 'You know who she is, don't you?'

'The woman you kidnapped,' Marian said.

Margaret Nolan said, 'Nora Chancel.'

Dart sighed lightly, mockingly, as if lamenting Nora's treachery.

'You made a serious mistake, Mr Dart,' Margaret said. 'You let her go. Please understand what I'm telling you. Mrs Chancel isn't cowering in the woods. She's on her way to find help. You should get away now. You can go back to Pepper Pot, put on your clothes, and take a car. If you waste a lot of time with us, you will certainly be captured by the police. You see that, don't you?'

'Captured?' Dart said. 'Wonderful word. Suggestion of the jungle beast.'

'We aren't asking to be untied. But if you want to keep your freedom, you have to leave Shorelands now. Mrs Chancel is probably already talking to Tony.'

After a long moment of silence, an owl hooted from the other side of the pond. Drops pattered down onto the tiles. Dart snickered. She glanced sideways. He was smiling up at the sky.

'What a worry. If Nora-pie does talk to your charity case, he'll come up here to check out her story. I can take care of Tony. But do you know what's really going to happen? In a little while, Nora is going to sneak into this house. Written in stone. The girl knows my little ways. Won't be able to help herself. Never abandon you, not possible.'

'That's stupid,' Marian said. 'Save yourself. Leave now. You don't even have time for clothes.'

'Like me naked, don't you, Marian? I like me naked, too.'

'Love standing here, the fresh air drifting around my body. Arouses me. I do especially enjoy being aroused, as you will discover. Do you have freckles on the soles of your feet, Marian?'

For several seconds, she said nothing. Dart waited her out.

'No.'

'What a pity. Shall we see if Nora's already here? Promised her a treat, and I dearly wish to keep my promise.' Dart shouted her name, cupped a hand to his ear, shouted it again. 'No answer, girls. Must carry on by ourselves. Never fear, Nora's arrival won't spoil our fun.' He pulled himself back in, and the French door grated shut.

Jeffrey jerked his head toward the front of the terrace and was instantly slithering over the tiles, making no sound at all. With a superhuman effort, Nora pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and followed him.

Jeffrey slipped around the edge of the pillar at the top of the steps and waited. When she reached him, he led her down the stairs to the grass, moved sideways to the wall beneath the terrace, leaned his head back against the stone, and stared out at the dark lawn.

'Is he always like that?'

'Pretty much,' Nora said. 'What are we going to do?'

'We have plenty of time. He's still winding himself up.' He smiled. 'You know, as long as you didn't care too much about who he killed, Dick Dart could have been a terrific combat soldier. He's incredibly strong and quick, he can absorb a tremendous amount of pain and keep going, he thinks ahead, and adverse situations bring out the best in him. So to speak.'

'You're asking me to admire Dick Dart?'

'Not at all,' Jeffrey said. 'I'm describing him. If I don't take him into account, I don't have a prayer of defeating him. I don't suppose he was always like what we saw just now?'

'Being brought in for murder liberated him. He didn't have to hide what he was like anymore.'

Jeffrey smiled again. 'Escaping liberated him. After that, all the normal rules were suspended. He's a brand-new person in a brand-new world, stretching his wings, discovering himself.'

This was so accurate that Nora set aside her impatience.

'He's not going to get around to doing any damage to those women for at least half an hour. He's having too much fun. In the meantime, he'll be waiting for you to show up. Is the front door locked or unlocked, do you know?'

'Unlocked,' Nora said.

'Okay.' Jeffrey looked up at nothing and wiped his face. 'Does he know that you know it's unlocked?'

'Yes.'

That's where he expects you to come in.' He walked out onto the lawn and looked up at the house. 'Let's cook up a little surprise for Mr Dart.' He ran his eyes along the rear of the building. The French doors weren't locked, either. Farther down from where we were, there was another set at the back of the room he went into to get the cleaver.'

'The dining room.'

'I bet every window in the building is unlocked. They rely on their isolation and Tony to keep them safe. They've probably never had a break-in. You say there's another woman in the house, some kind of invalid?'

'Agnes Brotherhood.'

'What floor is she on?'

'The second.'

'All right. When I was trying to find you, I saw a ladder next to the wall in the court. Some workmen must have left it behind. I'll go in through an upstairs window. Once I'm up there, I'll make some kind of noise, and Dart will think Agnes is about to join the party. He'll be delighted. You go back up there and stand at this end of the lounge. When you see him leave the room, go into the dining room and stay there.'

'All right.'

'We have to play this by ear, but hide in the dining room until you know you can take Dart by surprise. He won't expect you to come in that way. He won't be expecting me, either. If I can take care of him, I will. If I can't, he's going to bring me into the lounge, and that's when you come out.'

'You should take the gun,' she said.

'No, you keep it.' Jeffrey raised one leg, untied his shoe, wiggled it off, and set it beside the wall. He did the same with the other shoe. 'You have one bullet left. Don't waste it.' He tapped the center of her forehead with his index finger. 'Put it right here. This guy is made of iron.'

'I know,' Nora said, but Jeffrey was already slipping away through the dark.101

Marian's coat felt like a ridiculous encumbrance. Nora took the revolver from the pocket, ripped open the snaps, hitched her shoulders, and lowered her arms. The coat slid off and landed heavily on the grass. Except for the parts of her legs washed by the stream, the entire front of her body was dark with mud. She settled the revolver in her hand and moved up the stairs to the terrace. Quietly, she slipped across the tiles and flattened herself against the building beside the second set of French doors. She tilted her head and looked in to see three-fourths of the bright lounge. Marian Cullinan's back obscured half of Lily Melville. Margaret Nolan, fully visible, faced the all too visible Dick Dart. He was holding a champagne bottle in one hand, his half-erect penis in the other, and talking to Margaret, no doubt on the subject of the many delights he had given elderly women. She looked at him unblinkingly.

For the first time Nora began to doubt her assumptions about why Agnes was not with the others. Dart would not have left her in her room simply because she was too weak to get out of bed. Maybe he had tied her up and stashed her in a part of the room they could not see, saving her as a spider leaves extra meals in its web. If he had brought Agnes downstairs, he would know something was wrong the instant he heard a noise inside the house, and Jeffrey would be in even greater danger.

Dart swigged champagne and offered the bottle to Lily. When she did not respond, he moved in front of her. Nora thought he was putting the bottle to her lips. He made a sideways comment to Margaret. Of course. She was the one he hated most; he was performing for her benefit. He carried the bottle to Marian, tilted it like a waiter to display the label, and put the bottle to her mouth. Whatever Marian did or said evoked an expression of unhappy disbelief. Dart backed away, pouting, and walked across the room to pick the knife off the table. He explained what he would be forced to do if she did not join him in a drink and tried again. She must have allowed him to pour some of the liquid into her mouth, because he gave her a happy smile. He went to Margaret, who grimly opened up and let him tip in champagne.

Dart gulped from the bottle and turned to Marian. He tilted his hips, offering the cucumber. No? He put the bottle on the floor and said something which involved pointing to both the knife and the cucumber. Still talking, he tugged at himself, and the obedient cucumber plumped forward. Pleased, he displayed it to the other two women. Lily's eyes were closed, and Margaret barely glanced at his prize. Returning to Marian, Dart again indicated the knife and the cucumber. The back of Marian's head gave no clue to her response. Dart moved up beside her and rubbed the cucumber across her cheek. He glanced at Margaret, whose face settled into bleak immobility. Lily dared to take a peek at him and instantly squeezed her eyes shut again.

What was Jeffrey doing, admiring Georgina Weatherall's bedroom?

Dart backed away, raised the knife, and fingered the loops of rope binding Marian to her chair. After selecting one, he slipped the knife underneath it, severed the rope, and knotted it in a new place. Marian's right arm was freed to the elbow. It was an exchange of favors. Be nice to me, I'll be nice to you.

Stroking himself, Dart moved in front of Margaret. He waved himself at her and went through the same grinning pantomime he had with Marian. For Margaret's benefit, he manipulated himself into another inch of bloat. Pulling and stroking, a dreamy expression gathering in his eyes, he extended himself in front of her face, demanding admiration. He stroked her hair with his free hand. Then his head snapped sideways.

The muscles in Nora's arms and legs went tense. Dart said something to Marian. Marian shook her head. He whirled away from Margaret, bounded to the side of the entrance, and pressed his back to the wall. Marian turned her head, and Margaret quizzed her with a look. They had all heard something, and no one in the room thought it was the sound of Agnes Brotherhood wandering down to the main floor. Nora stared at the empty opening. Dart put a finger to his lips. A few seconds ticked by. The women strained in their chairs.

Dart licked his lips and stared at the entrance, ready to leap.

Nora's body decided for her. Before she had time to think, she moved across the window and pushed down the handle. Dart jerked his head sideways and stared at her in shock, surprise, and rage. He took a step forward, baring his teeth. Nora yanked open the French door, put a foot inside the lounge, and turned to stone as Jeffrey flew into the room. He somersaulted over, bounced to his feet behind Marian, and instantly began circling toward Dart, his body bent forward and his arms slightly extended.

Dart shifted his eyes to Nora, then back to Jeffrey. 'Who are you supposed to be. Action Man?' He sidled away from the wall. 'Ladies, say hello to Jeffrey, the manservant. You'd be dead already, Jeffrey, if the mudpie hadn't distracted me.'

'Norma!' Marian shrieked. 'Shoot him, shoot him!'

'Shut up,' Nora said. She moved alongside Lily, who was gazing at her in pure terror.

'Shoot him. Norma!' Marian yelled.

'Baby, she's a lousy shot, and the gun's already empty.' Dart said. Already wholly adjusted to this turn of events, he was once again in confident good humor. All he had to deal with was an unarmed man and Nora-pie, who was a lousy shot, especially when the gun was empty. He loved his odds. Jeffrey was still circling toward him. 'Come on, manservant,' Dart said.

Jeffrey had not glanced at Nora since he had rocketed into the room. So focused on Dart that he seemed not to have heard Marian's outbursts, he advanced with one slow, deliberate crab-step after another. Dart rolled his eyes in amusement. Jeffrey was not a serious threat. He threw out his arms and shrugged at Nora. 'Should tell you the bitter truth, sweetie. I lied to you. The tits aren't pretty. Too small and too flat.' He glanced at Jeffrey, and his smile widened.

Nora said, 'Do you ever wear women's clothes, Dick?'

He lost his smile, then began to move toward Jeffrey with the air of one having to conduct a necessary but tedious bit of business.

Lily looked up fearfully at Nora. 'Is that you, Mrs Desmond?'

'It's me, Lily.' Nora touched her shoulder. The men drew closer. Nora was aiming the revolver at Dart, but she had no confidence in her ability to hit him. She said, 'I can see your closet, Dick, there are two dresses inside it, and nobody's ever seen them but you.'

Dart growled and sprang, and Jeffrey seemed to flow backwards. Dart sailed four feet through the air and thudded down onto his stomach. In a second he pulled himself upright and went into a crouch. 'So we know you're fast,' he said, and bunched himself to charge.

Jeffrey jumped right, then left, so quickly he seemed not to have done it at all. He moved directly behind Margaret, who, unlike Lily and Marian, was looking at Nora. Her eyes moved to something near the windows, then back to Nora.

Nora looked behind her and understood. She ran to the table and picked up the cleaver. 'Are you crazy?' Marian yelled. 'You have a gun!'

Dart twitched right, Jeffrey twitched left, a mirror image.

Marian screamed at her to shoot.

Dart ripped his knife through the empty air where Jeffrey had been, then pivoted and charged forward. Instead of floating back, Jeffrey ducked sideways, gripped Dart's arm, rolled his body over his hip, and spun him wheeling to the carpet a few feet past Marian. Nora remembered that Jeffrey had once been, among a dozen other unlikely things, a karate instructor.

Wincing, Dart picked himself up nearly as quickly as he had the first time. 'Cool,' he said. 'Faggy martial arts. Way you fight when you can't really fight.' He jumped forward, jabbing, and Jeffrey faded back. Six feet from Dart, Jeffrey glanced at her over Marian's head and spoke with his eyes. Nora switched the cleaver into her right hand and chopped at the ropes running across the back of Margaret's chair.

'Now me!' Marian yelled.

Margaret pulled herself forward. The ropes fell away from her chest, but her hands were still tethered. 'Me!' Marian screamed. Nora put down the gun and knelt to saw the cleaver between Margaret's wrists. Lily cried out, and a body hit the floor. Dart was getting up on his knees, holding a bloody knife. Jeffrey dodged toward the hallway. An oozing, foot-long slash ran up the side of his chest, and his face looked as though he were listening to music. He filtered through the air, caught Dart's arm, and slammed him back down on the carpet. Instead of waiting for Dart to twitch himself upright and charge again, Jeffrey followed him over in one smooth, continuous movement. With the electric immediacy of a bolt of lightning, Dart twisted to one side and thrust the knife into Jeffrey's ribs.

During an endless few seconds in which Nora tried to convince herself that she was mistaken, that she had seen something else entirely, the two men hung locked into position. A red stain blossomed on Jeffrey's wet shirt, and then he sagged down onto Dart's body. Nora wavered to her feet.

Marian shrilled to be set free.

Dart released a sigh of triumph and pushed Jeffrey off his chest. Jeffrey pressed a hand over his wound and lay still.

Sitting up, Dart was sliding backwards to disentangle his legs from Jeffrey's. Nora took a step toward him. Jeffrey looked up at Dart and grunted, the first sound he had made since he had come hurtling into the room. The stillness of intense concentration had not left his face. Marian sent up insistent waves of sound. Frantic, Nora cocked the cleaver over her shoulder and walked toward the men.

Dart pulled himself easily to his feet and spun to face her. 'Really, Nora.'

Playful, taunting, the knife punched out at her. It was impossible, she could not do it, he was too fast for her. The knife jumped forward in another parody of a thrust, and Dart came smiling forward. Nora backed away, holding up the cleaver, knowing she could not hit him before he stabbed her. Superior, silvery amusement ran through him. 'I expected a little more of you,' he said, and then his eyes enlarged and his body dropped away in front of her with amazing, surreal speed.

She looked down. His arms around Dart's ankles, Dart's heels pressed against his chest, Jeffrey pulled him back another inch.

In the second of grace Jeffrey had given her, Nora sprinted forward, raised the cleaver high over her shoulder, and slammed it down into one of the tufts of hair on Dart's back. The fat blade sank two or three inches into his skin, and blood welled up around it. She tugged at the handle, intent on smashing the cleaver into his head. Dart shook himself like a horse and twitched the handle away from her grasp. 'Hey, I thought we were friends,' he wheezed. He kicked himself free from Jeffrey's grip and dragged himself forward. He wheezed again, got his elbows under him, and pulled himself toward her. She stepped back. He looked up at her, eyes alight with ironic pleasure. 'I don't understand this constant rejection.'

Nora's heel came down on the barrel of the revolver.

Marian's screams floated to the ceiling. Nora wrapped her hands around the grip of the revolver and took two steps forward, her mind a white emptiness. She squatted on the soles of her feet and pressed the barrel against Dart's forehead.

'Cute,' Dart said. 'Pull the trigger, show our studio audience the show must go on.'

Nora pulled the trigger. The hammer came down with a flat, metallic click. Dart gave out a breathy chuckle and clamped a hand around her wrist. 'On we go.' He pulled down her hand, and she squeezed her index finger again. The revolver rode upward on the force of the explosion, and the last bullet burned a hole through Dart's laughing eye, sped into his brain, and tore off the back of his skull. A red-gray mist flew up and out and spattered the wall far behind him. A bullet in the brain is better than a bullet in the belly. Even Dart Harwich was right sometimes. Dart's fingers trembled on her wrist. Faintly, as from a distant room, Nora heard Marian Cullinan screaming.102

Half an hour later the larger world invaded Nora's life, at first in the form of the many policemen who supplied her with coffee, bombarded her with questions, and wrote down everything she said, thereafter as represented by the far more numerous and invasive press and television reporters who for a brief but intensely uncomfortable period pursued her wherever she went, publishing their various inventions as fact, broadcasting simplifications, distortions, and straightforward untruths, a process which led, as always, to more of the same. If she had agreed, Nora could have appeared on a dozen television programs of the talk-show or tabloid kind, sold the rights to her story to a television production company, and seen her photograph on the covers of the many magazines devoted to trivializing what is already trivial. She did none of these things, considering them no more seriously than she considered accepting any of the sixteen marriage proposals which came to her in the mail. When the public world embraced her, its exaggerations and reductions of her tale made her so unrecognizable to herself that even the photographs in the newspapers seemed to be of someone else, Jeffrey Deodato, who endured a lesser version of Nora's temporary celebrity, also declined to assist in the public falsification of his life.

Once Nora had satisfied her laborious obligations to the law enforcement officers of several cities, what she wanted was enough space and time to reorder her life. She also wanted to do three specific things, and these she did, each one.

But this long, instructive process did not begin until forty minutes after she put Dick Dart to death, when the world rushed in and snatched her up. In the interim, Nora freed the other two women and let Margaret Nolan comfort Lily Melville while she held Jeffrey's hand and tried to assess his injury. Clearly in pain but bleeding less severely than she had feared, Jeffrey said, 'I'll live, unless I die of embarrassment.' Marian Cullinan retreated to her room, but sensible Margaret volunteered to drive Jeffrey to the hospital and used the imposing force of her personality to dissuade Nora from coming along. She would try to call the Lenox police from the hospital; if the telephones did not work, she would go to the police station after leaving the hospital. She ran to the lot and returned with her car. Staggering, supported by Margaret and Nora, Jeffrey was capable of getting to the door and down the walk. While easing him into the car, Nora remembered to ask Margaret what had happened to Agnes Brotherhood.

'Oh, my Lord,' Margaret said. 'Agnes is locked in her room. She must be frantic.' She told Nora where in her office to find the key and suggested that she might want to clean herself up and put on some clothes before the police came.

Nora had forgotten that she'd been naked ever since she had taken off Marian's coat beneath the terrace.

Margaret raced off toward Lenox, and Nora walked back toward Main House and Agnes, who had escaped the attentions of Dick Dart because he had been unable to get into her room.

She walked past the lounge without looking at Dart's body. The keys, each with a label, were in the top left-hand drawer of the desk, just as Margaret had said. Nora pulled on Margaret's big blue raincoat and went down the hall to Agnes's room.

The thin figure in the bed was sleeping, Nora thought, but as she took two steps into the room, Agnes said, 'Marian, why did you take so long? I don't like being locked in, and I don't like you, either.'

'It's not Marian,' Nora said. 'I'm the woman who saw you this afternoon. Do you remember? We talked about Katherine Mannheim.'

A rustle of excited movement came from the bedclothes, and Nora could make out a dim figure pushing itself upright. 'They let you come back! Or did you sneak in? Was that you who tried to get in before?'

Agnes had no idea of what had gone on downstairs. 'No, that was someone else.'

'Well, you're here now, and I know you're right. I want you to know. I want to tell you.'

'Tell me,' Nora said. She bumped into a chair and sat down.

'He raped her,' Agnes said. 'That terrible, ugly man raped her, and she died of a heart attack.'

'Lincoln Chancel raped Katherine Mannheim.' Nora did not say that she already understood at least that much.

'You don't believe me,' Agnes said.

'I believe you absolutely.' Nora closed her eyes and sagged against the back of the chair.

'He raped her and she died. He went to get the other one, the other horrible man. That was what I saw.'

'Yes,' Nora said. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance. 'And then you told the mistress, and she went to Gingerbread and saw them with her body. But you didn't know what she did after that for a long time.'

'I couldn't have stayed here if I knew. She only told me when she was sick and taking that medicine that didn't do anything but make her sicker.'

'Did you ask her about it? You finally wanted to know the truth, didn't you?'

Agnes started to cry with muffled sniffs. 'I did, I wanted to know. She liked telling me. She still hated Miss Mannheim.'

'The mistress got money from Mr Chancel. A lot of money.'

'He gave her whatever she wanted. He had to. She could have sent them both to jail. She had proof.'

Nora let her head roll back on her shoulders and breathed out the question she had to ask. 'What kind of proof did she have, Agnes?'

'The note, the letter, whatever you call it. The one she made Mr Driver write.'

'Tell me about that.'

'It was in Gingerbread. The mistress made Mr Driver write down everything they did and what they were going to do. Mr Chancel didn't want him to do it, but the mistress said that if he didn't, she would go back to the house and get the police on them. She knew he wouldn't kill her, even though he probably wanted to, because she put herself in with them. Mr Chancel still wouldn't do it, but Mr Driver did. One was as good as two, she said. She told them where to bury that poor girl, and she put that in the note herself, in her own writing. That was how she put herself in with them.'

She managed to say what she knew. 'And she put the note in her safe, the one under her bed, didn't she?'

'It's still there,' Agnes said. 'I used to want to look at it sometimes, but if I did I'd know where they buried her, and I didn't want to know that.'

'You can open her safe?'

'I opened it a thousand times when I was taking care of her. She kept her jewelry in there. I got things out for her when she wanted to wear them. Do you want to see it?'

'Yes, I do,' Nora said, opening her eyes and straightening up. 'Can you walk that far, Agnes?'

'I can walk from here to the moon if you give me enough time.' Agnes reached out and closed her hand around Nora's wrist. 'Why is your skin so rough?'

'I'm pretty muddy,' Nora said.

'Ought to clean yourself up, young thing like you.'

Agnes levered herself out of the bed and shuffled toward the door, gripping Nora's wrist. When they moved into the light, she took in Nora's condition with shocked disapproval. 'What happened to you? You look like a savage.'

'I fell down,' Nora said.

'Why are you wearing Margaret's raincoat?'

'It's a long story.'

'Never saw the like,' Agnes said, and shuffled out into the hallway.

In Georgina Weatherall's bedroom, the old woman switched on the lights and asked Nora to put a chair in front of the bed. She twirled the dial. 'I'll remember this combination after I forget my own name.' She opened the safe door, reached in, extracted a long, once creamy envelope yellow with age, and held it out to Nora. 'Take that with you. Get it out of this house. I have to go to the bathroom now. Will you please help me?'

Nora waited outside the bathroom until Agnes had finished, then conducted her back to her room. As she helped her get back into bed, she told her that there had been some trouble downstairs. The police were going to come, but everything was all right. Marian and Lily and Margaret were all fine, and the police would want to talk to her, but all she had to do was tell them that she had been locked in her room, and they would go away. 'I'd rather you didn't say anything about the letter you gave me,' she said, 'but of course that's up to you.'

'I don't want to talk about that note,' Agnes said. 'Especially not to any policeman. You better wash yourself off and get into some real clothes, unless you want a lot of men staring at you. Not to mention tracking mud all over the house.'

Nora showered as quickly as she could, dried herself off, and trotted, envelope in hand, to Margaret's room. A few minutes later, wearing a loose black garment which concealed a long envelope in one of its side pockets, she went downstairs. Seated at the dining room table, Marian jumped up when Nora came in. She had changed clothes and put on fresh lipstick. 'I know I have to thank you,' Marian said. 'You and that man saved my life. What happened to everybody? What happened to him? Are the police on the way?'

'Leave me alone,' Nora said. She went to a chair at the far end of the table and sat down, not looking at Marian. A current of emotion too complicated to be identified as relief, shock, anger, grief, or sorrow surged through her, and she began to cry.

'You shouldn't be crying,' Marian said, 'you were great.'

'Marian,' Nora said, 'you don't know anything at all.' From the front of the building came the sounds of sirens and police cars swinging into the gravel court, bringing with them the loud attentions of the world outside.

ONE DAY AT THE END OF AUGUST

One day at the end of August, a formerly lost woman who asked the people she knew to call her Nora Curlew instead of Nora Chancel drove unannounced through the gates on Mount Avenue and continued up the curving drive to the front of the Poplars. After having been ordered out of the house by his father, Davey had been implored to come back, as Nora had known he would, and was living again in Jeffrey Deodato's former apartment above the garage. Alone in the house on Crooked Mile Road, Nora had spent the past week dealing with endless telephone calls and the frequent arrivals of cameras, sound trucks, and reporters wishing to speak to the woman who had killed Dick Dart. She had also contended with the inevitable upheavals in her private life. Even after she told him that she wanted a divorce, Davey had offered to move back in with her, but Nora had refused. She had also refused his invitation to share the apartment above the garage, where Davey had instantly felt comfortable. You told the FBI where I was, she had said, to which Davey replied, I was trying to help you. She had told him, We're finished. I don't need your kind of help. Not long after this conversation, she had called Jeffrey, who was out of the hospital and convalescing at his mother's house, to tell him that she would see him soon.

Alden Chancel, whose attitude toward Nora had undergone a great change, had tried to encourage a reconciliation by proposing to build a separate house, a mini-Poplars, on the grounds, and she had turned down this offer, too. She had already packed most of the surprisingly few things she wanted to keep, and she wished to go someplace where few people knew who she was or what she had done. Nora was already impatient with her public role; another explosion of reporters and cameramen would soon erupt, and she wanted to be far away when it did. In the meantime, she had three errands to accomplish. Seeing Alden was the first of these.

Maria burst into a smile and said, 'Miss Nora! Mr Davey is in his apartment.'

A few days after being suspended, Maria had been rehired. The lawsuit against Chancel House had been withdrawn, and Alden no longer feared revelations connected to Katherine Mannheim.

'I'm not here to see Davey, Maria, so please don't tell him I'm here. I want to talk to Mr Chancel. Is he in?'

Maria nodded. 'Come in. He'll like to see you. I will get him.' She went to the staircase, and Nora walked into the living room and sat down on one of the long sofas.

In a few minutes, radiating pleasure, affability, and charm, Alden came striding in. He was wearing one of his Admiral of the Yacht Club ensembles: white trousers, a double-breasted blue blazer, a white shirt, and a snappy ascot. She stood up and smiled at him.

'Nora! I was delighted when Maria told me you were here. I trust this means that we can finally put our difficulties behind us and start pulling together. Davey and I need a woman around this place, and you're the only one who would possibly do.' He kissed her cheek.

A week ago, announcing that she had finally had enough of his abuse, fraudulence, and adulteries, Daisy had left the Poplars to move into a suite at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, from which she refused to be budged. She would not see or speak to Alden. She had emerged from her breakdown and subsequent immersion in soap operas with the resolve to escape her imprisonment and revise her book. During one of his pleading telephone calls, Davey said that his mother wanted 'to be alive again' and had told him that he had 'set her free' by learning the truth about his birth. He was baffled by his mother's revolt, but Nora was not.

'That's nice of you, Alden,' she said.

'Should we get Davey in on this talk? Or just hash things out by ourselves for a while? I think that would be useful, though any time you want to bring Davey in, just say the word.'

Alden had been impressed by the commercial potential of what she had done at Shorelands, and Nora knew from comments passed along by Davey that he was willing to provide a substantial advance for a first-person account of her travels with Dick Dart, the actual writer to be supplied later. The notion of her true crime nonfiction novel made his heart go trip trap, trip trap, exactly as Daisy had described. But the most compelling motive for Alden's new congeniality was what Nora had learned during her night in Northampton. He did not want her to make public the circumstances of the births of either Hugo Driver's posthumous novels or his son.

'Why don't we keep this to ourselves for now?' she said.

'I love dealing with a good negotiator, love it. Believe me, Nora, we're going to come up with an arrangement you are going to find very satisfactory. You and I have had our difficulties, but that's all over. From now on, we know where we stand.'

'I agree completely.'

Alden brushed a hand down her arm. 'I hope you know that I've always considered you a tremendously interesting woman. I'd like to get to know you better, and I want you to understand more about me. We have a lot in common. Would you care for a drink?'

'Not now.'

'Let's go into the library and get down to the nitty-gritty. I have to tell you, Nora, I've been looking forward to this.'

'Have you?'

He linked his arm into hers. 'This is family, Nora, and we're all going to take care of each other.' In the library, he gestured to the leather couch on which she and Davey had listened to his ultimatum. He leaned back in the chair he had used that night and folded his hands in his lap. 'I like the way you've been handling the press so far. You're building up interest, but this is about when we should do a full-court press. You and I don't need to deal with agents, do we?'

'Of course not.'

'I know some of the best architects in the New York area. We'll put together a place so gorgeous it'll make that house on Crooked Mile Road look like a shack. But that's a long-range project. We can have fun with it later. You've been thinking about the advance for the book, haven't you? Give me a number. I might surprise you.'

'I'm not going to write a book, Alden, and I don't want a house.'

He crossed his legs, put his hand to his chin, and tried to stay civil while he figured out how much money she wanted. 'Davey and I both want this situation to work out satisfactorily for all three of us,'

'Alden, I didn't come here to negotiate.'

He smiled at her. 'Why don't you tell me what you want, and let me take it from there?'

'All I want is one thing.'

He spread his hands. 'As long as it's within my powers, it's yours.'

'I want to see the manuscript of Night Journey.'

Alden stared at her for about three seconds too long. 'Davey asked me about that, hell, ten years ago, and the thing's lost. I wish I did have it.'

'You're lying to me,' Nora said. 'Your father never threw anything away. Just look at the attic of this house and the storeroom at the office. Even if he had, he would have kept that manuscript. It was the basis of his greatest success. All I want to do is take a look at it.'

'I'm sorry you think I'm not telling you the truth. But if that's what you came here for, I suppose this conversation is over.' He stood up.

'If you don't show it to me, I'm going to say things that you don't want people to hear.'

He gave her an exasperated look and sat down again. 'I don't understand what you think you can get out of this. Even if I did have it, it couldn't do you a bit of good. What's the point?'

'I want to know the truth.'

'That's what you came here for? The truth about Night Journey? Hugo Driver wrote it. Everybody knows it, and everybody's right.'

'That's part of the truth.'

'Apparently your adventures have left you more unsettled than you realize. If you want to come back in the next couple of days to talk business, please do, but for the present, we have nothing more to talk about.'

'Listen to me , Alden. I know you have that manuscript somewhere. Davey once came to you with an idea that would have made you even more money from the book, and you never even bothered to look for it. He did, but you didn't. You knew where it was, you just didn't want him to see it. Now I want to look at it. I won't open my mouth to a single human being. I just want to know I'm right.'

'Right about what?

'That Driver stole most of the story from Katherine Mannheim.'

Alden stood up and looked at her in pity. Just when she could have turned things around and joined the team, Nora had turned out to be a flake after all, what a shame. 'Let me say this to you, Nora. You think you know certain facts which could damage me . I would rather not have these facts come to light, that's true, but while they might stir up some publicity I could do without, I'll survive. Go on, do whatever you think you have to do.'

Nora took a folded sheet of paper from her bag. 'Look at this, Alden. It's a copy of a statement you probably won't want made public.'

Alden signed. He came across the room to take it from her. He was bored, Nora had thrown away her last chance to be reasonable, but he was a gentleman, so he'd indulge her in one final lunacy. He took his reading glasses from the pocket of the blazer, put them on, and snapped open the paper on his way back across the room. Nora watched this performance with immense pleasure. Alden read a sentence and stopped moving. He read the sentence again. He yanked off his glasses and turned to her.

'Read the whole thing,' Nora said. Until this moment, she had wondered if he had already known. The shock and dismay surfacing through his performance made it clear that he had not. She could almost feel sorry for him.

Alden moved behind the leather chair, leaned over it, and read Hugo Driver's confession and Georgina Weatherall's postscript. He read it all the way through, then read it again. He looked up at her from behind the chair.

'Where did you get this?'

'Does it matter?'

'It's a fake.'

'No, Alden, it's not. Even if it were, would you want that story to get out? Do you want people to start speculating about your father and Katherine Mannheim and Hugo Driver?'

Alden folded the letter into one pocket, his glasses into another. He was still hiding behind his chair. 'Speaking hypothetically, suppose I do have the manuscript of Night Journey. Suppose I satisfy your curiosity. If that were to happen, what would you do?'

'I'd go away happy.'

'Let's try another scenario. If I were to offer you two hundred thousand dollars for the original of this forgery, solely for the protection of my father's name, would you accept my offer?'

'No.'

'Three hundred thousand?'

Nora laughed. 'Can't you see that I don't want any money? Show me the manuscript and I'll go away and never see you again.'

'You just want to see it.'

'I want to see it.'

Alden nodded. 'Okay. You and I are both honorable people. I want you to know I never had any idea that… I never had any idea that Katherine Mannheim didn't just walk away from that place. You gave me a promise, and that's my promise to you.' He recovered himself. 'I still say that this is a forgery of course. My father followed his own rules, but he wasn't a rapist.'

'Alden, we both know he was, but I don't care. It's ancient history.'

He came out from behind his barricade. 'It's ancient history whether he was or wasn't.' He moved along the bookcase and swung out a hinged section of a shelf at eye level to reveal a wall safe, another massy vault larger within than without. He dialed it open and with more reverence than she would have thought him capable of reached in and took out a green leather box.

Nora came toward him and saw what looked like the bottom of a picture frame on the top shelf of the safe. 'What's that?'

'Some drawing my father squirreled away.'

Alden pulled the drawing out and showed it to her before sliding it back into the vault. 'Don't ask me what it is or why it's there. All I know is that when Daisy and I moved into the Poplars, he showed it to me and told me to keep it in the vault and forget about it. I think it must be stolen. Somebody probably gave it to him to pay off a debt.'

'Looks like a Redon,' Nora said.

'I wouldn't know.; Is that good?'

'Good enough.'

She took the box to the couch and looked inside. A small notebook with marbled covers sat on top of a lot of typed pages. She picked up the notebook. Katherine Mannheim's signature was on the inside cover. She had written 'Night Journey, novel?' on the facing page. Nora turned page after page filled with notes about Pippin Little; this was the embryo of Driver's book, stolen from Katherine Mannheim's bag. He who steals my trash steals trash. She put the notebook beside her and took the manuscript from the box. It seemed such a small thing to have affected so many lives. She opened it at random and saw that someone had drawn a line in the margin and written in a violent, aggressive hand,

p. 32, Mannheim notebook. She turned to another page and saw in the same handwriting, pp. 40-43, Mannheim. Lincoln Chancel had demanded the stolen notebook, kept the manuscript, and marked in it everything Driver had stolen from Katherine Mannheim. If Driver ever ruined him, he would ruin Driver.

'Do you see?' Alden said. 'Driver wrote the book. These Mannheim people don't have a leg to stand on. He borrowed a few ideas, that's all. Writers do it all the time.'

Nora returned the manuscript and notebook to the box. 'I'm grateful to you, Alden.'

'I still don't see why it was so important.'

'I just wanted to see it all the way through,' she said. 'In a day or two, I'm going to be moving to Massachusetts for a little while. I don't know where I'll be after that, but you won't have to worry about me.'

Alden told her he would say good-bye to Davey for her.

'I already did that,' Nora said.

The second of Nora's errands took her to the post office, where she withdrew from an unsealed envelope addressed to The New York Times a letter describing Hugo Driver's debt to the forgotten poet Katherine Mannheim and an account of the poet's death and her burial a few feet north of the area known as Monty's Glen in the Shorelands woods. To the letter she added, in her hasty hand, this note: 'Katherine Mannheim's original notebook and Hugo Driver's manuscript, with Lincoln Chancel's marginal notes referring to specific passages taken from the notebook, are in a wall safe located in the library of Alden Chancel's house in Westerholm, Connecticut.' Having kept her promise never to speak of these matters, she refolded the letter, wrapped it around another copy of Hugo Driver's confession, put them back into the envelope, sealed it, and sent it by registered mail to New York.

Nora's third errand brought her to Redcoat Road. Natalie Weil's house was still in need of a fresh paint job, but the crime scene tapes had been removed. She pulled up in front of the garage door, walked up the path to Natalie's front door, and pressed the bell. A friendly female voice called out, and footsteps ran down the stairs to the door. As soon as Natalie saw her, she immediately tried to slam the door, but Nora thrust herself inside and backed Natalie toward the stairs. 'I want to talk to you,' she said.

'I suppose you do,' Natalie said. She seemed aggrieved and reluctant, which did not displease Nora. 'I know how you feel, but all of a sudden three new listings showed up, and I have to show my boss I can still do my job, besides which there's a little problem with the police, some crap about drugs, but that won't stick, so what the hell, right? Come upstairs and have a beer.'

'You're calmer than I expected,' Nora said.

'You win some, you lose some. I'll have a beer, even if you're not going to.'

Nora went up the stairs and waited for Natalie. Despite her Westerholm weekend uniform of a faded denim shirt and khaki shorts, she looked wary and defensive, and though not as ancient as she had appeared on Barbara Widdoes's couch, older than Nora remembered her. She pulled her refrigerator open, took out a bottle of Corona, and popped the cap. 'Come on in, sit down, we've known each other a long time, what's a little husband fucking between old friends? I can't blame you for being mad at me, but it was hardly a big deal, if you want to know the truth.'

'Yes,' Nora said. 'I do.' She came into the kitchen and sat opposite Natalie at her kitchen table. 'That's exactly what I want to know.'

'Join the crowd.' Natalie drank from the beer bottle and gently put it down. Her eyes looked bruised. 'Hey, at least for the time being, I'm still in the real estate business. You know what that means? We sell dreams. Truth is what you say it is. Right?'

'A lot of people think so,' Nora said. The handcuff photographs had been taken off the corkboard, and the refrigerator magnets had been thrown away.

Natalie took another swallow of Corona. 'How do you like being famous? Is it neat? I wouldn't mind being famous.'

'It isn't neat.'

'But you killed Dick Dart. You wasted the bastard.' The beer in front of Natalie was not her first.

'So they say,' Nora answered.

Natalie toasted her with the Corona bottle. 'You and Davey all right?'

'He moved back in with his father and I'm leaving town. So, yeah, we're probably all right.'

'God, he's going back to Alden.' Natalie twisted her mouth into a half smile. 'I heard Daisy took off. About time. That guy is bad news, and he always was. I mean, you make mistakes, but Alden was about the worst mistake I ever made. Well, let's drop that subject.'

'Let's not,' Nora said. 'After all, you and Alden caused me a lot of trouble. I was about to be arrested when the wonderful Dick Dart abducted me.'

'Nobody's perfect. For what it's worth, Nora, I'm sorry.' Natalie was having trouble looking; at her. 'Sometimes you do things for the wrong reasons. It's a lousy deal, you know? You get strapped, you agree to stuff you'd never do otherwise. I never wanted to get you into trouble - shit, I like you. I always liked you. The whole thing was Alden's idea in the first place. It was just business.'

'Bid'ness is bid'ness,' Nora said.

Natalie made a wry face. 'Know how many houses sold here last year? Exactly nineteen. And not precisely at my end of the market, no siree, I get the top of the bottom end, like your place, no offense, but the office doesn't give me the two-million-dollar properties.' She swallowed more beer and put down the bottle. 'Alden's a jerk, but he's willing to put cash on the table, I'll say that for him. And I got you off the hook, didn't I?'

'Yes,' Nora said. 'But you almost got me arrested for kidnapping.'

Natalie took another swallow of Corona. 'It was never supposed to get that far, Nora. He just wanted to jerk Davey around, that's all. He was pissed off. We didn't know that whole thing with Dick Dart was going to happen, who could know that?'

'Tell me about the blood in your bedroom.'

Natalie smiled at her like a conspirator. 'One of Alden's brilliant ideas, He wanted to get everybody worked up, tie my thing into the murders. Stir the pot, you know? He got this pig blood from a butcher and wrecked my bedroom. But you're okay now, aren't you? I went through my act, it's all over, what's the difference?'

'If you don't know, I'll never be able to explain it to you,' Nora said.

Natalie turned her head away.

'Natalie,' Nora said, and Natalie looked at her again. 'You disgust me. Alden bought you, and you ruined my life.'

'You didn't like your life anyhow. How could you, married to that baby?'

'How much did he pay you?' Nora asked.

'Not nearly enough,' Natalie said. 'Considering what's probably going to happen to me. I'd like you to leave my house, if you don't mind. I think we're done. If you ask me, I did you a favor. You came out of this deal a lot better than I did.'

'I didn't volunteer,' Nora said. 'I was drafted.'

An unfamiliar car was nosed in toward Nora's garage door, and thinking it belonged to yet another reporter or to one of the unknown men who had proposed to her, she nearly drove on to the end of Crooked Mile Road until she saw Holly Fenn get out of the car and walk toward her front door. Nora turned into her driveway, and Fenn waved at her and started moving slowly back to the garage. She pulled in beside his car, got out, and walked toward him. He needed a haircut, he was wearing the ugliest necktie she had ever seen, and there were weary bags under his eyes. He looked great.

'So there you are,' he said. 'I called a couple of times, but I all I got was your machine.'

'I'm not answering my phone all that much.'

'I bet. Anyhow, I wanted to see you, so I thought I'd take a chance and come by.' He tucked in his chin, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and looked at her from under his eyebrows. A spark of feeling jumped between them. 'I have something to tell you, but mainly I just wanted to see how you were.'

'How am I?'

'Holding up pretty good, I'd say. I like your new hair. Cute.'

'Thanks, but you're lying. You liked it better the old way. I did, too. I'm going to let it grow out.'

Fenn nodded slowly, as if agreeing with her on a matter of great importance. 'Good. You getting your life back together okay?'

'I'm taking it apart pretty well, so I guess I am, yes. It isn't the same life, that's all. Holly, would you like a cup of coffee or something?'

'Wish I could. I have to be somewhere in five minutes. But I thought you ought to know something I learned about that old nursery school on the South Post Road. It occurred to me that I didn't know who held the lease on that building, so I checked. The lease is made out to a guy in New York named Gerald Ambrose. I called him up, and he told me that a citizen here in Westerholm rented it from him for the rest of the summer.'

'Ah,' Nora said. 'You're a good cop. Holly.'

'Yeah, maybe, but I turn out to be a little on the slow side. If I'd checked this out before, I could have saved you a lot of trouble.'

She smiled at him. 'I don't blame you. Holly. Who rented the building?'

He smiled back. 'Do I get the feeling you already know, or am I making that up?'

'I have an idea, but tell me.'

The citizen who rented the building is a big-time publisher who told Ambrose he needed temporary storage for some overstock. Are you on good terms with your father-in-law?'

'My soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law and I have a long history of mutual loathing.' She remembered Alden Chancel stroking her arm and saying I'd like to get to know you better. 'Holly, if you stop in on Natalie Weil, she'll probably tell you an interesting story. I just saw her, and she's sort of killing time until her world caves in.'

Fenn wiped his hand over his sturdy mustache and nodded, taking in both the remark and Nora. 'Your friend put on a pretty good show.'

'She even fooled Slim and Slam.'

Fenn's eyes crinkled. 'I gather some money changed hands.'

'Not enough, according to Natalie.'

Fenn grinned at the driveway, marveling at the ingenuity of the human capacity for committing serious error. 'And you called me a good cop.'

'I think you're pretty good all the way around,' Nora said. 'You stuck by me.'

'Yeah, well, I tried.' He gave her a rueful glance which managed to encompass compassion for what she had endured and anger at having been unable to spare her from it. 'Anyhow,' he said, 'I better get going.'

'If you must,' She walked him to his car.

'Look, maybe this is none of my business, but did you say that you were leaving your husband?'

'I already left.'

Fenn looked away. 'Are you going to stay in town?'

'I think I'll go to Northampton for a while. I can work with a woman who runs a catering business for a couple of weeks. I want to get away from the telephone and clear my head. After that, who knows?'

Fenn nodded his big, shaggy head, taking this in. 'After I'm through with Mrs Weil and your soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law, do you suppose I could come back here and take you out for coffee or something?'

'Holly, are you asking me for a date?'

'I'm too old for dates,' he said.

'Me, too. So come back later and we won't have a date, we'll just knock around together. I want to hear about your encounter with Alden. You can tell me all your favorite war stories.'

Fenn smiled at her with every part of his face. 'And I promise not to ask to hear yours.'

'Or tell me any lies.'

'I wouldn't know how to lie to you.'

Then it's a deal,' Nora said.

'Well, okay.' He lowered himself into his car, winked at her through the windshield, and backed away from the garage. A few seconds later, he was gone.