He gave her a kiss, which reminded him what his crazy conscience was making him miss. Then he set off up the drive.

The front door was ajar and his heart sank. Somehow he didn't think it had been left open deliberately in antic.i.p.ation of first-footers.

He stepped inside. Natural instinct was to call out, "h.e.l.lo, anyone there?" or some such implied apology for trespa.s.s, but he suppressed it. Anything he could hear to give him a pointer on how things were going before he got involved would be useful.

Except he could hear nothing.

A partially open door into the hallway spilled a line of light across the floor. He pushed it open. It was the room he was most familiar with, the study. The light came from a lamp on the desk, as if someone had been sitting there, working on the papers scattered across its leather surface. But the room was empty.

He went forward to the desk. According to Endo Venera, a sharp eye never missed a chance to read private papers on the grounds, you never knew when knowing something other folk didn't know you knew might come in useful.

A brief glance told him they were concerned with Poll-Pott, something about a partnership agreement.

What a more than brief glance might have told wasn't an option because at that moment he had a stroke. No other explanation for the way his head suddenly seemed to explode and he fell forward across the desk.

He seemed to be destined to come into close contact with this desk, he thought as he tried to force himself upward.

There were voices in the room now, or were they just inside his skull? He managed to get a few inches of s.p.a.ce between his face and the woodwork, and twisted his neck in search of the source of the voices.

His blurring gaze found it, or the possible source of one of them, or maybe not. Lucy Naysmith's lips didn't seem to be moving. In fact, her whole face was unnaturally still. You'd think a woman swinging a golf club at your head would show some emotion. What kind of club was it? he found himself wondering as survival instinct and buckling knees combined to have him falling away from the next stroke. (Stroke. Perhaps that's where the word came from, ho ho.) Maybe it was a mashie-niblick, where'd he heard that phrase recently? The club head caught him on the chest this time and clipped his chin in pa.s.sing. Lady needed to practise if she was going to improve her handicap. But she had the time, he acknowledged as he hit the ground and lay there, still as a ball on a nice lush fairway.

The voices were still talking ... something familiar about them ... Shoot! He must've hit the answer-machine b.u.t.ton as he fell against the desk and these were the same un scrubbed messages he'd heard last time the Christmas greetings, the guy after a taxi, the p.i.s.sed off client, Potter urging him to ring back, Dome's hidden threat... voices on the air, empty of meaning ... except that Endo Venera said that ninety per cent of what people said told you ten per cent more than they intended, so the sharp Eye was also a sharp Ear.

And he was right, realized Joe. The blow which had unscrambled most of his senses had sharpened that always pretty sensitive area of hearing that dealt with intonation and accent and sequence and all the other things which made listening so vital to a good gumshoe.

That's great, interposed another more cynical area of his brain. But shouldn't we be concentrating on why this nice ordinary lady is so keen to kill us and trying to find some way of dissuading her?

He said, "Feelie The club upraised for the possibly final blow, paused.

He said, '... not yours ... hers ... Dome's ..."

"She promised," said the woman. "She promised ... in the New Year ... I thought that was why ..."

No, he thought, he promised in the New Year, not she. But it didn't seem a good time to correct a lady. In fact, the sensible thing to do was to agree with everything she said. The customer was always right even when she wasn't a customer and was also clearly teetering on the edge of her trolley.

"She will keep her promise," he said. "That's why I'm here. I'm Joe Sixsmith, remember! We met earlier. It's all under control. That's why Felix asked me to come."

A man could get addicted to this lying business, he thought. Specially when it kept your head from having a divot taken out of it.

"Felix asked you?" she said, lowering the club gently so that it rested on his chest. "He didn't tell me."

"Just in case of emergencies," said Joe. "And you've got an emergency, right?"

It seemed reasonable to a.s.sume that whatever was going on in this poor woman's mangled mind could be labelled an emergency.

"Yes," said Lucy Naysmith. "You see, I thought when I saw her she'd brought my little girl round like she'd promised. But when I tried to take her she started screaming at me. Felix told me he had to talk to her alone, and he took her upstairs, and I was in the kitchen getting a drink when I heard you and I thought it might be ... I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, Mr. Sixsmith. If only Felix had told me you were coming. Let me help you up."

Suddenly she had become very middle-cla.s.s hostess, full of concern for her guest's comfort. Joe let himself be pulled to his feet and though he would have preferred to remain upright in case she had another change of heart, he was so weak at the knees he couldn't resist when she eased him into one of the high-backed leather armchairs. He touched the side of his head. There was blood on his fingers. She poured him a gla.s.s of whisky from a crystal decanter. He drank it then reached for the decanter, soaked his handkerchief in the Scotch and gently bathed the broken skin. It felt very tender but his guess was no worse. He had, as attested by surviving many hard falls in his accident strewn childhood, a very hard head.

Finally, after another internal application of the very smooth Scotch, he said, "So Felix is upstairs with Dorrie and the kid, right?"

That's right. It will be OK, won't it, Mr. Sixsmith? I mean, I don't think I could stand any more Her good-hostess veneer was very fragile. Beneath it she was crazed in every sense, her whole being ready to fly apart in unpredictable fragments.

Joe tried to bend his mind to the task of keeping her together long enough to regain his strength and find out exactly what was going on. But his mind kept veering back to the answer-machine tape. Dorrie's voice ... your order is ready for collection... and Dorrie telling him I was sure I'd hear from him the day after Boxing Day but nothing. So I thought enough's enough and first thing the next morning I rang.. He dragged himself back to here and now.

: "It must have been hard finding out Felix had fathered a child on Dorrie when you couldn't have one," he said ! sympathetically.

"Yes. At first I just wanted to kill them both," she said, very matter-of-fact. "But once Felix explained ..."

Explained what? This was important, but all he could think of was that the next morning had to be the morning of the twenty-eighth. But the message from Potter saying how urgent it was that Naysmith should come to town and meet ! him the next day hadn't been left till the afternoon of the

twenty-eighth, not long before his own abortive meeting with Potter had taken place. Yet that message came on the machine before Dorrie's His head felt like it was splitting open. But he mustn't let a silence develop into which Lucy Naysmith's sanity might fall. He opened his mouth and discovered that miraculously not thinking about what was important had shown him what it was.

"Felix explained to you that he had made an arrangement for Ms McShane to hand over the child to you for upbringing," he said. It was quite obvious as he said it. Funny how all the best deductions felt like that, not triumphs of logic but so clear you'd have to be brain dead to miss them.

He had no problem accepting that even a bright, educated woman like Lucy could have been taken in. Man might need a degree in psychology to understand why these things happened but to recognize that they did happen all he needed was a bit of observation and a lot of human sympathy. He recalled his cousin Mercy who got sent down for fourteen days by some d.i.c.khead magistrate for shoplifting dolls after she lost her baby. They got her out on appeal, but the magistrate, who was quoted as saying that it was far too easy for criminals to hide behind a screen of psychiatric disability, was still up there, regretting they no longer chopped off hands for petty theft.

He found that this diversion from the mystery of the tape messages had allowed another deduction to pop up like a piece of toast. Maybe he should patent this not thinking. Endo Venera, eat your heart out! Peter Potter was in his chambers on the evening of the twenty-eighth because that was when he had his appointment to meet Felix Naysmith.

Except that was really crazy, a real not-thinking conclusion. He'd been there himself and heard Potter talking to Naysmith on the phone. And the police had checked that the call came from the Naysmiths' cottage in Lincolnshire.

No, the fault had to lie in his interpretation of the phone message ... the first phone message, that was, not the call he'd overheard ... though if one why not the other ... but how ... ?

Back to the present!

Lucy was speaking.

'... and she'd be happy with me, I know she would. I've seen her often in the park, you know. She always knows when I'm watching and gives me a smile as if she's saying, yes, I'd love to come and live with you. She knows how much I'd love her. I'd always take her for walks myself, I wouldn't let some other woman have her while I was running around somewhere else, I'd be a real mother ... what are they doing up there, Mr. Sixsmith? If you've really come here to help, you'll go up there this minute and tell them I'm tired of waiting ... he said in the New Year and that's where we are, isn't it?"

Oh yes. In the New Year. Felix Naysmith had been pretty free with his promises of what he'd do in the New Year.

But which promise would he keep? And how would he keep it?

Time to go upstairs and ask him, thought Joe.

Uneasily he rose to his feet, clinging to the arm of the chair for support.

Lucy was standing looking at the wall behind the desk.

"He always keeps his promises ..." she murmured. "I was pregnant, you know. It doesn't show ... perhaps if I'd let it show..."

What the shoot was she looking at? A photo on the wall ... a wedding photo ... a bride with long blonde hair which the wind was whipping across her laughing face ... but that was Potter's wedding, that was Mrs. Potter ... with Naysmith as best man ... Naysmith who'd surprised his friends by getting married, whereas Potter ... I'd have said he was more likely which just goes to show... Butcher's voice ... This tremendous surge of crazy thoughts made Joe's head so heavy he almost sat down again. But, doubting if he'd ever manage to rise again, he resisted. Till a voice from the doorway said, "So you're here too. That's nice and handy." At which he turned, saw that he was being addressed by a dead man, and stopped resisting.

Twenty-Six.

Peter Potter came slowly into the room.

It wasn't of course Peter Potter, but Felix Naysmith with the face-concealing dressings removed.

"Darling, why are you doing that to Mr. Sixsmith?" asked Lucy as Naysmith/Potter wrapped a length of fishing line round Joe's chest and bound him to the chair. "I thought he'd come to help."

"No, dear, far from it. And Mr. Sixsmith is like one of those black beetles in the conservatory. You keep stamping on them but he keeps scuttling away!"

"It's you been trying to kill me," said Joe.

"Certainly. You see, while I knew you were stupid enough to mistake me for Potter, and stupid enough for me to use you to give me an alibi when Lucy got so impatient she rang from the cottage an act of folly also, but one which in the event turned out very well I didn't believe that such monumental stupidity could keep me safe forever. Of course, when you rang me ... why did you ring me, by the way?"

"Believe it or not, it was an accident."

"Oh, I believe it," laughed Naysmith. "But it really frightened me for a second. Then I realized here was a marvelous chance to lay another red herring and also give me an excuse to cover my face up till I'd succeeded in disposing of you. Injuring myself so it didn't look self-inflicted was a bit of a bore, but we all have to suffer in a good cause. How's that? Too tight, I hope?"

"Darling, where's Feelie? Why haven't you brought her?" asked Lucy.

"She's upstairs in the nursery saying goodbye to her ... to Dorrie. I felt she deserved that at least. She may be giving up the child but she's not entirely without feeling."

Joe shuddered. Looking at Naysmith's track record, it was entirely possible poor Dorrie McShane was indeed entirely without feeling. But he hoped not. This was a man who did not hesitate to kill in order to remove obstacles, but in this case, which obstacle did he want to remove?

He said urgently, "Mrs. Naysmith, Dorrie McShane doesn't want to give up her baby. Your husband's been lying to you. She loves the child dearly."

"No," she said. "All she's interested in is the money. That's all she's ever been interested in. That's why Felix had to keep on taking it."

"Keep on taking it?" echoed Joe. "Oh, shoot. You mean he'd started dipping his hand in while you were still working at Poll-Pott? I bet you helped him, right? No wonder he changed the habit of a lifetime and actually got married to you!"

"I resent that!" exclaimed Naysmith indignantly. "I love Lucy dearly, she knows that. All that I have done has been for our future happiness and that of our family."

He thrust his face close to Joe's as he spoke, but his expression didn't match his tone. A complicitous grin played on his lips and he gave Joe a big wink. This was a really cold piece of work, thought Joe. And it's only that coldness which is keeping me alive, and hopefully Dorrie too, while he works out how best to develop this situation.

Concentrate on the woman, he told himself. She's your best hope.

"He murdered Victor Montaigne, did you know that?" he said. "What happened, Felix? He too sharp for you? Got wind of what you were up to, so you offed him?"

Get him to admit it, see what her reaction was.

"Certainly. He was bright, dear Victor. But not bright enough to make his accusations in public. No, he waited till we were alone in the office after the Christmas party. I thought at first he wanted to propose taking a cut which would have been fine. But no, he just wanted me to know that he knew, and rather than spoil his skiing trip having to hang around and make statements to the police, he was postponing the revelation till after the hols. So I spoilt his skiing trip for him anyway."

"Meaning you killed him! You hear this, Mrs. Naysmith?"

"For heaven's sake," said Naysmith irritably. "You don't imagine you're telling Lucy anything she doesn't know? Who do you think drove my car up the Al while I drove Montaigne's with his body in the boot? Of course, when I made it look like suicide, I'd no idea how long it would take the pigs to find him. Worked out rather well."

They'll be able to tell he's been dead a week, not just two days," declared Joe with all the expertise of a man who'd read Venera's chapter on dating a body.

"After immersion in icy water? Hardly," said Naysmith. "But even if they do, so what? I never said he was the one who attacked me, did I? I'll leave recovery of that particular memory till everything's signed and sealed."

You had to give it to him, thought Joe, admiring what he knew he most lacked, the ability to think on his feet, to change direction in midair. No simple straightforward giant this, but a man wily as Loge. Yet he'd been like Wagner's Fafner in one respect in his l.u.s.t for gold he hadn't hesitated to kill his fellow giant, Fasolt.

"And Potter? Your old mate. How come you had to off him too?"

"Yes, that was hard," said Naysmith, frowning. "Poor Peter had stumbled on something. Maybe Victor had dropped a hint, can't see him getting there himself. Of course, the first person he confided in was me, because I was the last person he would suspect. Silly a.s.s then spent most of Christmas in the office puzzling things out. Didn't have much else to do, I expect. Rather a lonely type since all his sporting chums had got themselves married or partnered at the least. Deep down I think the dear chap was a repressed shirt-lifter, though he would have punched your nose in if you'd dared suggest it. Red hot on insurance claims. You ever get that problem of yours sorted, by the way?"

"I'm working on it," said Joe. "So what happened?"

"He rang me, suggested we meet. I came. He showed me what he'd worked out. It was clear as the nose on your face really. Everything pointed one way, I was the chap with his hand in the till. Only Peter was determined not to see it. But the others wouldn't let old friendship blind them, even if they felt it! So I thought, with Victor out of the way, there was a ready-made scapegoat if things got hot. No one knew I was here, eventually they'd find out Victor had never left the country, too good an opportunity to miss, so I did it."

Joe glanced towards Lucy. She'd wandered to the doorway and was looking anxiously up the stairs. No hope there, even if she had been listening, he guessed. While he didn't care to believe that her biological imperative would drive her to kill for herself, clearly it had taken her far beyond the point where anything her husband did for her alleged benefit bothered her.

"And Sandra lies?" he prompted.

"Sandra? When she got home after calling the police and giving her statement and all that c.r.a.p, she rang the cottage to tell me what had happened. Lucy fielded the call, said I was down at the pub. Sandra gave her a blow by blow account. She really thought you'd killed poor Peter at that point. So when she mentioned some papers of Peter's she'd removed, she wasn't at all suspicious. She just thought they looked a bit confidential and didn't want some nosey cop taking them in as evidence and breaking our client confidentiality. I'd rung Lucy from a call box on my way home to say all was well. But when she told me this, I got to thinking that maybe once you got yourself off the hook, Joe, Sandra might start having silly thoughts. I didn't know what it was she'd taken, but I couldn't risk it leading to me. So I turned round and headed back into town."

To kill her on the off chance she'd seen something? Shoot, you really get off on this stuff, don't you?"

"No, indeed," denied Naysmith indignantly. "All I wanted was to double check."

He glanced at his wife who was clearly in a world of her own, then dropped his voice confidentially.

"I had a key to her flat, you see. We used to have a little thing going, you know what I mean. I let myself in and took a look around. I found the papers, quite innocent as it turned out. But alongside them I found a copy of our partnership agreement which she'd clearly just been studying. How's that for cold blooded? She finds one of her partners dead and heads off home to see how this will affect her own situation."

He sounded genuinely indignant.

That why you killed her, to teach her a lesson in etiquette?" said Joe.

"Don't be frivolous. The silly cow woke up and found me there what else could I do?"

"Yeah, I see how it was forced on you," said Joe.

"Funny thing is, I've been looking at my own copy of the agreement tonight. In the unlikely event Darby died before we took on anyone else, leaving me as the sole surviving partner, I would a.s.sume absolute control, wouldn't have to buy anyone's estate out or anything. It was a sort of protective device against some unforeseen disaster which might mean a sole survivor would find himself forced on the street. Interesting, that."

Not if you're called Darby Pollinger, thought Joe. This was a guy who now saw no situation which someone's death couldn't improve. Only reason he hasn't killed me yet is once he does that he's got to make his mind up who goes next. He could, of course, just make a run for it, change his ident.i.ty, live the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, but that option probably took all of two seconds to get the thumbs down. Not a real choice unless he'd got so much loot stashed away he could set up real security and live in style. But that would take millions rather than tens of thousands.

No, Joe guessed he'd decided to stay and play the game out. With Montaigne set up as patsy, nothing to worry about but Joe. And one of the women. Couldn't keep them both happy. Lucy was going to run amok if she didn't get the little girl, and she knew everything. Dorrie wasn't about to sit quiet either if she didn't get her man. OK, she presumably knew nothing about the killings, but she certainly wasn't about to give up her daughter. Not while she was alive. But dead, what more natural than that the natural father should hold his hand up and accept responsibility?

So one of them had to go. That was the debate raging in Naysmith's mind.

But which one?

And why am I worrying about them when I don't have no either/or working for me? thought Joe.

Time to try this thinking-on-your-feet game. Except he wasn't on his feet, he was on his b.u.t.t with several yards of fishing line digging into his chest and arms, holding him to the chair.

Naysmith was regarding him almost sympathetically.

"Joe, you're not so stupid you can't see there's no way out of this for you, are you?" he said.

"You could gag me and make a run for it," suggested Joe without hope.

"No. If I'd got my hands on really big money, I might think about it. But all I've had is peanuts really, and a h.e.l.l of a lot of it's been spent already. Being a fugitive doesn't bother me all that much, but being a poor fugitive, now that's something else."

To hear his own logic so emphatically confirmed was no joy to Joe. Being right was no fun if it meant being dead along with it.

Naysmith was moving behind the chair. Joe recalled Potter's broken neck and Sandra Iles's too. He felt those strong broad hands caress his hair. Had Mr. Takeushi told the martial arts cla.s.s anything about resistance of fatal head holds when bound in a chair? If so, Joe hadn't been paying attention.