'Come down this time tomorrow to fetch your clothes,' he said. 'Come for a drink. An ordinary drink, not an emergency.'

'Thank you. I'd like that.'

He nodded amiably, and Fiona also, and I picked up my dry clothes-bag and the camera case and followed Tremayne and the others out again into the snow. The six of us squeezed into a large Volvo, Tremayne driving, Perkin sitting beside him, Ingrid sitting on Bob's lap in the back with Mackie and me. At the end of the village Tremayne stopped to let Bob and Ingrid get out, Ingrid giving me a sketchy smile and saying Bob would bring my suit and boots along in the morning, if that would be all right. Of course, I said.

They turned away to walk through a garden gate towards a small shadowy house, and Tremayne started off again towards open country, grousing that the trial would take his head lad away for yet another day. Neither Mackie nor Perkin said anything, and I still had no idea what the trial was all about. I didn't know them well enough to ask, I felt.

'Not much of a welcome for you, John, eh?' Tremayne said over his shoulder. 'Did you bring a typewriter?'

'No. A pencil, actually. And a tape recorder.'

'I expect you know what you're doing.' He sounded cheerfully more sure of that than I was. 'We can start in the morning.'

After about a mile of cautious crawling along a surface much like the one we'd come to grief on, he turned in through a pair of imposing gateposts and stopped outside a very large house where many lights showed dimly through curtains. As inhabitants of large houses seldom used their front doors we went into this one also at the side, not directly into the kitchen this time but into a warm carpeted hall leading to doorways in all directions.

Tremayne, saying, 'b.l.o.o.d.y cold night,' walked through a doorway to the left, looking back for me to follow. 'Come on in. Make yourself at home. This is the family room, where you'll find newspapers, telephone, drinks, things like that. Help yourself to whatever you want while you're here.'

The big room looked comfortable in a sprawling way, not tidy, not planned. There was a mixture of patterns and colours, a great many photographs, a few poinsettias left over from Christmas and a glowing log fire in a wide stone fireplace.

Tremayne picked up a telephone and briefly told the local force that his jeep was in the ditch in the lane, not to worry, no one had been hurt, he would get it picked up in the morning. Duty done, he went across to the fire and held out his hands to warm them.

'Perkin and Mackie have their own part of the house, but this room is where we all meet,' he said. 'If you want to leave a message for anybody, pin it to that board over there.' He pointed to a chair on which was propped a corkboard much like the one in Ronnie's office. Red drawing pins were stuck into it at random, one of them anchoring a note which in large letters announced briefly, 'BACK FOR GRUB'.

'That's my other son,' Tremayne said, reading the message from a distance. 'He's fifteen. Unmanageable.' He spoke, however, with indulgence. 'I expect you'll soon get the hang of the household.'

'Er- Mrs Vickers?' I said tentatively.

'Mackie?' He sounded puzzled.

'No- Your wife?'

'Oh. Oh, I see. No, my wife took a hike. Can't say I minded. There's just me and Gareth, the boy. I've a daughter, married a frog, lives outside Paris, has three children, they come here sometimes, turn the place upside down. She's the eldest, then Perkin. Gareth came later.'

He was feeding me the facts without feelings, I thought. I'd have to change that, if I were to do any good: but maybe it was too soon for feelings. He was glad I was there, but jerky, almost nervous, almost - now we were alone - shy. Now that he had got what he wanted, now that he had secured his writer, a lot of the agitation and anxiety he'd displayed in Ronnie's office seemed to have abated. The Tremayne of today was running on only half-stress.

Mackie, coming into the room, restored him to his confident self. Carrying an ice-bucket, she glanced quickly at her father-in-law as if to a.s.sess his mood, to find out if his tolerance in Fiona and Harry's kitchen was still in operation. Rea.s.sured in some way she took the ice over to a table bearing a tray of bottles and gla.s.ses and began mixing a drink.

She had taken off her padded coat and woolly hat, and was wearing a blue jersey dress over knee-high narrow black boots. Her red-brown hair, cut short, curled neatly on a well-shaped head and she was still pale, without lipstick or vivacity.

The drink she mixed was gin and tonic, which she gave to Tremayne. He nodded his thanks, as for something done often.

Tor you?' Mackie said to me. 'John?'

'The coffee was fine,' I said.

She smiled faintly. 'Yes.'

Truth to tell I was hungry, not thirsty. Thanks to no water in the friend's aunt's house, all I had had that day apart from the coffee was some bread and Marmite and two gla.s.ses of milk, and even that had been half frozen in its carton. I began to hope that Gareth's return, 'back for grub', was imminent.

Perkin appeared carrying an already full gla.s.s of brown liquid that looked like Coca-Cola. He sank into one of the armchairs and began complaining again about the loss of the jeep, not seeing that he was lucky not to have lost his wife.

'The d.a.m.ned thing's insured,' Tremayne said robustly. 'The garage can tow it out of the ditch in the morning and tell us if it can be salvaged. Either way, it's not the end of the world.'

'How will we manage without it?' Perkin grumbled.

'Buy another,' Tremayne said.

This simple solution silenced Perkin and Mackie looked grateful. She sat on a sofa and took her boots off, saying they were damp from snow and her feet were freezing. She ma.s.saged her toes and looked across at my black shoes.

'Those shoes of yours are meant for dancing,' she said, 'and not for carrying females across ice. I'm sorry, I really am.'

'Carrying?' Tremayne said, eyebrows rising.

'Yes, didn't I tell you? John and Harry carried me for about a mile, I think. I can remember the crash, then I sort of pa.s.sed out and I woke up just outside the village. I do vaguely remember them carrying me- it's a bit of a blur- I was sitting on their wrists- I knew I mustn't fall off- it was like dreaming.'

Perkin stared, first at her, then at me. Not pleased, I thought.

'I'll be d.a.m.ned,' Tremayne said.

I smiled at Mackie and she smiled back, and Perkin very obviously didn't like that. I'd have to be careful, I thought. I was not there to stir family waters but simply to do a job, to stay uninvolved and leave everything as I'd found it.

Thankful for the heat of the fire I shed the dinner jacket, laying it on a chair and feeling less like the decadent remains of an orgy. I wondered how soon I could decently mention food. If it hadn't been for the bus fare I might have bought something sustaining like chocolate. I wondered if I could ask Tremayne to reimburse the bus fare. Frivolous thoughts, mental rubbish.

'Sit down, John,' Tremayne said, waving to an armchair. I sat as instructed. 'What happened in court?' he asked Mackie. 'How did it go?'

'It was awful.' She shuddered. 'Nolan looked so- so vulnerable. The jury think he's guilty, I'm sure they do. And Harry wouldn't swear after all that Lewis was drunk-' She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. 'I wish to G.o.d we'd never had that d.a.m.ned party.'

'What's done is done,' Tremayne said heavily, and I wondered how many times they'd each repeated those regrets.

Tremayne glanced at me and asked Mackie, 'Have you told John what's going on?' She shook her head and he enlightened me a little. 'We gave a party here last year, in April, to celebrate winning the Grand National with Top Spin Lob. Celebrate! There were a lot of people here, well over a hundred, including of course Fiona and

Harry who you met. I train horses for them. And Fiona's cousins were here, Nolan and Lewis. They're brothers. No one knows for sure what happened, but at the end of the party, when most people had gone home, a girl died. Nolan swears it was an accident. Lewis was there- he should have been able to settle it one way or the other, but he says he was drunk and can't remember.'

'He was drunk,' Mackie protested. 'Bob testified he was drunk. Bob said he served him getting on for a dozen drinks during the evening.'

'Bob Watson acted as barman,' Tremayne told me. 'He always does, at our parties.'

'We'll never have another,' Mackie said.

'Is Nolan being tried for murder?' I asked, into a pause.

Tor a.s.sault resulting in death,' Tremayne said. 'The prosecution are trying to prove intent, which would make it murder. Nolan's lawyers say the charge means manslaughter but they are pressing hard for involuntary manslaughter, which could be called negligence or plain accident. The case has been dragging on for months. At least tomorrow it will end.'

'He'll appeal,' Perkin said.

'They haven't found him guilty yet,' Mackie protested.

Tremayne told me, 'Mackie and Harry walked together into Mackie and Perkin's sitting-room and found Nolan standing over the girl who was lying on the floor. Lewis was sitting in an armchair. Nolan said he'd put his hands round the girl's neck to give her a shaking, and she just went limp and fell down; and when Mackie and Harry tried to revive her, they found she was dead.'