'I love you.' He tilted his head to kiss her.

'I'm too ill!' She shrank away.

He reached for her hand, the pads of his fingers, stroking her nails. 'You don't make it easy to look after you, Legs darling.'

'I don't need looking after. Francis. We must talk about-'

He lifted his hand to her mouth to silence her, her fingertips still gripped in his. 'You don't understand what's going on. You need protecting as much as the rest of us, darling one more so, according to Conrad. I spoke to him again today. He's in a terrible state; always lacked backbone,' he added with satisfaction, sounding just like Hector.

'What's Conrad got to do with it?' She had a sudden vision of her ex-lover threatening to enact a terrible revenge on her for her maddened umbrella resignation.

But she couldn't have been further from the truth.

Francis took her hand again. 'We think Gordon Lapis has a stalker who's already hanging about here at Farcombe not just a random crank; a fully fledged nutcase.'

'Since when?' She sat up, clutching her head as she went dizzy.

Francis propped himself up on one elbow. 'Well according to Conrad there have always been unhinged mega-fans.'

'Lots,' she agreed.

'And God knows there are enough turning up here in Farcombe each day to bear that out but this one is a breed apart.'

'Is this to do with the letters?'

'You know about those?'

'Your father accused Byrne of writing death threats.'

'It's not him, not unless he has an accomplice. A third letter turned up just today, hand-delivered as before, at about the same time Dad had Jamie-go at gunpoint. It's obvious that whoever it is watches everything that goes on here. That includes you.'

'Me?' She remembered Byrne's very real fear for her safety, and Hector's hurry to get her back to the hall.

'You've got a couple of personal mentions in the stories.' He took her hands in his.

She felt her scalp tighten with fear. "Stories'?'

'They all start "Once Upon a Time" Dad's trying to persuade the police to have a forensic psychologist looking at them, but they're not taking it terribly seriously to be honest, and obviously see it as a waste of resources. They've got all the notes. I met with them again today, but their hands are tied unless a crime actually committed.'

'Surely poison letters count as a criminal offence?'

'It's termed "malicious communication", but of course the fear is that something much worse will happen before they can catch whoever it is playing postman. The police say they've increased their presence, but we get one patrol car passing by a day if we're lucky, and that's only really to remind the happy campers that Big Brother is watching them.'

'What happy campers?'

But he wasn't listening. He had discovered the heavy ring that was stuck on her finger.

He held up her hand to examine it, lifting it up to the moonlight. 'Why are you wearing Kizzy's ring?'

She snatched her hand away. 'It can't possibly be Kizzy's.'

'She never takes it off. She's got these lions tattooed on her ...' He cleared his throat. 'Somewhere intimate.'

Mind whirring, Legs' first illogical reaction was to be livid that Byrne had fobbed off Kizzy's ring as a love token, and to wonder why he was in possession of it in the first place. Then she was illogically offended that Francis had once made her feel so grubby about the little stars on her ankle, and yet Kizzy clearly had a minor safari park inked somewhere private. Finally she felt paranoid that Francis would never let her leave the hall again, keeping her for ever entombed amid erotic paintings and poetry readings. Her thoughts were still so jumbled up with tiredness and barbiturates, and talk of death threats and stalkers. Somehow it seemed vitally important not to give anything away about her recent encounter with Byrne.

'I ... found it,' she improvised hopelessly. 'In the woods.'

He tutted in disbelief. 'Don't lie to me.'

'It's not a lie.' She had found it in a Fisherman's Friend bag, she told herself, staring determinedly back at him in the half darkness. His face was light and shadow dancing as clouds scudded across the moon. He looked both incredibly handsome and eerily predatory.

'You mustn't go out alone, it's not safe,' his voice was carefully modulated, both caring and censorious.

She found herself thinking about Byrne asking after the threats earlier, the man for whom they were almost certainly personally directed. He had been typically cool and level-headed, claiming to be more concerned about Hector waving a gun about than hate letters and cranky fans. If anything, he had seemed far more concerned for her safety. But if the perpetrator was really wandering around the estate by night, didn't that put him in terrible danger?

'Where is Byrne tonight?' she demanded in a panic.

Francis looked at her warily. 'He's camping.'

'Where?'

'On the Isle of Wight,' he snapped, sounding bored. 'Here, of course, on one of Home Farm's old hay fields.'

'Isn't that a bit unfriendly, not to mention frightening out there with mad stalkers running around?' She felt terrified for him, ready to raid the wardrobes for more evening wear and storm out to stand guard over his tent with Hector's shotgun.

'It was his choice.'

'But it must be lonely.'

'Legs, darling, it's a city out there. Didn't you notice when you were wandering around earlier?'

She shook her head. 'I went via the lake.'

'Come and look,' talking her by the hand, he led her from the room and across the wide landing into his old bedroom which had mullion windows looking over the walled kitchen gardens up to Home Farm and its pastureland.

There she saw acres of tents in the monochrome moonlight. There must have been more than a hundred, thrown scattergun fashion into the hills like little glacial boulders. A few, where the inhabitants were still awake, glowed like illuminated lanterns. Closer to the farm were campervans and motor-homes in serried lines.

'All paying handsomely for their pitches,' Francis looked very pleased with himself. 'I'll buy you that Ferrari. If they keep turning up at this rate, it'll be a 250 GT. Who knew trash fiction could be so rewarding? I can't wait to shake Gordon Lapis by the hand.'

'If he survives the death threats and mad stalker.' She stared at him in horror.

'It's all under control. We're hiring in a private security firm. Conrad has it covered. We can't cancel now. This lot would riot, not to mention the thousands we're expecting in the next fortnight.'

'And you'd lose a fortune,' she muttered quietly.

'This place costs a fortune.' He turned to her suddenly, cupping her face. 'You've saved us, Legs. You've saved me.'

'I have?' She bleated.

'You brought me Gordon Lapis. You did this for Farcombe Hall and for us. You did it to beg forgiveness. I love you for it. I never stopped loving you. And my God I'm going to protect you.' He pressed his lips down on hers.

She hurriedly faked a few coughs to back him off.

'And Byrne is out there right now?' Her eyes raked the endless little pods shimmering in the moonlight.

He let out a caustic laugh. 'Old Jamie-go hates being cooped up indoors, it seems. Probably misses bunking down in a stable in Kildare. Poppy says he loves it out there with all the oddballs, although the dog isn't quite so keen on sharing his personal space with the great unwashed.'

The first light of dawn was breaking over the horizon. Legs gazed out across the steely fields, knowing Byrne was out there somewhere, sleeping among the superfans. And suddenly she knew what he was doing. He was getting to know his readers face to face, meeting them in person, breaking bread and sharing firelight while he remained behind the cloak of anonymity. He was testing the water to see whether he could cope with the full onslaught of sharing the rest of his life with them all as an active part of it.

'Nothing will stop this festival going ahead now,' Francis was saying. 'Crowds are estimated as high as a hundred thousand. We're going to close public access to the village and bring them in through the estate gates from the main road, charging anyone without a ticket a tenner each.'

Legs felt foreboding trickling the length of her body; whether the mad stalker would get to Gordon before he got to Hector was debatable; either way it was set to be a dramatic festival. And the crowds could be the most unpredictable force of all.

'Where exactly is Gordon Lapis's first public appearance being staged?'

'The current plan is the library. Given the threats to Gordon's safety, it's thought that the main marquee is too much of a security risk. Gayle Keiller-Myles has come up with the brilliant idea of taking out all our books and replacing them with thousands of Gordon Lapis ones in every edition including the hundreds of foreign language ones. It will look fantastic on the live screening.'

'Live screening? On EuroArts?' Legs knew the budget satellite arts channel which sponsored the festival had an outdoor broadcast unit consisting of one freelance journalist and a digital camera hooked up to a laptop. They didn't do live.

'Auntie's finest from Four are dedicating an hour to us.' He touched his nose, indicating a secret. 'It's being announced at the press launch tomorrow. EuroArts are cool as they get fifty per cent of all syndication rights, plus the chance to run endless repeats. The broadcast has already been sold around the globe. And the Beeb will show edited highlights as a part of a Gordon Lapis Omnibus special.

'We're also laying on big screens in the parkland here,' he bragged, sounding as though they did it every year whereas Legs knew Farcombe's most newsworthy festival speaker to date had been a photogenic Iranian female poet under fatwa. 'We have a company coming to place a fifty square metre LED in front of the parterre it sits on top of a huge pantechnicon.'

'I guess that will make up for the fact that you don't have a television in the house,' she said faintly.

Legs felt weak as she took in the sheer scale of the operation and its total lack of foresight or understanding about Gordon and his readers and their long, loving relationship with Ptolemy. She'd spent enough time at Fellows Howlett dealing with the cranky post and email just a tiny fraction of the Lapis phenomena to know what a demanding lot they were. They would want to be close to him, she was certain, not fobbed off with a glorified webcam screening.

The one person possibly best qualified to judge right now was out in the parkland, counting down the days to the moment he revealed himself as an imposter not only to those fans all around him, but also to the mother with whom he had only just made contact. Legs adored Byrne with an intensity that frightened her, and she loved Gordon's work with an addict's passion, but now that she knew one man to be the flipside of the other, she feared for his stability. What had he got planned for Hector? Now that he knew he couldn't publicly discredit him, would he risk something even more shocking? If it involved a crowd of thousands, no public liability insurance and a live BBC screening, he could bring down Farcombe like the House of Usher.

She was suddenly very angry with all those who had let Byrne down; Conrad with his negligence and cowardice; Francis with his greed; Hector for his bullying selfishness, but mostly angry with herself for playing her part so artlessly, living for the moment as always and now faced with the possibility of truly catastrophic consequences.

'You're shivering, Legs darling.' Mistaking her shaking anger for fatigue, Francis was instantly back in condescending carer mode. 'You need to get back to bed.'

'I'm fed up of being in bed.' She shrugged away the hand on her shoulder. He'd be quoting at her next, she predicted wearily, suddenly realising she was very tired indeed.

As soon as she clambered into bed she conked out, gold signet ring pressed against the tip of her nose for comfort, only to dream that she'd been entombed in the family mausoleum in Farcombe's graveyard, the festival in full swing in the parkland beyond the walls. Then blinding lights flashed on and she realised she was facing a television crew with live action being fed to the big screens outside. Alongside her sat Byrne and Fink the basset, both wearing dark glasses. She was interviewing the duo, a producer who sounded like Conrad shouting in her ear. Beside the camera's all-seeing eye, an autocue starting to roll with questions, the first of which read ALLEGRA: 'So, Gordon Lapis, tell me, if you were a biscuit which one would it be?'

Chapter 38.

Legs woke abruptly mid morning to the sound of one of Poppy's bloodcurdling screams which was clearly distinguishable above the wind, howling wilder than ever now.

She scrambled out of bed and onto the landing, reeled around, coughed a lot and looked for a weapon in case she needed to take on the assailant. Despite her years reading racy detective fiction, she made for a hopeless female lead as she crept downstairs in a short nightie, wheezing consumptively, holding aloft a stone doorstop shaped like a pineapple which was so heavy she was forced to rest it on the banisters halfway down before resuming her mission.

Now wailing in anguish, Poppy was flapping about in the hallway, beaded jewellery rattling like castanets. She was clutching a piece of paper in her hand.

Legs hovered on the bottom step. 'Is everything OK?' she asked dumbly, because it plainly wasn't.

Barely pausing in her lament, Poppy wailed past like a siren, then wailed back again to snap: 'Put that pineapple down, Allegra. It's from Goblin Granny's roof! It's one of the last th-things we laughed about and the only things h-a-ave to r-r-remember her by. It almost f-fell on me the d-d-day she d-died.'

Goblin Granny had always possessed a very dark sense of humour. She would no doubt have been highly amused by the note Poppy thrust at Legs now.

'Isn't this j-just beastly? The spelling's di-diabolical.'

The single page of standard cartridge paper was printed out in neat twelve point font: Once Upon A Time there was a woman who culd never be trusted and used to pathetically hide behind tall walls creating misery in the name of art ... it started.

Legs read on in alarm as the deranged note described the brutal killing of Farcombe's headline act and most of the festival organisers by a shadowy figure who disembowelled them all before throwing their corpses over a cliff. As she scanned it, she thought she recognised the style, but couldn't think from where. It was surprisingly readable. Many of Fellows Howlett's esteemed clients would struggle to get this much action-packed plot into three hundred times the page length.

Then she caught her breath as she read: and the blonde girl came running through the woods to rapashously meet with her evil lover wearing a long black coat and eating sweets and nobody heard her scream as her throat was cut for stealing ...

'What do you think?' Poppy asked fearfully.

'The punctuation is rather reminiscent of the final episode of Ulysses,' she joked, her first defence reflex when scared witless. At the bottom of the page, the author had finished with the line and if I do not get what I want you will ALL die!

'At least nobody gets to feel left out.'

'It was delivered in the early hours. I've told Francis we must install CCTV. Anybody can get close to the house through the graveyard, as you know.'

Legs swallowed uncomfortably, realising that it was quite possible the stalker had hand-delivered it while she and Francis were gazing out of the window at the fields of camping Ptolemy fans. Had she just glanced down, she might have seen a shadow stealing through the cloisters.

'Are you still thinking about cancelling the festival?' she asked, suddenly thinking that might be a very good idea after all.

But Poppy had entirely changed heart in the light of the enthrallingly large crowds flocking into her beautiful gardens and grounds. 'Don't be ridiculous, darling. It's far too late for that. I'm thinking of asking Gordon Lapis to unveil my latest sculpture on the live television broadcast. He can hardly refuse given the hospitality we're extending and the peril we're putting ourselves in. I will check with Conrad Knight that it's all arranged when he dines with us later.'

Legs reeled. 'Conrad is having dinner here?'

'He and his colleagues are here meeting with the festival team now; Francis is kindly sitting in for me because I really have so much to do, what with the press launch and tonight's party.' She cleared her throat. The truth was that her terror had now reached such a fever pitch that she couldn't even bear to cross the courtyard to the festival offices. 'In fact, I must press on now,' she reached out to snatch the letter back. 'Shouldn't you be in bed? That nightie must be letting in a frightful chill. Isn't it one of mine?' She eyed it suspiciously.

Legs hung tightly onto the folded paper with one hand and the hem of her nightie with the other. If she kept hold of the letter, she realised, she could try to get it to Byrne. It suddenly seemed terribly important that he saw it. 'Don't you think somebody should tell Gordon about this?'

'I'm sure Conrad has all that under control,' Poppy wrenched the letter from her, leaving Legs just clutching the envelope. 'His author will be escorted everywhere under heavy security, I can assure you, although I may personally finish him off. He's brutalised Ptolemy. If he gets murdered, he probably deserves it for what he's done to that poor boy!'

Legs sucked her teeth, realising that Poppy still had no idea that her son was the feted writer, currently living unguarded and under canvas amongst his most fanatic fans, one of whom might well be hand-delivering highly personalised death threats.

She wondered if she had the physical strength to make another run for it and race through the tent-strewn fields in search of him with a warning, but even if she had been wearing something that fell lower than her buttocks, she was terrified that by doing that she might lead any killer straight to him. She clearly recalled Gordon telling her once that the crankiest Ptolemy fans knew all about his publisher and agent and their staff. Even though she no longer worked for Fellows Howlett, she was clearly in this mad stalker's scrapbook under 'blonde girl' and had been observed in the woods yesterday with Hector's tailcoat and a Fisherman's Friend. The thought made her feel faint with fear.

Then it occurred to her that all she had to do was break into her little silver car and get her phone back so that she could message him. Delighted, she hurried past Poppy through the green baize door to the back lobby and out into the main courtyard where several big, glossy cars were now parked, including Conrad's sleek black Jag. But her little silver Tolly had gone, she realised with a cry of frustration.

The wind was wild, promising more storms. Gusts were threatening to hoist her crotch-length nightie up her torso like a flag. Still clinging onto the hem, she looked around wildly, catching sight of several faces watching her from the big glass windows of the festival offices which had once been a vast arch to the coachhouses.

A moment later, Francis had rushed out carrying a long Mackintosh.