Herbert van Thal compiled a number of anthologies including some of the writings of James Agate, Ernest Newman and Hilaire Belloc and a volume on Victorian Travellers. He also resuscitated the works of many neglected Victorian writers. In 1971 his autobiography, The Tops of the Mulberry Trees, was published, as well as The Music Lover�s Companion (with Gervase Hughes). He also edited Thomas Adolphus Trollope�s autobiography and a two-volume work on Britain�s Prime Ministers. He died in 1983.

�Good morning, gentlemen!� Gwyneth Davies�s quiet voice was raised so that her greeting would carry the length of the ward. She spoke with a gentle lilt suggestive of shyness and self-effacement. Halting at the deserted nurses� station, she adjusted the short sleeves of her physiotherapist�s uniform; fleshy but firm arms, the well-exercised biceps matched by solid calves and heavy ankles. �Another lovely morning today. We are being lucky with the spring this year.�

Bright light shone through the windows which separated each pair of beds along three walls of the room. The ward was magnificently sited, commanding the sun throughout the day. The sense of space and light seemed to mock the rows of patients waiting helplessly for the miracle of a cure and the promise of a return to normal life.

Leaving her report sheets on the nurses� desk, Gwyneth crossed over to the first bed:

�Good morning, Mr�Barlas. I hope you had a good night.� She opened Mr�Barlas�s eyes, noting that they were bloodshot again. �Tch, tch! I wonder what makes them go like that. Anyone would think you had been drinking.� She laughed. �I�ll be back in a moment for your exercises.�

One by one Gwyneth went round all the coma patients opening their eyes and giving a few words of solace. It was a daily ritual. She was sure it must be very bad to have your eyes closed all the time. Nerve fibres might start to degenerate. And besides, it was easier to talk to them if their eyes were open, she did not feel so strange about it. Completing her round, she returned to the first bed, pulled back the covers, and bore down on Mr�Barlas�s chest to deepen his breathing. �Gosh, you are warm! Maybe you don�t need so many covers.� She moved from his chest to working his legs.

�Good old Gwyneth,� called Sally-Anne Younger, hurrying into the ward and immediately unbuttoning the top of her uniform, �always chatting to them. Sorry I�m late.�

�Sally-Anne! I�ve opened their eyes.�

�Well? I don�t see any heads turning.� Sally-Anne closed the uniform over her bra. �Can�t go around wrongly buttoned up, can I? She reached behind her head and adjusted the band that held her blonde hair into a pony-tail. �Right! Late but willing. I�ll start over here. What�s old Heywood been up to? Not giving any trouble, is he?�

�Talk to them, Sally-Anne, not about them.�

�Well, Mr�Heywood, what have you got to say for yourself this morning? Not much, I don�t suppose. Honestly, when I went in for physiotherapy I never expected to have to do so much chatting. My flat-mates say I never stop talking when I get home.�

Gwyneth laughed; she liked Sally-Anne. �Look you, it doesn�t affect me like that. I can be very quiet with people who talk back.�

�I was never quiet with anyone. I was late learning to walk but I could talk almost from birth.�

They giggled as they went on with their work. Exercising comatose patients was hard labour, sweat came easily. Gwyneth tried not to think of them as �deadweights�, but that was what they were. She would get out of breath, and sometimes the lowered oxygen levels made Sally-Anne and her mildly hysterical as they pursued their macabre task. They talked to the patients and to each other but the conversations were at different levels, one real, the other somehow like a dream. Gwyneth would feel she had entered a land whose inhabitants were cast under a spell of sleep from which no one was able to free them. Drowsiness would hang in the air like mist and when she walked it was like wading in a dense fluid that resisted her legs.

�What�s this? What�s this on your pyjamas, Mr�Higgins? I do believe Mr�Higgins has had a nocturnal emission.�

�Sally-Anne!� Gwyneth hurried to Mr�Higgins�s bed.

�You old devil.�

�Where? Where is it?�

�There.�

Gwyneth stared intently at the striped cotton. �That isn�t anything, it could have been there for ages. Honestly, Sally-Anne, the things you say. Poor Mr�Higgins is probably all embarrassed inside.�

�Oh well, perhaps I was being optimistic. Everyone back to bed. False alarm.�

Gwyneth gave a reproving look, but then smiled as she returned to exercising Mr�Dutton. Sally-Anne was rather shocking at times, but there was something exciting about her too. It flattered Gwyneth that she was her friend and often took an interest in her. She kneaded Mr�Dutton�s calves. But one day, she mused to herself, there was going to be somebody to be interested in her all of the time. Not just for a minute, but for always. Someone who loved her and would draw out the things she could feel waiting inside. Lately, the certainty had been growing stronger. Not far ahead there was a corner and once it had been turned nothing would be the same again.

There is a curious tree, native to Malaysia, called �The Midnight Horror�. We had several in Ayer Hitam, one in an overgrown part of the Botanical Gardens, the other in the front garden of William Ladysmith�s house. His house was huge, nearly as grand as mine, but I was the American Consul and Ladysmith was an English teacher on a short contract. I assumed it was the tree that had brought the value of his house down. The house itself had been built before the war�� one of those great breezy places, a masterpiece of colonial carpentry, with cement walls two feet thick and window blinds the size of sails on a Chinese junk. It was said that it had been the centre of operations during the occupation. All this history diminished by a tree! In fact, no local person would go near the house; the Chinese members of the staff at Ladysmith�s school chose to live in that row of low warrens near the bus depot.

During the day the tree looked comic, a tall simple pole like an enormous coat-rack, with big leaves that looked like branches�� but there were very few of them. It was covered with knobs, stark black things; and around the base of the trunk there were always fragments of leaves that looked like shattered bones, but not human bones.

At night the tree was different, not comic at all. It was Ladysmith who showed me the underlined passage in his copy of Professor Corner�s Wayside Trees of Malaya. Below the entry for Oroxylum indicum it read, �Botanically, it is the sole representative of its kind; aesthetically, it is monstrous�.�.�. The corolla begins to open about 10 p.m., when the tumid, wrinkled lips part and the harsh odour escapes from them. By midnight, the lurid mouth gapes widely and is filled with stink�.�.�. The flowers are pollinated by bats which are attracted by the smell and, holding to the fleshy corolla with the claws on their wings, thrust their noses into its throat; scratches, as of bats, can be seen on the fallen leaves the next morning�.�.�.�

Smelly! Ugly! Pollinated by bats! I said, �No wonder no one wants to live in this house.�

�It suits me fine,� said Ladysmith. He was a lanky fellow, very pleasant, one of our uncomplicated Americans, who thrives in bush postings. He cycled around in his bermuda shorts, organizing talent shows in kampongs. His description in my consulate file was �Low risk, high gain�. Full of enthusiasm and blue-eyed belief; and open-hearted: he was forever having tea with tradesmen, whose status was raised as soon as he crossed the threshold.

Ladysmith didn�t come round to the Club much, although he was a member and had appeared in the Footlighters� production of Maugham�s The Letter. I think he disapproved of us. He was young, one of the Vietnam generation with a punished conscience and muddled notions of colonialism. That war created dropouts, but Ladysmith I took to be one of the more constructive ones, a volunteer teacher. After the cease-fire there were fewer; now there are none, neither hippies nor do-gooders. Ladysmith was delighted to take his guilt to Malaysia, and he once told me that Ayer Hitam was more lively than his home-town, which surprised me until he said he was from Caribou, Maine.

He was tremendously popular with his students. He had put up a backboard and basketball hoop in the playground and after school he taught them the fundamentals of the game. He was, for all his apparent awkwardness, an athletic fellow, though it didn�t show until he was in action�� jumping or dribbling a ball down the court. Perhaps it never does. He ate like a horse, and knowing he lived alone I made a point of inviting him often to dinners for visiting firemen from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. He didn�t have a cook; he said he would not have a servant, but I don�t believe he would have got any local person to live in his house, so close to that grotesque tree.

I was sorry but not surprised, two months after he arrived, to hear that Ladysmith had a fever. Ayer Hitam was malarial, and the tablets we took every Sunday like communion were only suppressants. The Chinese headmaster at the school stopped in at the consulate and said that Ladysmith wanted to see me. I went that afternoon.

The house was empty; a few chairs in the sitting room, a shelf of paperbacks, a short-wave radio, and in the room beyond a table holding only a large bottle of ketchup. The kitchen smelled of peanut butter and stale bread. Bachelor�s quarters. I climbed the stairs, but before I entered the bedroom I heard Ladysmith call out in an anxious voice, �Who is it?�

�Boy, am I glad to see you,� he said, relaxing as I came through the door.

He looked thinner, his face was grey, his hair awry in bunches of standing hackles; and he lay in the rumpled bed as if he had been thrown there. His eyes were sunken and oddly coloured with the yellow light of fever.

�Malaria?�

�I think so�� I�ve been taking chloroquine. But it doesn�t seem to be working. I�ve got the most awful headache.� He closed his eyes. �I can�t sleep. I have these nightmares. I��

�What does the doctor say?�

�I�m treating myself,� said Ladysmith.

�You�ll kill yourself,� I said. �I�ll send Alec over tonight.�

We talked for a while, and eventually I convinced Ladysmith that he needed attention. Alec Stewart was a member of the Club Ladysmith particularly disliked. He wasn�t a bad sort, but as he was married to a Chinese girl he felt he could call them �Chinks� without blame. He had been a ship�s surgeon in the Royal Navy and had come to Ayer Hitam after the war. With a young wife and all that sunshine he was able to reclaim some of his youth. Back at the office I sent Peeraswami over with a pot of soup and the latest issue of Newsweek from the consulate library.

Alec went that night. I saw him at the Club later. He said, �Our friend�s pretty rocky.�

�I had malaria myself,� I said. �It wasn�t much fun.�

Alec blew a cautionary snort. �He�s not got malaria. He�s got dengu�.�

�Are you sure?�

�All the symptoms are there.�

�What did you give him for it?�

�The only thing there is worth a docken�� aspirin.�

�I suppose he�ll have to sweat it out.�

�He�ll do that all right.� Alec leaned over. �The lad�s having hallucinations.�

�I didn�t know that was a symptom of dengu�,� I said.

�Dengu�s a curse.�

He described it to me. It is a virus, carried by a mosquito, and begins as a headache of such voltage that you tremble and can�t stand or sit. You�re knocked flat; your muscles ache, you�re doubled up with cramp and your temperature stays over a hundred. Then your skin becomes paper-thin, sensitive to the slightest touch�� the weight of a sheet can cause pain. And your hair falls out�� not all of it, but enough to fill a comb. These severe irritations produce another agony, a depression so black the dengu� sufferer continually sobs. All the while your bones ache, as if every inch of you has been smashed with a hammer. This sensation of bruising gives dengu� its colloquial name, �break-bone fever�. I pitied Ladysmith.

Although it was after eleven when Alec left the Club, I went straight over to Ladysmith�s house. I was walking up the gravel drive when I heard the most ungodly shriek�� frightening in its intensity and full of alarm. I did not recognize it as Ladysmith�s�� indeed, it scarcely sounded human. But it was coming from his room. It was so loud and changed in pitch with such suddenness it might easily have been two or three people screaming, or a dozen doomed cats. The Midnight Horror tree was in full bloom and filled the night with stink.

Ladysmith lay in bed whimpering. The magazine I�d sent him was tossed against the wall, and the effect of disorder was heightened by the overhead fan which was lifting and ruffling the pages.

He was propped on one arm, but seeing me he sighed and fell back. His face was slick with perspiration and tearstreaks. He was short of breath.

�Are you all right?�

�My skin is burning,� he said. I noticed his lips were swollen and cracked with fever, and I saw then how dengu� was like a species of grief.

�I thought I heard a scream,� I said. Screaming takes energy; Ladysmith was beyond screaming, I thought.

�Massacre,� he said. �Soldiers�� killing women and children. Horrible. Over there�� he pointed to a perfectly ordinary table with a jug of water on it, and he breathed, �War. You should see their faces all covered with blood. Some have arms missing. I�ve never�� He broke off and began to sob.

�Alec says you have dengu� fever,� I said.

�Two of them�� women. They look the same,� said Ladysmith lifting his head. �They scream at me, and it�s so loud! They have no teeth!�

�Are you taking the aspirin?� I saw the amber jar was full.

�Aspirin! For this!� He lay quietly, then said, �I�ll be all right. Sometimes it�s nothing�� just a high temperature. Then these Chinese�.�.�. then I get these dreams.�

�About war?�

�Yes. Flashes.�

As gently as I could I said, �You didn�t want to go to Vietnam, did you?�

�No. Nobody wanted to go. I registered as a c.o.�

Hallucinations are replies. Peeraswami was always seeing Tamil ghosts on his way home. They leapt from those green fountains by the road the Malays call daun pontianak�� �ghost leaf��� surprising him with plates of hot samosas or tureens of curry; not so much ghosts as ghostesses. I told him to eat something before setting out from home in the dark and he stopped seeing them. I took Ladysmith�s visions of massacre to be replies to his conscientious objection. It is the draft-dodger who speaks most graphically of war, not the soldier. Pacifists know all the atrocity stories.

But Ladysmith�s hallucinations had odd highlights: the soldiers he saw weren�t American. They were dark orientals in dirty undershirts, probably Vietcong, and mingled with the screams of the people with bloody faces was another sound, the creaking of bicycle seats. So there were two horrors�� the massacre and these phantom cyclists. He was especially frightened by the two women with no teeth, who opened their mouths wide and screamed at him.

I said, �Give it a few days.�

�I don�t think I can take much more of this.�

�Listen,� I said. �Dengu� can depress you. You�ll feel like giving up and going home�� you might feel like hanging yourself. But take these aspirin and keep telling yourself�� whenever you get these nightmares�� it�s dengu� fever.�

�No teeth, and their gums are dripping with blood��

His head dropped to the pillow, his eyes closed, and I remember thinking: everyone is fighting this war, everyone in the world. Poor Ladysmith was fighting hardest of all. Lying there he could have been bivouacked in the Central Highlands, haggard from a siege, his dengu� a version of battle fatigue.

I left him sleeping and walked again through the echoing house. But the smell had penetrated to the house itself, the high thick stink of rotting corpses. It stung my eyes and I almost fainted with the force of it until, against the moon, I saw the blossoming coat-rack and the wheeling bats�� The Midnight Horror.

Della Galway went out with a man for the first (and almost the last) time on her nineteenth birthday. He parked his car, and as they were going into the restaurant she asked him if he had locked all the doors and the boot. When he turned back and said, yes, he�d better do that, she asked him why he didn�t have a burglar-proof locking device on the steering wheel.

Her parents had brought her up to be cautious. When she left that happy home in that safe little provincial town, she took her parents� notions with her to London. At first she could only afford the rent of a single room. It upset her that the other tenants often came in late at night and left the front door on the latch. Although her room was at the top of the house and she had nothing worth stealing, she lay in bed sweating with fear. At work it was just the same. Nobody bothered about security measures. Della was always the last to leave, and sometimes she went back two or three times to check that all the office doors and the outer door were shut.

The personnel officer suggested she see a psychiatrist.

Della was very ambitious. She had an economics degree, a business studies diploma, and had come out top at the end of her secretarial course. She knew a psychiatrist would find something wrong with her�� they had to earn their money like everyone else�� and long sessions of treatment would follow which wouldn�t help her towards her goal, that of becoming the company�s first woman director. They always held that sort of thing against you.

�That won�t be necessary,� she said in her brisk way. �It was the firm�s property I was worried about. If they like to risk losing their valuable equipment, that�s their look-out.�

She stopped going back to check the doors�� it didn�t prey on her mind much as her own safety wasn�t involved�� and three weeks later two men broke in, stole all the electric typewriters and damaged the computer beyond repair. It proved her right, but she didn�t say so. The threat of the psychiatrist had frightened her so much that she never again aired her burglar obsession at work.

When she got promotion and a salary rise, she decided to get a flat of her own. The landlady was a woman after her own heart. Mrs�Swanson liked Della from the first and explained to her, as to a kindred spirit, the security arrangements.

�This is a very nice neighbourhood, Miss Galway, but the crime rate in London is rising all the time, and I always say you can�t be too careful.�

Della said she couldn�t agree more.

�So I always keep this side gate bolted on the inside. The back door into this little yard must also be kept locked and bolted. The bathroom window looks out into the garden, you see, so I like the garden door and the bathroom door to be locked at night too.�

�Very wise,� said Della, noting that the window in the bed-sitting room had screws fixed to its sashes which prevented its being opened more than six inches. �What did you say the rent was?�

�Twenty pounds a week.� Mrs�Swanson was a landlady first, and a kindred spirit secondly, so when Della hesitated, she said, �It�s a garden flat, completely self-contained and you�ve got your own phone. I shan�t have any trouble in letting it. I�ve got someone else coming to view it at two.�

Della stopped hesitating. She moved in at the end of the week, having supplied Mrs�Swanson with references and assured her she was quiet, prudent as to locks and bolts, and not inclined to have �unauthorized� people to stay overnight. By unauthorized people Mrs�Swanson meant men. Since the episode over the car on her nineteenth birthday, Della had entered tentatively upon friendships with men, but no man had ever taken her out more than twice and none had ever got as far as to kiss her. She didn�t know why this was, as she had always been polite and pleasant, insisting on paying her share, careful to carry her own coat, handbag and parcels so as to give her escort no trouble, ever watchful of his wallet and keys, offering to have the theatre tickets in her own safe keeping, and anxious not to keep him out too late. That one after another men dropped her worried her very little. No spark of sexual feeling had ever troubled her, and the idea of sharing her orderly, routine-driven life with a man�� untidy, feckless, casual creatures as they all, with the exception of her father, seemed to be�� was a daunting one. She meant to get to the top on her own. One day perhaps, when she was about thirty-five and with a high-powered lady executive�s salary, then if some like-minded, quiet and prudent man came along�.�.�. In the meantime, Mrs�Swanson had no need to worry.

Della was very happy with her flat. It was utterly quiet, a little sanctum tucked at the back of the house. She never heard a sound from her neighbours in the other parts of the house and they, of course, never heard a sound from her. She encountered them occasionally when crossing from her own front door to the front door of the house. They were mouselike people who scuttled off to their holes with no more than a nod and a �good evening.� This was as it should be. The flat, too, was entirely as it should be.

The bed-sitter looked just like a living-room by day, for the bed was let down from a curtained recess in the wall only at night. Its window overlooked the yard which Della never used. She never unbolted the side gate or the back door or, needless to say, attempted to undo the screws and open the window more than six inches.

Every evening, when she had washed the dishes and wiped down every surface in the immaculate well-fitted kitchen, had her bath, made her bedtime drink, and let the bed down from the wall, she went on her security rounds just as her father did at home. First she unlocked and unbolted the back door and crossed the yard to check that the side gate was securely fastened. It always was as no one ever touched it, but Della liked to make absolutely sure, and sometimes went back several times in case her eyes had deceived her. Then she bolted and locked the back door, the garden door and the bathroom door. All these doors opened out of a small room, about ten feet square�� Mrs�Swanson called it the garden room�� which in its turn could be locked off by yet another door from the kitchen. Della locked it. She rather regretted she couldn�t lock the door that led from the kitchen into the bed-sitting room but, owing to some oversight on Mrs�Swanson�s part, there was no lock on it. However, her own front door in the bed-sitter itself was locked, of course, on the Yale. Finally, before getting into bed, she bolted the front door.

Then she was safe. Though she sometimes got up once or twice more to make assurance trebly sure, she generally settled down at this point into blissful sleep, certain that even the most accomplished of burglars couldn�t break in.

There was only one drawback�� the rent.

�That flat,� said Mrs�Swanson, �is really intended for two people. A married couple had it before you, and before that two ladies shared it.�

�I couldn�t share my bed,� said Della with a shudder, �or, come to that, my room.�

�If you found a nice friend to share I wouldn�t object to putting up a single bed in the garden room. Then your friend could come and go by the side gate, provided you were prepared to promise me it would always be bolted at night.�

Della wasn�t going to advertise for a flatmate. You couldn�t be too careful. Yet she had to find someone if she was going to afford any new winter clothes, not to mention heating the place. It would have to be the right person, someone to fill all her own exacting requirements as well as satisfy Mrs�Swanson�.�.�.

�Ooh, it�s lovely!� said Rosamund Vine. �It�s so quiet and clean. And you�ve got a garden! You should see the dump I�ve been living in. It was over-run with mice.�

�You don�t get mice,� said Della repressively, �unless you leave food about.�

�I won�t do that. I�ll be ever so careful. I�ll go halves with the rent and I�ll have the key to the back door, shall I? That way I won�t disturb you if I come in late at night.�

�I hope you won�t come in late at night,� said Della. �Mrs�Swanson�s very particular about that sort of thing.�

�Don�t worry.� Rosamund sounded rather bitter. �I�ve nothing and no one to keep me out late. Anyway, the last bus passes the end of the road at a quarter to twelve.�

Della pushed aside her misgivings, and Mrs�Swanson, interviewing Rosamund, appeared to have none. She made a point of explaining the safety precautions, to which Rosamund listened meekly and with earnest nods of her head. Della was glad this duty hadn�t fallen to her, as she didn�t want Rosamund to tell exaggerated tales about her at work. So much the better if she could put it all on Mrs�Swanson.

Rosamund Vine had been chosen with the care Della devoted to every choice she made. It had taken three weeks of observation and keeping her ears open to select her. It wouldn�t do to find someone on too low a salary or, on the other hand, someone with too lofty a position in the company. She didn�t like the idea of a spectacularly good-looking girl, for such led hectic lives, or too clever a girl, for such might involve her in tiresome arguments. An elegant girl would fill the cupboards with clothes and the bathroom with cosmetics. A gifted girl would bring in musical instruments or looms or paints or trunks full of books. Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della�s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della�s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids� �followers�, noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund�s love life.

The two girls settled down happily together. They seldom went out in the evenings. Della always went to bed at eleven sharp and would have relegated Rosamund to her own room at this point but for one small difficulty. With Rosamund in the garden room�� necessarily sitting on her bed as there was nowhere else to sit�� it wasn�t possible for Della to make her security rounds. Only once had she tried doing it with Rosamund looking on.

�Goodness,� Rosamund had said, �this place is like Fort Knox. All those keys and bolts! What are you so scared of?�

�Mrs�Swanson likes to have the place locked up,� said Della, but the next night she made hot drinks for the two of them and sent Rosamund to wait for her in the bed-sitter before creeping out into the yard for a secret check-up.

When she came back Rosamund was examining her bedside table. �Why do you put everything in order like that, Della? Your book at right angles to the table and your cigarette packet at right angles to your book, and, look, your ashtray�s exactly an inch from the lamp as if you�d measured it out.�

�Because I�m a naturally tidy person.�

�I do think it�s funny your smoking. I never would have guessed you smoked till I came to live here. It doesn�t sort of seem in character. And your glass of water. Do you want to drink water in the night?�

�Not always,� Della said patiently. �But I might want to, and I shouldn�t want to have to get up and fetch it, should I?�

Rosamund�s questions didn�t displease her. It showed that the girl wanted to learn the right way to do things. Della taught her that a room must be dusted every day, the fridge defrosted once a week, the table laid for breakfast before they went to bed, all the windows closed and the catches fastened. She drew Rosamund out as to the places she had previously lived in with a view to contrasting past squalor, with present comfort, and she received a shock when Rosamund made it plain that in some of those rooms, attics, converted garages, she had lived with a man. Della made no comment but froze slightly. And Rosamund, thank goodness, seemed to understand her disapproval and didn�t go into details. But soon after that she began going out in the evenings.

Della didn�t want to know where she was going or with whom. She had plenty to occupy her own evenings, what with the work she brought home, her housework, washing and ironing, her twice-weekly letter to her mother and father, and the commercial Spanish she was teaching herself from gramophone records. It was rather a relief not to have Rosamund fluttering about. Besides, she could do her security rounds in peace. Not, of course, that she could check up on the side gate till Rosamund came in. Necessarily, it had to remain unbolted, and the back door to which Rosamund had the key, unlocked. But always by ten to twelve at the latest she�d hear the side gate open and close and hear Rosamund pause to draw the bolts. Then her feet tip-toeing across the yard, then the back door unlocked, shut, locked. After that, Della could sleep in peace.

The first problem arose when Rosamund came in one night and didn�t bolt the gate after her. Della listened carefully in the dark, but she was positive those bolts had not been drawn. Even if the back door was locked, it was unthinkable to leave that side gate on nothing all night but its flimsy latch. She put on her dressing gown and went through the kitchen into the garden room. Rosamund was already in bed, her clothes flung about on the coverlet. Della picked them up and folded them. She was coming back from the yard, having fastened those bolts, when Rosamund sat up and said:

�What�s the matter? Can�t you sleep?�

�Mrs�Swanson,� said Della with a light indulgent laugh, �wouldn�t be able to sleep if she knew you�d left that side gate unbolted.�

�Did I? Honestly, Della, I don�t know what I�m doing half the time. I can�t think of anyone but Chris. He�s the most marvellous person and I do think he�s just as mad about me as I am about him. I feel as if he�s changed my whole life.�

Della let her spend nearly all the following evening describing the marvellous Chris, how brilliant he was�� though at present unable to get a job fitting his talents�� how amusing, how highly educated�� though so poor as to be reduced to borrowing a friend�s room while that friend was away. She listened and smiled and made appropriate remarks, but she wondered when she had last been so bored. Every time she got up to try and play one of her Spanish records, Rosamund was off again on another facet of Chris�s dazzling personality, until at last Della had to say she had a headache and would Rosamund mind leaving her on her own for a bit?�

�Anyway, you�ll see him tomorrow. I�ve asked him for a meal.�

Unluckily, this happened to be the evening Della was going to supper with her aunt on the other side of London. They had evidently enjoyed themselves, judging by the mess in the kitchen, Della thought when she got home. There were few things she disliked more than wet dishes left to drain. Rosamund was asleep. Della crept out into the yard and checked that the bolts were fastened.

�I heard you wandering about ever so late,� said Rosamund in the morning. �Were you upset about anything?�

�Certainly not. I simply found it rather hard to get to sleep because it was past my normal time.�

�Aren�t you funny?� said Rosamund, and she giggled.

The next night she missed the last bus.

Della had passed a pleasant evening, studying firstly the firm�s annual report, then doing a Spanish exercise. By eleven she was in bed, reading the memoirs of a woman company chairman. Her bedside light went off at half-past and she lay in the dark waiting for the sound of the side gate.

Her clock had luminous hands, and when they passed ten to twelve she began to feel a nasty tingly jumping sensation all over her body. She put on the light, switched it off immediately. She didn�t want Rosamund bursting in with all her silly questions and comments. But Rosamund didn�t burst in, and the hands of the clock closed together on midnight. There was no doubt about it. The last bus had gone and Rosamund hadn�t been on it.

Well, the silly girl needn�t think she was going to stand this sort of thing. She�d bolt that side gate herself and Rosamund could stay out in the street all night. Of course she might ring the front door bell, she was silly and inconsiderate enough to do that, but it couldn�t be helped. Della would far rather be awakened at one or two o�clock than lie there knowing that side gate was open for anyone to come in. She put on her dressing gown and made her way through the spotless kitchen to the garden room. Rosamund had hung a silly sort of curtain over the back door, not a curtain really but a rather dirty Indian bedspread. Della lifted it distastefully�� and then she realized. She couldn�t bolt the side gate because the back door into the yard was locked and Rosamund had the key.

A practical person like herself wasn�t going to be done that way. She�d go out by the front door, walk round to the side entrance and�� but, no, that wouldn�t work either. If she opened the gate and bolted it on the inside, she�d simply find herself bolted inside the yard. The only thing was to climb out of the window. She tried desperately to undo the window screws, but they had seized up from years of disuse and she couldn�t shift them. Trembling now, she sat down on the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. For the first time in her life she was in an insecure place by night, alone in a London flat, with nothing to separate her from hordes of rapacious burglars but a feeble back door lock which any type of a thief could pick open in five minutes.

How criminally careless of Mrs�Swanson not to have provided the door between the bed-sitter and the kitchen with a lock! There was no heavy piece of furniture she could place against the door. The phone was by her bed, of course. But if she heard a sound and dialled for the police was there a chance of their getting there before she was murdered and the place ransacked?

What Mrs�Swanson had provided was one of the most fearsome-looking breadknives Della had ever seen. She fetched it from the kitchen and put it under her pillow. Its presence made her feel slightly safer, but suppose she didn�t wake up when the man came in, suppose�.�.�.? That was ridiculous, she wouldn�t sleep at all. Exhausted, shaken, feeling physically sick, she crawled under the bedclothes and, after concentrated thought, put the light out. Perhaps, if there was no light on, he would go past her, not know she was there, make his way into the main part of the house, and if by then she hadn�t actually died of fright�.�.�.

At twenty minutes past one, when she had reached the point of deciding to phone for a car to take her to an hotel, the side gate clicked and Rosamund entered the yard. Della fell back against the pillows with a relief so tremendous that she couldn�t even bother to go out and check the bolts. So what if it wasn�t bolted? The man would have to pass Rosamund first, kill her first. Della found she didn�t care at all about what might happen to Rosamund, only about her own safety.

She sneaked out at half-past six to put the knife back, and she was sullenly eating her breakfast, the flat immaculate, when Rosamund appeared at eight.

�I missed the last bus. I had to get a taxi.�

�You could have phoned.�

�Goodness, you sound just like my mother. It was bad enough having to get up and�.�.�.� Rosamund blushed and put her hand over her mouth. �I mean, go out and get that taxi and�.�.�. Well, I wasn�t all that late,� she muttered.

Her little slip of the tongue hadn�t been lost on Della. But she was too tired to make any rejoinder beyond saying that Mrs�Swanson would be very annoyed if she knew, and would Rosamund give her fair warning next time she intended to be late? Rosamund said when they met again that evening that she couldn�t give her fair warning, as she could never be sure herself. Della said no more. What, anyway, would be the use of knowing what time Rosamund was coming in when she couldn�t bolt the gate?

Three mornings later her temper flared.

On two of the intervening nights Rosamund had missed the last bus. The funny thing was that she didn�t look at all tired or jaded, while Della was worn-out. For three hours on the previous night she had lain stiffly clutching the breadknife while the old house creaked about her and the side gate rattled in the wind.

�I don�t know why you bother to come home at all.�

�Won�t you mind if I don�t?�

�Not a bit. Do as you like.�

Stealthily, before Rosamund left the flat by the front door, Della slipped out and bolted the gate. Rosamund, of course (being utterly imprudent), didn�t check the gate before she locked the back door. Della fell into a heavy sleep at ten o�clock to be awakened just after two by a thudding on the side gate followed by a frenzied ringing of the front door bell.

�You locked me out!� Rosamund sobbed. �Even my mother never did that. I was locked out in the street and I�m frozen. What have I done to you that you treat me like that?�

�You said you weren�t coming home.�

�I wasn�t going to, but we went out and Chris forgot his key. He�s had to sleep at a friend�s place. I wish I�d gone there too!�

They were evidently two of a kind. Well-suited, Della thought. Although it was nearly half-past two in the morning, this seemed the best moment to have things out. She addressed Rosamund in her precise schoolmistressy voice.

�I think we�ll have to make other arrangements, Rosamund. Your ways aren�t my ways, and we don�t really get on, do we? You can stay here till you find somewhere else, but I�d like you to start looking round straightaway.�

�But what have I done? I haven�t made a noise or had my friends here. I haven�t even used your phone, not once. Honestly, Della, I�ve done my best to keep the place clean and tidy, and it�s nearly killed me.�

�I�ve explained what I mean. We�re not the same kind of people.�

�I�ll go on Saturday. I�ll go to my mother�� it won�t be any worse. God knows�� and then maybe Chris and I�.�.�.�

�You�d better go to bed now,� Della said coldly, but she couldn�t get any sleep herself. She was wondering how she had been such a bad judge of character, and wondering too what she was going to do about the rent. Find someone else, of course. An older woman perhaps, a widow or a middle-aged spinster�.�.�.

What she was determined not to do was reveal to Rosamund, at this late stage, her anxiety about the side gate. If anything remained to comfort her, it was the knowledge that Rosamund thought her strong, mature and sensible. But not revealing it brought her an almost unbearable agony. For Rosamund seemed to think the very sight of her would be an embarrassment to Della. Each evening she was gone from the flat before Della got home, and each time she had gone out leaving the side gate unbolted and the back door locked. Della had no way of knowing whether she would come in on the last bus or get a taxi or be seen home in the small hours by Chris. She didn�t know whether Chris lived near or far away, and now she wished she had listened more closely to Rosamund�s confidences and asked a few questions of her own. Instead, she had only thought with a shudder how nasty it must be to have to sleep with a man, and had wondered if she would ever bring herself to face the prospect.

Each night she took the breadknife to bed with her, confirmed in her conviction that she wasn�t being unreasonable when one of the mouselike people whom she met in the hall told her the house next door had been broken into and its old woman occupant knocked on the head. Rosamund came in once at one, once at half-past two, and once she didn�t come in at all. Della got great bags under her eyes and her skin looked grey. She fell asleep over her desk at work, while a bright-eyed vivacious Rosamund regaled her friends in the cloakroom about the joys of her relationship with Chris.

But now there was only one more night to go�.�.�.

Rosamund had left a note to say she wouldn�t be home. She�d see Della on the following evening when she collected her cases to take them to her mother. But she�d left the side gate unbolted. Della seriously considered bolting it and then climbing back over it into the side entrance, but it was too high and smooth for her to climb and there wasn�t a ladder. Nothing for it but to begin her vigil with the cigarettes, the glass of water, the phone and the breadknife. It ought to have been easier, this last night, just because it was the last. Instead it was worse than any of the others. She lay in the dark, thinking of the old woman next door, of the house that was precisely the same as the one next door, and of the intruder who now knew the best and simplest way in. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but the strongest instinct of all over-rode all her feeble attempts to concentrate on tomorrow, on work, on ambition, on the freedom and peace of tomorrow when that gate would be fastened for good, never again to be opened.

Rosamund had said she wouldn�t be in. But you couldn�t rely on a word she said. Della wasn�t, therefore, surprised (though she was overwhelmingly relieved) to hear the gate click just before two. Sighing with a kind of ecstasy�� for tomorrow had come�� she listened for the sound of the bolts being drawn across. The sound didn�t come. Well, that was a small thing. She�d fasten the bolts herself when Rosamund was in bed. She heard footsteps moving very softly, and then the back door was unlocked. Rosamund took a longer time than usual about unlocking it, but maybe she was tired or drunk or heaven knew what.

Silence.

Then the back door creaked and made rattling sounds as if Rosamund hadn�t bothered to re-lock it. Wearily, Della hoisted herself out of bed and slipped her dressing gown round her. As she did so, the kitchen light came on. The light showed round the edges of the old door in a brilliant phosphorescent rectangle. That wasn�t like Rosamund who never went into the kitchen, who fell immediately into bed without even bothering to wash her face. A long shiver ran through Della. Her body taut but trembling, she listened. Footsteps were crossing the kitchen floor and the fridge door was opened. She heard the sounds of fumbling in cupboards, a drawer was opened and silver rattled. She wanted to call out, �Rosamund, Rosamund, is that you?� but she had no voice. Her mouth was dry and her voice had gone. Something occurred to her that had never struck her before. It struck her with a great thrust of terror. How would she know, how had she ever known, whether it was Rosamund or another who entered the flat by the side gate and the frail back door?

Then there came a cough.

It was a slight cough, the sound of someone clearing his throat, but it was unmistakeably his throat. There was a man in the kitchen.

Della forgot the phone. She remembered�� though she had scarcely for a moment forgotten her�� the old woman next door. Blind terror thrust her to her feet, plunged her hand under the pillow for the knife. She opened the kitchen door, and he was there, a tall man, young and strong, standing right there on the threshold with Mrs�Swanson�s silver in one hand and Mrs�Swanson�s heavy iron pan in the other. Della didn�t hesitate. She struck hard with the knife, struck again and again until the bright blood flew across the white walls and the clean ironing and the table neatly laid for breakfast.

The tea-shop in Brussels overlooked the gardens of the Palais d�Egmont. Bare trees, stripped by the icy winter stood like gaunt sentinels across the frozen lawns and although the sky was a rich, clear blue the air outside could freeze your breath into a cloud.

John Talbot sipped his lemon tea and fumbled for another cigarette. He�d picked the Caf� d�Egmont because he thought it would be quiet and he�d be able to finish reading the last four editions of the Herald Tribune. The caf�, however, was far from quiet. It was packed solid with elderly Belgians who were engaged in their two most favourite pastimes, talking loudly and ramming chocolate cakes down their throats.

That they could perform both these activities at one and the same time was wondrous to behold. Talbot found it faintly nauseating�� but fascinating none the less.

On his right four ladies, whose combined weight would have equalled a Sherman tank, crouched over plates of meringues, doughnuts, iced-g�teaux, �clairs, chocolate fingers, marzipan wedges and dense, yellow fruitcake. All of them wore fur coats, and all of them sported rings that sliced into the mottled flesh of their podgy fingers. The conversation was in French, and the high speed delivery kept up a continuous spray of icing sugar, crumbs and half-chewed currants that fell like some unholy rain across the shimmering lace-trimmed tablecloth in front of them.

Just beyond, two other women, also in furs, but with the addition of fur hats, were spooning down sherry trifle and sloshing back glasses of piping hot chocolate malts. The look of dedicated concentration on their faces would have done justice to a brace of nuns who had just been kissed by the Pope.

Talbot inhaled from his low-tar jumbo filter with reactivated charcoal-type nodules designed to trap noxious poisons and release only the nutty, wide-open-spaces flavour he knew he could trust, and coughed like a sheep.

Not so much as one pretty face among the whole lot. Even the waitresses were nudging middle age and had the waxen complexions and gargantuan buttock fat of the Patisserie Aficionado.

Immediately, on Talbot�s right, a small table had been wedged against the window and an elderly couple had just shuffled themselves into the constricted space and sat down.

The man was frail and birdlike with a wobbling Adam�s apple in his turkey neck and sad, watery eyes. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles which had been pushed up on to his forehead and too big a suit fashioned from what appeared to be bleached horse blanket.

The woman was immense. A great quivering blancmange of a female with a face half obscured by tinted, fly-away glasses and a slash of vermilion lipstick. Her fingers, expensively beringed, were the size of pork sausages and she had clearly needed a tyre lever to get her feet into her shoes. A rim of fat overhung the gleaming patent leather and threatened at any moment to drip on to the mosaic floor like molten candle wax.

The man ordered six different cakes and they were produced almost at once and lowered by stainless steel spatula on to his plate. The woman ordered nothing, but sat impassively gazing at the man. He cut the cakes into small pieces with the side of his fork and then proceeded to feed the woman in the manner of an adult feeding a small child.

It was only then that Talbot realized the woman was blind and he felt suddenly guilty about his uncharitable thoughts.

She sat there, opening her vermilion mouth to receive the piled spoonfuls and chewing thoughtfully while he prepared the next morsel.

It was a touching scene, the old, faithful husband and the sad, grotesque�� his wife.

When the cakes were finished, the man ordered more and the whole process was repeated. The woman�s jaws rose and fell like well-oiled machinery and the man began to speed up the delivery. Once, she made as if to protest, but he ignored her and shovelled in another forkful of Black Forest strawberry g�teau.

It was impossible to gauge the blind woman�s true feelings; her impassive bulk and the enormous tinted spectacles served as a mask to her real emotional state.

She chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. More cakes arrived. Oblong wedges filled with marmalade and honey, squat macaroons frosted with sugar icing, dark plain chocolate buns with glac� cherries sunk into their flanks, shortbread packed with sultanas, monster �clairs, bleeding cream from their slashed throats. And so on.

Talbot lit another cigarette. Where would it end? How much more could the human digestive tract receive without spectacular rebellion?

Suddenly, and inappropriately, Talbot was reminded of an old, bawdy, British Army song:

Now, bird man was ordering more cakes and his poor blind wife was gleaming with a light sheen of perspiration. Her breathing had quickened, and her pudgy fingers flexed and unflexed nervously.

More cake, cut into neat, bite-sized pieces was forked past the slack vermilion lips. Jaws worked. Mouth opened, fork entered, tipped out contents, withdrew. Chewing, swallowing, opening, shutting, chewing, swallowing, opening�� faster now�� swallow big pieces whole, don�t wait to chew. Open, swallow, open, swallow, open, swallow.

An entire chocolate �clair entered the vermilion cave and was gulped down. The fat blind lady quivered, her breath suddenly harsh, like escaping steam�� then she fell forward, stone dead, and her face rested in a plate of white meringues.

The bird man reached across and unhooked her handbag from her dead, fat arm and opened it. Sheaves of paper tied with pink ribbon. Insurance policies. Talbot could see the names at the top. Bird man flicked through them, silent and unblinking. After examining one he folded them and slipped them into his jacket pocket. Then, and only then, he allowed himself to weep silently, rocking gently to and fro like a child.

Talbot lit another cigarette and picked up his Herald Tribune. He was English, after all, and Englishmen didn�t intrude on private grief.

The car rattled to a standstill and Ted Baxter cursed under his breath. Darkness spread around the landscape like a muffling garment. He was trapped by his own stupidity. He should have known better than to trust this lane to lead him to the motorway. It was nothing but a hummocky cart-track, growing narrower all the way. Now he was stranded in the middle of an Oxfordshire wilderness, one wheel jammed in a rut of squelching mud. A cold drizzle of rain was splashing the windows of the car.

He climbed out cautiously, shuddering as his foot sank ankle-deep in the icy puddle that had trapped the wheel.

Fields stretched interminably beyond the hedges on either side of the lane. At the far end of the expanse to his left, he made out a clump of trees, and a light that glimmered in and out between the windswept branches. A house, in this benighted spot? Perhaps his luck was in.

Squeezing through a space where the hedge thinned out, he started to plod across the soggy ground.

The house stood back among the trees, almost as if it were ashamed to be seen. It was a three-storied building, and the roof tapered into a turret with a circular window, giving the place a Gothic aspect. The light that had guided him shone dimly from the downstairs window to the left of the door. It was covered by a discoloured lace curtain.

He pressed the bell. For a moment there was silence; then he fancied he heard furtive footsteps within, as though more than one person were scurrying into the back regions of the house. Then more footsteps�� it sounded like only one lot this time�� returned, but did not reach the door. A soft creaking told him that someone was quietly mounting the stairs.

Suddenly he started, as a window rattled open from the room above the door, and a woman�s head and shoulders were thrust out.

�Are you from Gino? If so, there�s no deal!�

The voice held a mixture of defiance and fear.

Ted answered as politely as he could, while rain pelted down on his upturned face:

�I�m not from anyone�� my car�s stuck in the mud out there��

He jerked his thumb towards the lane. �I wondered if I might use your phone?�

The woman still seemed to be scanning him suspiciously.

�Who are you?� she asked at length. �Are you the one that�s been here before?�

Ted made an effort to control his impatience.

�My name�s Baxter,� he answered, �though that won�t mean a thing to you. �No, I�ve never been here before. I was on my way to Thame, and my car got stuck��

After a moment�s hesitation, she mumbled something that might have been �All right� and withdrew her head. The window slammed shut and presently he heard her descending the stairs. Then the door opened and she stood revealed in the light from an unshaded bulb in the narrow hallway.

She was middle aged, thin, dark haired, gipsy looking. She seemed worried, and was rubbing her hands nervously on an off-white apron.

She looked at him searchingly, as though stilt not convinced of his innocence; then, evidently reassured by his bland expression, she moved aside, holding the door open.

�You�d better come in,� she said, a little more amicably this time, �You�ll get soaked out there!�

She led the way to the lighted room on the left of the hall.

As soon as he entered, Ted was aware of a tension, an electric quiver left in the air, as of a sudden departure, a hovering breath of fear.

The room was small, sparsely furnished, but redeemed by a blazing fire, with a faded armchair on either side. A small table stood in the centre, and two upright chairs were drawn up to it�� one, he noticed, standing slightly awry, as though it had been hurriedly pushed aside. The woman was quickly removing plates from the place in front of it. Her own meal was half finished.

�I�m sorry,� Ted began, �I�m afraid I�ve come at an awkward time.�

She smiled then, rather ashamedly, and her face took on a kinder expression. Before time and experience had made it haggard, Ted felt it must have held a certain beauty.

�No matter,� she said. �You�re welcome as long as you�re not one of his lot. Would you care for some stew?�

She was holding a ladle over a steaming bowl in front of her. It smelt appetizingly of onion and rabbit. Ted began to realize how hungry he was.

�Well, if you�ve any to spare��

He wondered if he should offer payment, but was not quite sure how to phrase the words.

�I�d like to phone first, if I may.�

She jerked her head towards a small table by the wall.

�Help yourself, while I get you a plate.�

She disappeared, evidently bound for the kitchen, and Ted dialled the Carpenter�s Arms at Thame. He had been looking forward to the comfortable room booked for him, and wondered if he�d manage to make the Athletic Club Conference scheduled for the following morning. It seemed doubtful. He wondered if his temporary hostess could put him up.

She returned with a tray of china and cutlery, and seemed to guess his thought.

�Better stay put tonight, mister,� she said. �It�s seven miles or more to Little Milton, and I doubt if there�s anywhere there could accommodate you.�

The house was not exactly the spot Ted would have chosen, but at that moment it seemed a haven of refuge.

He explained his predicament to the proprietor of the Carpenter�s Arms. Now his hostess had left the room again for more supplies from the kitchen, and Ted�s attention wandered, first to the welcome glow of the fire, then to the mantelpiece above it, where two photographs stood, one at each end. They showed the head of a girl, evidently the same girl, and he fancied he detected a likeness to the woman who was offering him hospitality. The daughter of the house? But the eyes had a haunted look, the expression thoughtful and brooding.

Then the woman returned to set a place for him, and introduced herself as Louise Wells.

�I�m sorry I wasn�t more welcoming,� she explained, �but you see, we don�t get many visitors, and we have to be careful�� there�s just me and my daughter here��

Ted nodded understandingly. �You�re pretty isolated here, aren�t you?�

�We like it that way,� was all she said.

Feeling that the subject embarrassed her, for some reason he could not understand, Ted tried to change the conversation. He glanced towards the mantelpiece.

�Is that your daughter?� he asked. Something about that pictured face fascinated him.

Mrs�Wells started slightly, and he saw that her lips were tightly compressed as though she were keeping herself under control.

�That�s Marilyn,� she said, but made no further comment, and for a while they ate in silence. Then she looked at him keenly, and he fancied the old suspicion had returned. He hastened to reassure her.

�I was just thinking,� he said, �what a beautiful girl she is.�

A bitter smile crossed the woman�s face.

�You think so? That�s what Gino keeps reminding me, but that�s only part of his interest in her.�

�This fellow Gino�� he�s bothering your daughter, is that it?�

Again, that twisted smile.

�You might say that,� she said slowly, �and again, you might not.�

Ted retreated into silence. This cryptic dialogue was getting too confusing. He decided on a bold course of action.

�I can assure you,� he said, �that I have no connection with this person. I�m just a stranded traveller, and she has nothing to fear from me. I should be delighted to make her acquaintance��

Louise�s reaction was unexpected. She rose quickly, the grim smile playing around her lips.

�Would you now?� she said. �I wonder. Well, there�s no chance of that�� none whatever.�

Leaving her unfinished meal on the table, she made for the door.

Ted stared after her uncomfortably. His attempt at reassurance had misfired.

Presently, Mrs�Wells returned, and her eyes looked wet.

�I�m sorry,� she said. �I�m sure you don�t mean us any harm, Mr�� er�� Baxter, but there are some things it upsets me to talk about.�

She went on quickly:

�I�ll make up a bed for you in the back room. You can see the road from there that�ll lead you to the M40.�

She started to clear the table. She had evidently no intention of finishing her meal, and Ted had made short work of his.

Feeling pleasantly drowsy after the satisfying dish, he offered no objection when she suggested showing him to his room straight away.

As they passed across the landing on the first floor, he noticed a winding stair leading to what must be the turret.

�You must excuse the untidiness,� she said apologetically, and when she opened the door, he realized what she meant. Items of female clothing were flung about everywhere�� a skirt on the floor, articles of underwear over the bed and the single wicker chair. Mrs�Wells was picking them up and folding them quickly into some semblance of order. She bundled them into one of the drawers of a small chest at the back of the room. Then she took fresh sheets from another drawer and started to make up the narrow truckle bed.

From the window, Ted could make out the blurred streak of what must be the road that would lead him back to normality. He hoped devoutly that the night would pass quickly.

�My daughter sleeps upstairs,� Mrs�Wells was explaining, �but there�s not much room for keeping things there.�

Ted could well believe it. This room was small enough; he reckoned the one above must be even smaller.

He noticed that the top of the chest of drawers served as a dressing table, equipped with standing mirror. Some magazines were piled on it, and what looked like a child�s exercise book. A disquieting thought crossed his mind. Was the girl perhaps mentally retarded? That would account for Louise�s reluctance to introduce her. But there was nothing retarded about the face in the photographs. On the contrary, it had looked thoughtful, intelligent.

He made a note to glance through that book when he was alone.

Mrs�Wells finished making up the bed and stood for a moment in the doorway.

�The bathroom�s just across the landing,� she indicated; then halfway through the door she paused, as though uncertain of what to say.

�Just one thing, Mr�Baxter,� she went on, a little hesitantly. �You mustn�t be upset by anything you may hear in the night.�

He looked at her uneasily.

�My�� daughter��� again, that slight hesitation. �She�s sometimes a little noisy.�

A cold chill went through him. Was she trying to tell him there was a maniac in the house?

He was still staring blankly as she retreated swiftly, closing the door behind her. Next moment he had darted across the room, and was rattling the handle and calling loudly: �Mrs�Wells!� Softly but unmistakably, he had heard the sound of a key turning in the lock.

She made no answer, and he heard her calling down the stairs. It sounded like: �I�m coming�� I�m coming!�

Once the first shock of her action had passed, he began to visualize a possible explanation of it. Was she locking him in for his own safety?

Presently steps sounded again on the stair�� more than one person�s, he was sure, and he heard a whispering on the landing. Then the sound of someone climbing the winding stair to the turret. He glanced upward a little apprehensively, and as he did so, heard the soft slithering of a key in the lock, and Mrs�Wells� footsteps once more descending the stairs.

He turned the handle of the door. It opened easily. So it was a precaution on her part, to prevent him seeing the other occupant of the house. Was it really her daughter? he wondered. Or was the whole thing a ploy for the concealment of some wanted criminal? Perhaps that copy book might give him some hint of the nature of this peculiar household.

The cover drew his attention. A name was printed across the top in a childish scrawl. He felt relieved to see that the bluish crayon was faint and faded. It had evidently been written a long time ago. So he need not necessarily assume that the writer�s mind was childish still? Yet there was something peculiar about the writing of that name.

Louise Wells had spoken of �Marilyn�. But the name here was curiously divided, and appeared as �Marie-Lynne�. He smiled. Some caprice of the child? Or perhaps the parents? Wasn�t it common in some southern states of America for little girls to be called Elly-May or Lindy-Lou? So why not Marie-Lynne?

He ran through the pages quickly, but could find nothing of particular significance, except that exercises on how to write simple words like �dog�, �cat� and �jug� were invariably duplicated in slightly differing types of print.

Suddenly he started, nearly dropping the book in surprise as a sound reached his ears from the room above. Feminine voices, at first subdued, then rising to a tone of anger. Two people seemed to be talking together�� shouting, in fact. He fancied he heard something about �You shouldn�t have thrown down that skirt. I wanted to wear it!� Then, equally indignantly: �You wanted to wear it!�

Then he heard Mrs�Wells running quickly upstairs, and replaced the book guiltily. Now she was mounting the winding stair, calling out something in an angry tone. A confused babble answered her. Then all was quiet and he heard her descend the stairs again. After that there was no more disturbance from the turret room, and presently he heard his hostess come up to bed. Her room, he knew, must be the one facing the front of the house; it was the only other room the first floor seemed to possess.

He woke from a confused dream of lunatic shouts from the room above, to realize that the noise was coming from a different direction, and this time the voice was masculine. Someone was shouting in the hall below, loudly enough for the words to reach him.

�This is your last chance,� the man was bellowing. �I don�t want to make this a public matter, but I�ve as much right to her as you!�

Ted jumped out of bed and switched on the light, then started frantically to put on his top clothes.

The man�s next words were in a quieter tone. It seemed he was trying to achieve his end by persuasion.

Ted went quickly to the door and opened it a fraction, buttoning up his jacket while he listened to the words of the man below.

�Be reasonable, Louise. Think what it will mean�� we�d be in clover�� her too! Do you think you�re giving her a fair chance, cooped up here? There�s hardly room to swing a cat. I�ve got a strong case, and the law would be on my side. You�re not providing a decent life for the girl.�

�Girl?� Louise�s tone was harsh, strident. �What sort of a girl is she? My God, what are you offering her?�

Now the angry tone was back in his voice.

�The only life she can expect,� he shouted, �and a very prosperous one, I can assure you. Why, she�s unique�� there�s been nothing like her since Annabelle Grey. Gino�s getting impatient, and I�m not throwing away a fortune for your squeamishness!�

Annabelle Grey? The name sounded vaguely familiar, in what connection he could not recall, but Ted had no time to dwell on that now.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.

�I�m coming to get her,� the man was saying, and he heard Louise�s protests as she clambered up behind him. The steps passed across the landing, and Ted just had time to close the door quietly as the intruder went across to Louise�s room. Finding no one there, he made for the back room, but Ted was ready for him.

He threw open the door again as the man�� Mr�Wells, evidently�� was about to storm in, and Ted found himself confronted by a shortish, thickset man in a trilby hat pulled down rakishly on one side to give him a jaunty air. He had a greying moustache, and his face was blotched and reddened, by anger or alcohol�� probably both, Ted guessed.

He stared at Ted in astonishment.

�What the devil!� he began, then stepped back uncertainly as he saw Ted�s belligerent expression.

�Oh,� he shrugged, evidently deciding discretion was the best course, �so you have a boy-friend, my dear. I hope he knows how to keep his mouth shut about family affairs!�

�He doesn�t know any family affairs!� Louise retorted.

She was holding a red woollen dressing-gown round her, and her dark hair fell loosely about her shoulders.

Her husband nodded, smiling grimly.

�Very wise,� he commented, viewing Ted with a half-scared, half-suspicious look. �See it stays that way!�

He seemed� completely indifferent to his wife�s presumed amours; he was evidently concerned with more pressing problems, at which Ted could only guess.

The man�s eyes strayed towards the spiral stair, and he made a move towards it, but Ted blocked his path. The action was instinctive. He felt called upon to protect Louise from the unwelcome intruder.

�So that�s the way it is?� observed Mr�Wells. It was obvious he had no wish to take on his wife�s muscular companion. For all his bullying manner, he was clearly no hero. His blustering air was collapsing like a punctured balloon.

He backed away down the stairs, flashing a malicious glance at his wife from his rather protruding eyes.

�You�ll be hearing more about this!� he warned. �I know my rights, and the law will support me!�

They heard the door slam, and presently the sound of a car driving away along the road Ted had glimpsed from the window.

Louise laid a hand on his arm.

�I�m sorry,� she said, and he could see she was trembling. �Thank you for your help. That was my husband, of course. We�re separated. At least, I thought we were when he gave up the latchkey. But of course, I should have guessed, he�d had another one cut. He�s sly, that one. Gino�s a friend of his, and he wants�� She broke off, as though afraid she had said too much, then continued: �I�m always so careful to put her in the cellar when anyone knocks. She can get out into the woods from there and hide away, if necessary. I thought we were safe, but I should have known. He�s had his spies round here for a long time.�

Ted nodded sympathetically. He hoped she was going to enlighten him on the complexities of the situation, but at that moment an uproar started in the room above, and she glanced at him apprehensively.

�You�d better go back to your room,� she said. �Would you mind? It�s upset her now�� I�d better go up!�

She ran up the winding stair, and Ted returned to his room, but his curiosity was becoming a torment. He listened with straining ears.

He heard Mrs�Wells talking in a soothing voice, and fancied that an answering voice said: �I want to go with him�� I hate this house!� Then another, similar voice, crying bitterly: �Oh no, Marie, no�� no please!�

Long after he heard Louise return to her room, he sat pondering on what to make of this strange affair. Those two photos on the mantelpiece�� the divided name. Twins perhaps�� conjoined twins? He had seen two Indian girls once, joined at the base of the spine, and the sight had sickened him. But if this was the case, why had Louise referred to a �daughter�? And Wells had spoken of �she� not �they�. Surely �daughters� would have been the more logical term? A thought struck him. Those clothes that Louise had been hurriedly putting out of sight: if they were meant to cover two united bodies, there should be some indication of it in their shape.

He pulled open the drawer and searched through its contents. Two or three flowered skirts, which he felt sure did not belong to Louise. They were in the short, florid styles favoured by teenagers. There were also some loosely made top garments which puzzled him slightly, but not being a connoisseur of women�s fashions, he did not give them much thought.

Unable to find any clue to the mystery, he put the clothes back in the drawer and reached for his top coat. This house was too unsavoury to stay in a moment longer.

The pale light of early morning was filtering through the faded curtains. It would be a long walk to the motorway, but he knew now the direction he had to take.

He made his way quietly downstairs, pausing at the living-room door. Switching on the light, he tore a leaf from his pocket-book and scribbled a few words of thanks. After a moment�s hesitation, he added his name and address. There might come a time, he felt, when Louise needed a friend. He slipped a five-pound note under the paper and left it on the table.

At the door he turned, for a last look at the two photos on the mantelpiece. They seemed to be mirror images of each other. Could the strange Marilyn or Marie-Lynne be one woman with a divided personality? Yet he had heard two voices speaking simultaneously�� or so it seemed�� but why must she be hidden away? A horrible possibility occurred to him. Could she be ravaged by disease�� disfigured by some nightmare accident? He took a last look at the lovely pictured face and refused to admit the thought.

Then he left swiftly, switching off the light and closing the door quietly behind him.

He passed round the side of the house, and through the gate, where the link road ran diagonally before him. As he bent forward, huddling beneath his coat collar against the biting wind, two names kept running through his head. Marie-Lynne Wells�� Annabelle Grey. He thought he remembered now where he had read about the latter.

It was three weeks later that he saw the picture splashed across the front page of one of the more sensational dailies, and he recognized the woman at once. She must have been younger when that was taken, but there was no mistaking the face. Louise Wells looked out at him from the page.

He read the headline: �Murder and suicide in lonely house.�

With a creeping foreboding, he bought the paper.

It was a lurid account, of how the estranged husband had returned to find his wife dead from an overdose of sleeping pills. She had left a note, telling him where to find their child. Maddeningly, the paper gave no full description of the child�s appearance, except to say that the body was found in the cellar, stabbed to the heart. It hinted only that it was in some way abnormal, and the mother confessed to the murder, rather than have the child exhibited in �Gino�s Circus�.

Ted laid the paper on the table, and went to the bookshelf. He had avoided looking for the book before, dreading what he would see, but he remembered now where he had learned about Annabelle Grey. It was in Man, Myth and Magic[1], and if his memory was correct, it was in Volume Seven.

He drew out the heavy volume and turned to the section where the name occurred. Anna Belle Grey.

Now he understood the significance of Mr�Wells� reference to her. �Nothing like her since��

Rare indeed Anna Belle must have been, and rare the daughter of that tragic house.

As he studied the picture of Anna Belle Grey, the memory of that other lovely face came back with startling vividness. Why should there not have been conflicting temperaments, opposing opinions?

The photograph showed a different face, of course, and the elegant hair style was outmoded. Anna Belle must have lived near the beginning of the century. But there was the same sombre look, the same grave acceptance of fate, that had characterised Marie-Lynne Wells.

The subject was shown naked to the waist, and seated. A rug was thrown over the lap, beneath which two shapely legs were visible. Arms, shoulders and breasts were perfectly formed, and a well-manicured hand rested lightly on each thigh. It was only towards the top of the torso that abnormalities became apparent; a small, smooth protuberance in the centre, suggesting a vestigial third breast, and a broadness of the shoulder region caused by the necessity of supporting, in perfect symmetry, the two slender necks with their delicate-featured, identical heads.

Dr�Melrose Dichter�s wife was one of the most beautiful women in Beverly Hills. Bearing in mind that this particular area of Los Angeles was noted for its disproportionately high quota of stunning female flesh, this was no mean accolade. She was five feet seven inches tall with honey blonde hair that tumbled to her waist and a figure so perfect that men would bump into lamp posts or drive their cars up on the sidewalk just to get a longer look at her. Her skin was permanently tanned, but not to that extreme, leathery condition that so many of her contemporaries mistook for chic. It was golden, with a slight sheen that came from massage with perfumed oils and regular, though not strenuous exercise. When she walked, her rear view made strong men whimper and beautiful women weep silently with envy. The twin globes of her buttocks performed a rhythmic, primeval movement that Dr�Dichter himself had once described as �liquid poetry�.

Her face, devoid of make-up, was oval and the perfect blue eyes set in a complexion that was unmarred by even the smallest imperfection. Her name was Olga and she was twenty-seven years old.

Dr�Dichter had married her when she had been only eighteen and he fifty. The match had caused no great stir in the area. Old men were frequently taking child brides, it was part of the Los Angeles syndrome�� instant youth-sex-prestige-satisfaction. Dr�Dichter had never been married before, his work as a plastic surgeon had taken all of his attention and energy and by the time he had reached the peak of his profession the years had simply rattled by. He first saw Olga in a coffee shop on Rodeo Drive, sipping coke from a frosted glass and gazing enviously at the peacock parade of rich and famous people parking their limos prior to shopping in the dazzling array of luxury stores that lined the street.

She was wearing cut-off Levis, dirty sandals and a baggy sweatshirt. Her hair, which was the colour of mouse-droppings, stuck out from her scalp like a housemaid�s mop. Her blue eyes were cross and her thick peasant�s lips forced into a pout by the yellowing, buck-rabbit�s teeth that protruded horizontally from her misshapen gums.

Dr�Dichter had parked his Rolls-Royce convertible in front of the coffee shop and gazed at this totally unlovely creature with more than usual interest. She had strong, square shoulders and a straight back. Her chin, though a trifle rococo was at least reasonably symmetrical. Generally she struck Dichter as being sound of wind and limb, a healthy, flesh-draped skeleton that might serve his professional purposes admirably.

Smiling his most debonair consulting-room smile, he approached her table and drew up a chair.

�Forgive the presumption,� he said amiably, �but I am Dr�Melrose Dichter of Bel Air. I am, as it so transpires, the world�s foremost cosmetic surgeon, medical journals rave over my work. I have redesigned more than a score of senators� noses and demand for my artistry, in the breast and buttock area, has reached Carthaginian proportions. Film actresses and television millionaires jostle for the privilege of feeling my scalpel bite into their subcutaneous tissues. I am, in short, a celebrity myself.�

The girl glanced up from the ruins of her Danish pastry.

�So what else is new?� she mumbled.

Dichter crossed one immaculately trousered leg over the other.

�Your defensive sarcasm does you credit,� he said, snapping his fingers in the direction of a waitress.

�Too many women in this overblown town are ready, nay even willing, to succumb to the predatory blandishments of the first jack-adventurer who chances across their path. I, however, am not importuning you with a view to instant fornication. Not for me the limpid clasp of mindless lust. I reach for more esoteric goals. Will you, if I may so phrase it, consider marrying me?�

�I might,� she said. �It depends what�s in it for me.�

Dichter nodded sagely. �Wise beyond your years, I see,� he riposted. �But let me elaborate. If you consent to be my wife, I shall make you the most beautiful woman in the universe. Not only that, you shall have fine clothes, servants, opulent limousines, jewellery, perfumes drained from the scent glands of nearly extinct animals that only roam the craggy heights of Hindustan, and your own personal American Express card.�

�You�re very persuasive,� she said, suddenly demure. �And I accept.�

Dichter leant across and kissed her chastely on the forehead.

�That is a decision,� he said, �that you will not regret. Now that we are engaged so to speak, may I presume to cup my hand over your left breast�� purely for medicinal purposes I hasten to add?�

She hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

�As your betrothed I cannot deny you the right to slake your unbridled lusts in whatever way you see fit. May I suggest, however, a full scale grope in my modest apartment on Sunset Boulevard? We could open a bottle of cheap red wine.�

�I�ll hear of no such compromising,� cried Dichter, overwhelmed by a bout of tumescence.

�If our lewd coupling is to be accompanied by anything at all, it will be a Dom Perignon �69 and possibly some wafer-thin biscuits heaped with rare Iranian caviar flown in clandestinely from that strife-torn country by a half-mad Irish pilot who happens to be in my employ.�

�Done,� she said, rising sensuously.

And so it was. They were married a month later in Las Vegas and honeymooned in the Caribbean. These traditional formalities disposed of, Dichter then settled down to re-designing his willing bride into the dream creature he had so long craved to possess.

He lowered her cheekbones by two centimetres. He drew out all her front teeth and replaced them with perfect plastic ones that gleamed whiter than snow. He tightened her breasts and increased their size with silicon injections. He shaved the cr�pe-like fat from her thighs and transformed them into columns of firm golden flesh. He re-tucked her buttocks. He dyed her hair. He rounded off her shoulders and he flattened her belly.

After nearly three years of intensive surgery Dichter declared himself satisfied with the work and Olga was allowed to view the results in a full length mirror. Metamorphosis is too inadequate a word to describe what Olga saw in her own reflection. It was as if a total stranger had invaded her body and taken possession of flesh, limbs, hair and teeth.

The goddess, for such she now was, stood motionless before the mirror drinking in the sleek hips, the silken skin, the flawless face. It was as pure a moment of ecstasy as any human being could reasonably expect to enjoy in an entire lifetime:

A week later Dichter launched her into Los Angeles society with a substantial flourish. He booked the whole of the Beverly Hills Hotel for the occasion and issued gold-edged invitations to a glittering array of luminaries and doyens of the movie business.

Carol Channing was there, and Peter Sellers, not to mention Jimmy Stewart, Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda and Richard Burton. Representatives of several international newspapers were also present and had been earlier granted the privilege of meeting Olga at a special press reception prior to the banquet. They all dined off gold plate and consumed vintage wines flown in from Paris.

Not a single soul demurred from the general opinion that Olga Dichter was the most beautiful woman in the world.

During the months that followed Olga�s confidence and personality blossomed with lightning speed. No longer the gauche, ungainly girl-child, she became self-assured, imperious, and above all, voluble.

Her vocabulary, while not elaborate, was in constant use. She talked incessantly to Dr�Dichter, subjecting him to a hailstorm of cheery words from the moment she woke up until the moment when her head hit the pillow last thing at night.

When he sought refuge in his surgery, tucking the occasional limpid abdomen, or remodelling the odd mottled buttock, Olga compensated for his absence by using the telephone. She held long, vigorous, one-sided conversations with her hairdresser, her tennis coach, her fortune teller, her lawyer, her interior decorator, her landscape gardener and, occasionally, an unfrocked cardinal from Dubrovnik who now wrote gourmet recipes for Bel Air hostesses.

She invited sixty people round for coffee and croissants and spoke almost without drawing breath for two hours and fourteen minutes. She gave pool parties where the only escape from her Niagara of words was for guests to remain underwater in the swimming pool with rubber nuggets jammed in their ears.

Dichter bore all this with patience and fortitude. That is, up until the time Olga began talking in her sleep.

The occasional nocturnal mumble he could have endured, even the sporadic stringing together of a complete sentence would scarcely have taxed his equilibrium. Eight-hour monologues conducted at full volume seven nights a week were something else altogether.

The talking began to haunt him. He imagined he could hear her voice even when he was a hundred miles away performing a nipple transplant at a remote but luxurious ranch in the Nevada Desert.

He lost weight. His usually trim figure sagged and a small tic developed under his left eye. He tried slipping tranquillizers into her late-night glass of vitamin-drenched milk, but it was of no avail.

He tried bullying. He yelled at her but she simply yelled back�� only several decibels louder. Neighbours began to complain. The sound of Olga�s ceaseless chatter was like a pneumatic drill. Writs were served, lawyers enriched and families broken up.

The holocaust of words continued for three full months until Dr�Dichter, a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound gibbering ninny, decided upon a drastic solution. It was, he convinced himself, a merciful way out. She was still when all was said and done the most beautiful woman in the universe and his enjoyment of her physical charms only diminished by the debilitated condition into which her volcanic gabbling had so cruelly cast him.

On a Thursday at midnight during one of her Wagnerian-style monologues about the parlous state of the nail varnish industry he applied a particularly powerful sleeping draught to her raspberry and ginseng low-fat milk shake.

To his intense relief she went down like a felled telegraph pole and he was able to carry her inert body into his stylishly decorated Italian-motif operating theatre.

Eight hours later when she awoke she was aware of a cathedral-like calm. She lay in the luxury of their four-poster bed, bolstered by silk cushions crammed with swansdown.

Dichter lay beside her in his black satin karate-type pyjamas, a dreamy smile creasing his sunken cheeks. He held a mother-of-pearl hand mirror in front of her so that she might see the result of his nocturnal surgery.

Her eyes bulged at the vision she beheld. Across her face, from left to right, was a pink and white zipper that sealed off her mouth as tightly as a locked suitcase.

Speech was impossible, all she could manage was a pathetic snort and a few silent tears. Dichter kissed her on the cheek and whispered fondly in her ear.

�Don�t fret yourself my precious one. It�s for your own good. And as for food and drink? No problem at all, if you would like to pull back the sheets you will observe that I have arranged a feeding orifice in a most unusual location. Now dear one, what would you like for breakfast? One nod for porridge, two nods for grapefruit segments and three nods for hot molasses!�

Old Ned Sanderson gouged his finger into the eye socket of the sheep�s skull and tested the tenderness of its brain. It was firm and hot having boiled for twenty minutes in a pan of cabbage water. He withdrew his hand and sucked the finger.

�It�s all ready now, Daisy Lou,� he called out suddenly, his voice like rivets sliding over a tin tray. A hundred feet from where he sat a sacking curtain was pulled back from the doorway of a crude log cabin and a woman appeared. She was thick and squat with burnished leather features and shortcropped hair. Canteloupe breasts pushed against the faded print dress that hung raggedly at her knees and she clenched a clay pipe in the corner of her mouth from which white smoke curled.

Ned beckoned impatiently with a bony hand. �I ain�t waitin� on you no more, Daisy Lou, this here food won�t stay hot all day. And bring yo�self a knife for the scrapings. Sure is too good for wastin� even a mouthful.�

The woman joined him at the small woodfire he had built and squatted down on her haunches.

�Where you get this here sheep, Ned? You bin thieving down in the valley while I�s bin shucking peas?�

Ned shook his head slowly and pulled the sheep�s head out of the boiling water with his thumb and forefinger.

�Sure is hot as hell,� he chuckled, rolling it onto a tin plate. Daisy Lou sniffed and removed the clay pipe from her mouth.

�Smells good,� she admitted, running her tongue over her lips. Ned picked up a small hammer with a scarred, rusty head and smashed open the sheep skull. The animal�s brain burst out like a flowering sea anemone and covered the plate. They ate in silence, using their fingers and a penknife that Daisy Lou had salvaged from her dead sister�s belongings ten years ago at the funeral.

Ned was only forty but a life of poverty and hardship had reduced his body to a permanent skeletal stoop. His face was cracked and fissured from decades of sun and the once blond hair now only a fuzz of dirty grey.

Like most mountain folk, he and Daisy Lou kept themselves to themselves. They were society�s forgotten souls, isolated, shy, inbred, grindingly poor and pathologically suspicious of strangers.

Had they been urban blacks, instead of hillbilly whites, the media trendies and their television camp followers would have urged upon a reluctant nation some form of compulsory welfare for these reclusive misfits. Lacking the glamour of the �fashionable� oppressed, they were instead ignored, even shunned by the rest of their fellows.

Ned was one of eight children, six of whom had died at birth. Daisy Lou was the seventh daughter of a family of sixteen who had never even known their father. Ned and Daisy Lou had married at fourteen and lived ever since in a wooden shack under the lip of Old Bluey, a towering mountain peak that reached down from its craggy eminence into the valley of the Stokehold Quarry. The quarry was exhausted now of its grainy stone, stripped and scraped over five decades by quarrymen who sold it in great slabs to builders who made fireplaces from it to grace the mansions of Long Island in New York.

In those days Ned had managed to get casual work dragging stone and shovelling sand. Daisy Lou had hitched her skirt for a hundred or more sweating quarrymen and when finally she was with child, she aborted it herself, not out of shame, but out of economic necessity. What they didn�t need was another mouth to feed. Whether the dead child was Ned�s or any one of the labourers� who had used her was of supreme indifference to all concerned. Since then Daisy Lou had been barren and they took that as a great blessing, for a while at least. As she approached the age of forty Daisy Lou was given to daydreaming, mooning about outside the shack nursing a bundle of old rags to her breast and crooning to it as if for all the world it was a bawling nipper. Ned ignored her when she took on these moods. There was no harm in it after all, and he was too occupied with scraping enough food together each day to keep them marginally ahead of malnutrition. Daisy Lou, however, found she could supplement her potato and beetroot diet with snakes, fat juicy beetles and occasionally a whole raw rabbit.

Ned, who was more fastidious, preferred nuts and berries to keep him going, except of course when he could cut the head off a sheep that had fallen into the ravine and was trapped between the rocks. Today, therefore, was a special treat. Boiled sheep�s brains and a few black-eyed peas.

When the feast was done Ned belched appreciatively and stretched on the flat earth.

�Sure was a treat,� he murmured, closing his eyes. Daisy Lou picked up the fragments of sheep skull and sucked off the last tenacious chunks of brain that still clung to it. Finally satisfied, she sank down next to her husband and promptly fell asleep.

An hour passed and the sun moved over the top of Old Bluey, throwing cold shadows on to the sleeping couple. Ned stirred, his ribs standing out like a xylophone as he stretched and yawned. The fire was low, but still burning. Suddenly he sat upright, his head cocked and listening like an animal. Daisy Lou opened an eye and then propped herself on an elbow.

�What�s up, Ned?� she asked drowsily. Ned made a hush with his eyes and continued listening. After a few seconds Daisy Lou could hear it too, plain as a bell. It was the sound of a baby crying.

�What in hell�s name�� began Ned, but Daisy Lou was already on her feet and scrambling towards the direction from which the plaintive sounds emanated. Ned shrugged and followed her, the sheep�s brains sitting heavy and comforting in his gut. Daisy Lou had disappeared behind the log cabin and was crouching over a natural recess in the blue-black volcanic granite. As he approached she placed a finger to her lips, warning him to make caution. He drew level with her and peered over her shoulder. What he saw made him suck in a gasp of astonishment. Nestling in the saucer-like recess was a naked boy-child, his tiny limbs flailing as he gave vent to his yells of newborn life.

�Where in heck did he come from?� whispered Ned, genuinely awestruck.

Daisy Lou slipped her big hands under the child�s body and raised it to her bosom. All at once his crying stopped and his mouth sought voraciously for her nipple. She turned away from Ned and loosened the tie-strings on her dress.

�No nourishment here, little man,� she crooned, �but you can take comfort.�

�Where�d he come from?� demanded Ned again, taking a pace towards his wife. She threw him a withering glance over her shoulder.

�Keep yo� voice down. Little man here having his feed.� Ned sniffed disapprovingly.

�How long afore he cottons on to you bein� empty as last year�s bean barrel?�

�Soon enough,� said Daisy Lou, rocking the child gently. �Now you go and see if there�s anythin� left over from our meal, y�hear?�

Ned shook his head slowly.

�You taken leave o� yo� senses, woman. Little critter cayn�t eat no sheep�s brain�� besides, you wolfed it all. Ain�t nothin� left. Not a scrap.�

Daisy Lou turned and brushed past her husband. �All he needs is a scrapin�,� she said.

There was a tiny puddle of gravy left in the tin dish by the fire and she scooped it up with her finger.

�Here, child,� she whispered, �git this down yo�.� The baby sucked happily at her finger and kicked his tiny limbs.

�Y�see,� she announced triumphantly, �he�s takin� it.� Ned pulled out his clay pipe and started scooping out the encrusted tobacco.

�Best wrap him up in somethin� warm, folks�ll be along soon to claim him.�

Daisy Lou looked up sharply, her eyes narrowing. �Ain�t nobody goin� to claim him,� she said. Folks just left him. It�s a mercy we was to hand, little man coulda died. Easy.�

Ned lit the pipe with a glowing wood splinter from the fire. �You mustn�t talk that way, Daisy Lou,� he said. �You know you cayn�t jus� keep a child. He�s gotta go back to where he come from. That�s natural.�

�Oh?� said Daisy Lou. �And where do he come from? You tell me that, Ned Sanderson!�

Ned shrugged. �Aw come on, Daisy Lou. You ain�t talking sense. You ain�t aimin� on keeping the critter. We goin� take him down the valley. Give him to the sheriff. Maybe we get some money for him. A reward. Think on it, Daisy Lou. We ain�t got five dollar b�tween us. We could do with a few bucks.�

Daisy Lou shook her head firmly.

�Ain�t givin� him to no sheriff. Not now. Not anytime. He�s my child Ned, and I�s keepin� him.�

Ned�s protests failed to move her and he eventually fell silent, surrendering to her stubborn will.

As the shadows lengthened they withdrew into the log cabin and Ned lit the old stove with a bundle of sticks. Daisy Lou made a crib for the child out of a pile of sacking and laid him gently on to it.

�He�s so pretty,� she murmured kneeling over him. �Where�d you s�pose he come from Ned?�

Ned sucked hard on his pipe. �If you ask me,� he said slowly, �he jus� fell outa the sky.�

At first she gave hardly a thought to the child upstairs. She�d hear the little footsteps run across the other side of her ceiling from time to time, and presumed that one day she�d see the child and its parents.

Recently widowed, she had only just moved into this ground floor bed-sit and had not met any of the other tenants of the house. From her window, she�d glimpsed a couple of young men setting off to work at different times in the morning, and another young man drive away on a motorbike, but she was too busy sorting herself out in her new quarters and accustoming herself to her new loneliness to bother much about anyone else.

As the days passed, however, it did dawn on her that although she heard that child�s footsteps in the room above, she never heard its voice on the stairs or in the hall. Usually children made a certain amount of noise, but this one was exceptionally quiet. She had heard a woman�s voice�� presumably the mother�s, as there was apparently no other woman in the house except herself�� and the voices of the men sometimes as they went in and out.

Through studying the names on the row of bells outside the front door, and noticing post which arrived, she gradually identified her fellow-tenants. The two young men who went out early to work and had bed-sits at the back of the house were Mr�Grey and Mr�Blake, and the couple above her head were Mr and Mrs�Lambert. Mr�Lambert was the one with the motorbike. Sometimes his wife went with him on the pillion. Other times she set off alone, on foot. Obviously they both went to work, so there must be someone else up there to look after the child. And as she never saw anyone arrive early in the morning, it would be someone who lived in. But who? The person never made a sound, any more than the child did�� except for its footsteps. That nanny or baby-sitter or whatever never went out and never took the child out. No one took the child out. Why not? Was it deformed in some way and were they ashamed of it? She shivered at the thought of that.

More time passed and she became convinced gradually that there was no one in that upstairs flat during the daytime except the child. Those callous young parents simply went out to work all day and left the child alone. It was not only cruel but dangerous. Suppose the poor little thing had an accident. Children were always falling about on their unaccustomed legs. And what did it do with itself all day? How did it get itself anything to eat? A boy or girl of nine, ten, eleven might be all right alone, but the footsteps were those of a much younger child�� four or five.

One afternoon, when she�d come in from shopping, the house seemed to be silent with emptiness, until she heard the child�s footsteps. They were quicker than usual. There was a note of panic in them. The child was afraid! She could tell!

Deciding suddenly that she had ignored this unhappy situation for far too long, she went upstairs and stood outside the door of the Lamberts� flat. She listened. No sound of movement now. Oh, dear, had the child been alarmed by the sound of her own footsteps coming up, then stopping at the door? Was the poor little soul standing still in there, petrified with fear?

She tapped very gently on the door. �Hello,� she said. �I�m Mrs�Murray, the lady who lives downstairs. I know you�re alone, and I�m alone too, so if you�ll let me in we could make friends.�

Silence. And no wonder. She cursed herself for a fool. No doubt the parents had instructed the child never to let anyone in. By trying to �do good�, she was only making things worse.

�Oh, I�m sorry if I�ve scared you,� she said now. �I didn�t mean to. We must meet properly one day, when your parents are here.� She went downstairs again, being deliberately noisy, so that the child would know she�d gone. No sooner was she back in her room again than the child�s footsteps sounded overhead. And there was still that panicky, trapped sound about them.

Perhaps if she introduced herself to the mother, they could come to some arrangement by which she could keep the child company for part of the day. It seemed like a good idea, so she kept her eye on the window at about the time when Mrs�Lambert usually returned from work and, when she saw the young woman walking up the path, she went into the hall and met her accidentally-on-purpose as she let herself in.

�Oh, hello,� the girl said, smiling. �You�re Mrs�Murray, aren�t you? I�m Mrs�Lambert. Quite absurd that we haven�t met before but life in these houses of flats and bed-sits is like that, and my husband and I are out so much. How do you do,� and she held out her hand.

They shook hands and, unexpectedly, Mrs�Murray found herself liking young Mrs�Lambert. But that just showed that you can�t go by appearances. She didn�t look the type to leave her offspring alone all day, yet that was what she did.

Feeling very much the interfering neighbour, yet determined to be so, she said, �Mrs�Lambert, doesn�t your little boy, or girl, get lonely up there?�

�My little boy or girl? We haven�t any kids, worst luck. Wish we had. We�re still trying.�

�But I hear the child�s footsteps above my room.�

�That�s our living-room, Mrs�Murray. There�s no child there.�

�I happen to know that there is. I�m not deaf.�

The other woman looked at her with uneasiness. �You�re mistaken, honestly. It must be some other sound that you hear. The water system makes some clonking noises sometimes.�

�I hear a child�s footsteps.� She would not give in.

�Have you been ill?� Mrs�Lambert asked now.

�No. Why?�

�Oh�� fever�� delirium�� imagining things��

�I have imagined nothing and�� and I�m sorry to be intrusive, but I think it�s wrong of you to leave your child alone day after day��

�Come up with me now. I�ll show you the flat. You�ll see that it�s empty.�

She followed Mrs�Lambert up the stairs. The other let them into the flat. The living-room was neat and undisturbed. �Look in the other rooms if you like, Mrs�Murray. There�s no child here.�

She did look into the other rooms.

No child was there.

Apologizing, she went downstairs again. She sat down, feeling faint and covered her face with her hands. For if there was no living child in that upstairs room, whose were the footsteps that she heard?

An idea came to her, bringing some relief with it: This house was semi-detached. Surely it was possible therefore that sounds might carry from the other �half� of the place. Yes�� maybe there was a child next door and, when the house was quiet, it was him or her that she heard. Next day she made inquiries. She called next door and asked: �Please, does a child live here? I have some sweets I don�t want and��

The woman who had opened the door interrupted her: �No, dear. No kids here. Nice of you to offer, all the same.� And that was that. Sadly, she ate the little bag of sweets she�d bought as an excuse to ask about a child. And when she got home again, she heard the child�s footsteps. They were unmistakable. Also she heard them the next day, and the next day, and the next.

The day after that was Saturday and the landlord called to collect the rents, as it was the end of the month. When he was in her room, she hoped that the footsteps would sound, then she could ask if he heard them too. But the only sounds from overhead were quiet, adult movements�� probably Mrs�Lambert dusting and tidying.

Before the landlord left, she asked him in a tone of casual interest: �Has there ever been a child in the flat above my head?�

He looked surprised at the question, then answered: �Goodness knows. Certainly not in my time. But no doubt in the old days, before the house was converted, it would have been owned by one family, and there�d probably have been children. Why?�

�I just wondered,� she said feebly and wished she hadn�t asked. She hoped now that Mrs�Lambert wouldn�t tell the landlord about �that weird Mrs�Murray hearing footsteps�. She feared being thought mad�� even if she was. No�� especially if she was! But I�m not mad, she told herself. I hear what I hear. It�s not me that�s crazy. It�s this house that�s haunted!

More time passed. She heard the footsteps nearly every day, in the afternoons, and often they had a trapped, panicky sound. Or was that her own imagination�� because she herself felt trapped and panicky? Maybe, she brooded, I am going through some minor mental illness, a reaction to the shock of my husband�s death and my unaccustomed loneliness.

She decided that she must leave this house and began serious room-hunting. Accommodation was scarce but she trudged the streets, looking at noticeboards in newsagents� windows; scanned advertisement columns in newspapers; applied for bed-sitters, only to find that they had just been taken, and so on. Then, at last, she did find another room, in a distant neighbourhood, and she moved.

As soon as she�d moved into her new digs she began to feel better. At first, neurotically, she listened for footsteps, but heard none. So they couldn�t have been only in her head after all. They had belonged to that frightening house. Maybe some poor little soul had come to grief there years ago and she, in her sensitive, vulnerable state, had caught vibrations from the past. She could think of no other explanation. She had been haunted by some ghostly shadow of a child.

It was about five years later that she had to return to her former neighbourhood to make a business call, and afterwards, on impulse, she went to take a look at the �haunted house�.

When she arrived, she received a shock, for there had been a recent fire. The top part of the front of the building was blackened and ruined, as if waiting for builders to come and restore it. As she stood staring in dismay, one of her previous fellow-tenants came out: young Mr�Grey, although not quite so young any more.

He was about to pass her, then stopped. �It�s Mrs�Murray, isn�t it? I suppose you read about the fire in the papers and came to see if it was true.�

She shook her head. �No, I hadn�t read about it. What happened?�

�No one knows exactly. Faulty electric wiring, maybe. Or some matches left lying around while the little boy��

�What little boy?�

�Oh, of course, you wouldn�t know. The Lamberts had a baby a few months after you left. A boy. She stopped work and stayed at home to look after him. She never left him alone, except on that one afternoon. She and her husband were expecting guests in the evening. She�d done the necessary shopping in the morning, taking the boy with her, as usual. But she forgot the wine. So, in the afternoon, she left the child alone in the flat while she slipped up the road to the off-licence. It shouldn�t have taken her more than five minutes, but when she got there the place was closed for decoration, so she belted down to the main shopping centre. That, of course, took a deal longer, and when she came home again she saw flames in her living-room window.�

He pointed to the ruined upper floor front.

�She let herself in, tore up the stairs, but was driven back by fire on the landing. When she ran out of the house again, her clothes were alight. A man who was passing threw her to the ground and crushed out the flames. She�s in hospital now with shock and burns. The fire brigade came, but by that time the boy was dead.�

�And there wasn�t anyone else in the house?�

�Ironically, there was. An old lady on her own was living in the room you used to have. She�d heard the child�s footsteps running backwards and forwards, but then she was accustomed to hearing them, and as she didn�t know that Mrs�Lambert had gone out, she just thought the mother and son were playing a noisy game. By the time she did smell smoke, Mrs�Lambert was back and everything was panic and chaos.�

Distressedly, he shook his head. �My God, Mrs�Murray, people never know what the future holds in store, do they?�

�Never,� whispered Mrs�Murray, white-lipped, �but sometimes the future casts�� a backwards shadow.�

Yesterday I returned from the funeral of Joseph O�Connor.

He was buried in his village churchyard, and half the county were there, including two very old men of his regiment, the disbanded Royal Munster Fusiliers.

The memory of twenty-five years ago came back with vivid clarity as I looked at a distant gravestone that was on its own, markedly separate from all the others, as if it was on unholy ground.

I felt again the shiver of awful fear that I had experienced years ago.

Norah O�Connor, who stood beside me and saw where I had looked, put her hand on my arm and whispered, �He is at peace now, Colonel�.�.�. Never again.�

Joe and Norah had visited me often over the intervening years, I was told of the changes that had taken place. The river had been diverted to flow into the big one and then into the Shannon. A motorway had been built to bypass the village. Fishermen still came, but they fished elsewhere; otherwise life was tranquil.

Had I not felt it my duty, because of my regard for those two, to attend Joe�s funeral, I would not have put my face within twenty miles of the place.

It was on my return home that I sorted out the notes I had made of my visit all those years ago, and in the reading I felt again the chilling atmosphere that had surrounded me then. Looking back with hindsight I told myself it was not true. That the Korean war had unhinged me to allow this impossible thing to happen to me�.�.�. but I knew I was wrong�.�.�. it did happen.

She came up the long drive, dragging her feet wearily, and Ian watched her come. She had her head down, and hand clapped to her old felt hat, to keep it on in the fierce wind.

As she came nearer, he saw that she was a woman of about fifty, with a red, weatherbeaten face, and when she finally reached the front door, and he stared at her through the window, he could see that she had streaks of grey in her dark hair, bright blue eyes, a tight-lipped mouth, and a strong chin.

She was standing upright now, but one roughened hand still held the battered hat in place, and her fingernails were dirty. She wore an old mackintosh, unbuttoned over a shapeless brown tweed suit, with a skirt uneven at the hem, and her shoes were worn and cheap.

Who was she? Why had she come to him? Why were there no dogs about to prevent her?

She pressed the door bell, and the sound jangled through the house so fiercely that, although he had been expecting it, he was startled.

He hesitated, then went to the door, reluctantly.

Damn Jamie! He�d taken all the dogs walking at the same time! Lazy devil! He�d been told not to, time and time again, but he had disobeyed! �Always leave one of the dogs behind to guard the place, Jamie,� Ian had told him. But no, he had taken them all as usual!

Ian was in his sixties. He was tall and lean, and rather precious. In an effeminate way, he was attractive. He was a writer and a scholar, and he enjoyed living alone in this old house, so faraway from anywhere.

Jamie was his only companion, and Jamie would be leaving soon to take a job on his uncle�s farm some twenty miles away.

Ian opened the door, and the woman looked at him slyly. He was immediately repelled, and when she spoke in a high, whining, self-pitying voice, he liked her even less.

She wasn�t Scottish. Her voice was accented, but he wasn�t sure from where she came. Ireland? London? He disliked both the Irish and the English equally, and he frowned.

The woman saw the frown, and said ingratiatingly, �Can you help me, sir? I�m tired and hungry, and I need a rest.�

�Why come to me?� he asked.

�I saw the house from the road.�

�Where have you come from?�

�London.�

�How did you get here, for heaven�s sake?�

�The coach stopped for petrol, some way back. I got out to stretch my legs, and it started again without me.�

�Why didn�t you shout for it to stop?�

�I couldn�t, sir. I�d gone behind some bushes,� she said, and smirked.

The smirk irritated him, and he replied brusquely, �I don�t believe a word of it.�

�It�s true, sir.�

They stared at each other in some hostility, then she continued in the whine that he so disliked, �It�s cold, sir. If you please, sir, I�d like to come in.�

He didn�t know why, but he stood aside, and she stepped into the hall. �It�s a beautiful place you have here, sir. Do you live here all alone?�

He divined at once that she already knew; had been making inquiries before she came. �No,� he said, �I don�t.�

�May I see the kitchen, sir?�

�Why?�

�I�d like a look, sir. I�m dying for a hot drink, sir. Tea, perhaps, or coffee, if you�d be so kind. Of course I will make it for myself.�

He didn�t answer, but led the way to the kitchen, his feet clattering angrily down the stone passage.

When they reached the kitchen, she made for the nearest chair, and sat in it, shivering. �It�s a wicked day, sir. Shouldn�t be surprised if it snowed quite soon.�

He jerked up his head. �You�ll have to find your way back to the village before the storm, then. I can�t keep you here. Where were you proposing to go, in that bus?�

�Up there,� she said, vaguely. �Up north. Scotland.�

�You�re in Scotland.�

�Yes.�

�Why Scotland?�

�Sorrow, sir.�

�Sorrow?�

�Me �usband died, sir.� She suddenly became more Cockney. �The name is Martha, sir. Martha O�Leary.�

�You�re Irish, then?�

�Irish father. Cockney mother.�

For some reason this confirmation of his earlier surmise pleased Ian inordinately. �You can make tea for the two of us,� he said expansively. �No, for three. Jamie will be back with the dogs soon.�

�Dogs?�

�Five Alsatians.�

He thought she looked scared, but she didn�t reply, and busied herself making the tea. He didn�t tell her where the things were, but she seemed at home in a kitchen, and soon found what she was looking for.

�You�re warm in here,� she said admiringly. �Central heating?�

�Yes.�

�A fine kitchen, sir.�

�Thanks.�

�A lovely house, sir. Beautiful.�

�Thanks.�

She discovered a tray, and put the tea things on it, then put the tray on the kitchen table. �Do we have tea in here, sir?� she asked.

�Of course. Where else?�

�Yes. Of course.�

The back door opened, and Jamie came in, with one Alsatian at his heels. The dog growled on seeing Martha, and his hackles rose. �Down, Roger! Down!� said Jamie soothingly. �Quiet, boy. Easy, lad!�

He looked inquiringly at Ian. �Company?� he asked, surprised.

�She�s lost her way, and she�s cold, so she�s having some tea,� said Ian.

Jamie looked at Martha with disfavour, then he jerked his head towards Ian, and said, as though Martha were deaf and couldn�t answer for herself, �Where�s she from?�

�London, she says,� replied Ian.

�It�ll be snowing soon,� said Jamie. �She�d best away before the storm.�

�Just what I said,� agreed Ian.

�How will we get her away?�

�Your motorbike?�

�She�ll be bloody cold.�

�I can�t help that. She chose to come here, and my car is being serviced at the garage, as you know.�

�Aye, I ken that fine. Drink up, lass, and we�ll be going.�

Martha looked from one to the other, then suddenly she began groaning and rolling her eyes. �Oh, the pain of it! Oh, Mary Mother of God, the pain in me chest! Oh, me chest! Oh, the pain! Help me! Help me! It�s the horrors, that it is.�

�What�s the matter?� asked Ian, impatiently.

�It�s me chest,� said Martha. �I have the divil of a time with it sometimes.�

�If the pain is that bad, the sooner you get to see a doctor, the better,� said Ian, drily. �Jamie is ready to take you.�

�Oh, me arms! Oh, me legs!� She tried to rise, but fell back dramatically in the chair. �I can�t move, sir, and that�s the truth!

�You�ll have to,� said Ian.

�I can�t, sir, as the good Lord is my witness.�

�You can�t stay here,� said Ian angrily.

Martha continued moaning, and for good measure started pulling wildly at her hair. She dislodged the dirty hat, which fell on the floor. �Mary Mother of God, the pain of it! Dear Jesus, the pain! Again she tried to get up, and again she fell back. Ian and Jamie exchanged looks, and the sky outside grew steadily darker. Martha, though continuing with her lamentations, was watching them keenly from under her grey-streaked fringe.

Jamie tapped his foot. �Come on now,� he said. �Away with us before the storm is on us.�

�You�ll have to lift me,� said Martha. �I can�t walk. Me legs! Me legs! Oh, sir, have pity on me legs!�

�Stop acting!� exclaimed Ian. �We all know there�s nothing wrong with you.�

Martha moaned on.

�OK,� said Ian. �You�d better do as she says, Jamie, and carry her to your bike. Hurry!�

The woman shrieked, and Jamie said, �I can no carry her screeching all the way into town.�

�Once she�s on the bike, she�ll have to shut up or get killed,� said Ian. Jamie picked Martha up, and she waved her arms, still screaming her head off. He put her down again. �With her kicking and making yon disturbance,� he said, �it�s no possible, and I�ll no do it.�

Snowflakes hurled themselves at the windows, melting at the contact with the glass.

�What�ll we do? The storm may last for days.�

�Oh, sir!� exclaimed the woman, eagerly. �I�d work for you! I�m a good cook, and a good cleaner, and for the while the storm lasts I�d want no pay; only food and shelter.�

�If you�re as ill as you make out, you won�t be much good at working,� said Ian.

�It�s an attack,� said the woman. �It�ll pass.� She huddled in the chair, and began swaying backwards and forwards, moaning, but softly now.

�There�s no a thing we can do, except call the poliss,� said Jamie.

�No, no, we don�t want the police,� said Ian, and he sounded alarmed.

The woman darted a look at him, but by the time he had turned back to look at her her eyes were shut, as she rocked herself to and fro.

The men then left the kitchen, and Martha strained her ears to hear where they were, and if they were talking about her. When they hadn�t returned for several minutes, she cautiously got up, and began washing up the tea things.

The storm raged for three hours, and by the time it had blown itself out, and Ian and Jamie were back with her again, she had scrubbed the kitchen floor, tidied the room, and polished the Welsh dresser.

�I hope you didn�t mind, sir?� she asked Ian coyly. �I shouldn�t a done it, I know, but the place needed a bit of a clean, and I like working.�

Ian considered her. The room certainly looked good, and when Jamie went in a few days� time he�d need someone to do a bit of the work. People were hard to get these days in an out-of-the-way place like this, and he wouldn�t like just anyone. When he went to America, he�d need someone to take care of the dogs. He wasn�t prepared to put them in kennels. It would be a boon to have the house cared for, at the same time.

He patted Roger, who was lying in front of the stove with his head on his paws, watching him, and the dog wagged his tail.

�Are you good with dogs?� he asked.

Again the woman looked startled. �Dogs?� she asked. �Why?�

�Jamie is leaving here to work at his uncle�s farm, and I may have to go away for a few weeks. Could you look after them?�

She had gone very pale, and her face suddenly looked pinched. �If I had to,� she said, �I�d do it.�

�You don�t like dogs?�

�I�ve never had anything to do with them.�

�Get Jamie to show you how to handle them. They�re wonderful creatures, aren�t you, boy?� He patted Roger again, and the dog gazed at him adoringly.

�So I can stay?�

�We�ll see.�

�For a few days?�

�Yes. For a few days, and then we�ll see.�

There was no doubt she was a splendid worker. She scrubbed and cooked and polished and cleaned until he felt that he never wanted to lose her, but it was the dogs that were the most important. They were the light of his life. The dogs and his fits. The fits were important, too. When Jamie went, he and Martha would be alone together, and he might not be able to control himself, and one day, as his mother had said when she was begging for mercy, he�d be caught. His luck wouldn�t always hold. After all, he hadn�t managed to kill Jamie the other day, but though Jamie was leaving because of his attack on him, he was certain Jamie would never tell on him.

He had never forgotten his mother�s words, nor the hatred on her face. �I can see now that I should never have reared you,� she had said. �They told me you were dangerous, but I loved you, heaven help me, and I thought I could manage you. But one day, Ian, they�ll catch you and put you in a loony bin, and you�ll stay there for the rest of your life. You�ve always hated enclosed spaces, haven�t you? Claustrophobia, they call it. You�ll be shut up, Ian, and you�ll never be free again.�

He�d killed her then, and been glad to. He�d thrown down the chair leg with which he had been beating her, and doused the red hot poker with which he had been branding her, and had throttled her. And he hadn�t been found out, because his wife had hated his mother, and he�d told her a cock-and-bull story about how his mother had been mad, and had attacked Ian, and somehow he had managed to convince her that he had been innocent! His wife had been a fool, and when her turn came, it was laughable to see the horror on her face as it dawned on her that he had lied about his mother! He had tied her to a chair, and cut her up while she was still alive, and had then put the pieces in a sack, and buried them at the bottom of the orchard.

His younger brother had put up a better fight, and so had his co-author on his book on the history of early Byzantine architecture, yet he hadn�t been found out about either of them.

He had been frightened at first, when Jamie had managed to escape him. He was getting older, and Jamie was strong, and surprisingly clever. What�s more he�d never get another chance, as Jamie was now always armed, and always on the look-out for trouble, but though Jamie wouldn�t give him away because of the love they�d had for one another (and because he�d managed to convince Jamie that it was the first time one of his fits had come over him), if Jamie discovered that he�d killed Martha, he�d certainly go to the police straight away. Dare Ian let her stay?

The difficulty was that he enjoyed his fits. They gave him a feeling of exhilaration and pride that nothing else in his life could do.

Martha had sought him out, so she deserved any trouble that was coming to her. The dogs needed a keeper, and Martha was good in the house. Martha should remain. It was settled!

Jamie and Martha took the dogs for a walk together every day, and all was nearly well. Though she was scared of them, all but Roger were very good natured, so she had developed a certain amount of confidence with them. Roger, though, was different. Though he behaved himself when Ian or Jamie was near, if he were left alone with her he growled at her, and sometimes he snarled. Martha hated him with a passion as intense as his own.

Jamie left, and the walks continued. Martha made Ian so comfortable that to his surprise he had no difficulty in restraining himself. The house, of which he was immensely proud, had never looked better, and he himself had never fed so well. He was able to work without interruption, and in time he grew almost fond of Martha.

At last the letter which Ian had been expecting from America arrived, and with it a covering letter from his agent, saying that the terms offered were first class, and he fully advised Ian to accept. The lecture tour would last for three months, on a circuit which guaranteed first class hotels and every comfort. Ian was delighted.

�So there it is,� he said to Martha. �Everything will be in your care.�

�Six dogs is a lot all by myself, sir,� she said anxiously. �What happens if one of them falls sick?�

�I�ll leave the address and telephone number of the vet.�

�Couldn�t they go to kennels, sir? I don�t like the responsibility, sir, with you being so fond of them.�

�They�d hate kennels.�

�They�d all be together, and there�s a lot to do in the house if I give it a real spring cleaning.�

�There�s plenty of time to spring clean without me to prepare meals for, and those dogs are my whole family.�

�But�.�.�.�

�But buts, Martha. Those are your orders.�

�What if I refuse?� For a moment her eyes flashed.

�I�ve found out all about you, Martha,� said Jan softly, �so if I were you, I�d do as you�re told.�

She looked terrified. �You�re not going to go the police?� she gasped.

�Not if you behave yourself.�

�Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you!� She threw herself at his feet and clasped him round the knees.

Jan drew himself away disdainfully. �All the same, I�d like an explanation of why you did it.�

�How did you find out?� asked Martha anxiously.

�I hired a private detective.�

�Would he tell the police?�

�Not a chance. He had no idea where you are. Come on. Tell me what happened.�

�I was a battered wife, sir. I called the police myself, but they�d do nothing, so I called the social workers, and a fat lot of good they were! No one helped me, and I was desperate. I couldn�t stand any more, sir. So I made my plans, and the next time he came for me, I hit him.�

�With a carving knife? Sorry, Martha, that won�t do. I want no lies.�

�It�s no lie, sir. It�s the truth I�m telling you. I hit him with a poker, then when he fell, I used the knife. I cut at him to make it look like real violence, you see, and hoped the poker hit would look like a bump, where he fell. Then I turned the house upside down, took all the money there was, and his watch, to make it look like a robbery, and left. It was the middle of the night, you see, and no one heard me, and I�d made my plans. I walked to Andover.�

�A long walk, Martha.�

�Yes, sir, then I took the first train to London, and the first coach to Scotland. I wanted to get right away, you see, and then when we got near here, I saw your drive gates, and asked about the place. The driver told me you lived alone here, and that no one ever saw you, and that you were a famous professor, so it came to me that as I was a good worker, sir, I could help you, and you could help me.�

As this was more or less what Ian had been told by the detective, he felt satisfied. �I see,� he said.

�When you found out about me, were you never afeared of me?� asked Martha.

�No, Martha. Living alone, one takes one�s precautions.�

�Yes, sir,� said Martha. She had gone very pale, and seemed to have trouble with her breathing.

�So you�ll look after the dogs until I return.� This was a statement.

�Oh, yes, sir.�

She hadn�t the courage to tell him of her fears about Roger, and he never referred to the subject again.

It was nearly June when Ian left for America, and Martha watched his departure with despair. The dogs watched it, too, and Roger set up a howl. She immediately took them for a walk, and to her surprise though he seemed subdued and depressed, Roger behaved himself.

For several weeks all seemed to go well. Roger growled softly and bared his teeth from time to time, but he was quite obedient, except that he never went into the kitchen if she were there, and he refused to allow her to enter Ian�s room.

At first this didn�t matter too much. There was no need to change the sheets and make the bed and turn out the room until just before Ian returned, and by that time, she might have come to terms with the dog. She tried kindness, feeding him on special delicacies, and giving him plenty of praise, but he seemed impervious. Then she tried to thwart his guardianship of the room by every means in her power. She�d put his food well away from the kitchen door in the yard, and go upstairs as fast as she could, but whichever staircase she used, he was always there first, having used the other. She got up in the night, having made sure that he wasn�t in the house, but he had found a secret entrance which she could never discover, and was always by the room. Once she took a huge stick to beat him into submission, but his growls were so terrifying as long as she had it in her hand that she was forced to abandon the idea. She tried starving him, but he hunted on his walks, and caught and killed rabbits.

There were now only three days until Ian�s return, and matters had become urgent. She couldn�t not do the room, and explain to Ian, in case he turned nasty and told the police about her. Besides, she had been making her own inquiries about him, from the delivery boy and the milkman, and though neither of them knew anything like the full extent of his madness, both had heard tales of his terrible temper, which they said led to violence, and she had no wish to become a battered victim again.

In desperation she decided to poison Roger. She had seen that the weedkiller in the barn had a poison label on it, and though she was terrified at the thought of trying to kill him, she was even more worried about how to dispose of the body. He was a huge dog, and she had to find somewhere where the other dogs could never find him, to give her away.

The only possible place was the loch. It was half a mile away, at the end of the copse, and it would be a frightening journey, but if she could get him into it, she could take him there in the large wheelbarrow, tie a rope round his neck with a stone on it, tip him in, and he�d sink.

With trembling hands she made him a stew of liver, which he loved, and saw him come near the kitchen door to sniff it. She put in the weedkiller, hoping to heaven that he wouldn�t taste it, and praying that she had given him a lethal dose, then poured the stew into his bowl, and when it had cooled sufficiently, she put it outside the door, and went upstairs to her room. She didn�t dare go to Ian�s, in case Roger divined it, as usual, and so delayed his death.

She lay down on her bed and watched the clock. She had given herself one hour to wait.

Once she thought she heard a howl, but she didn�t move. Her room was on the other side of the house from the kitchen, and two storeys up, so she wouldn�t hear his death throes if there were any.

At last the hour was up, and she went down the stairs, and peered out of the kitchen window.

Roger was lying rigid and still beside his bowl. His lips were drawn away from his teeth in an expression of agony, there was foam on his mouth, and his eyes were almost starting out of his head. A fly was walking over one of them.

The struggle to get him into the wheelbarrow was horrible. It was a hot day, and Roger was unbelievably heavy. She managed it at last, and with the rope and the stone also in the barrow, she set off determinedly for the loch.

The walk seemed to take for ever. She was frightened of tripping over tree roots on the ride, and so tipping Roger out before they reached the water. Her heart was pounding, her mouth was dry, and her legs would hardly support her. There was an agonizing pain round her chest, which felt as if she were corseted with an iron band, and sweat poured down her face and neck.

She arrived at the loch and began tying the rope round Roger�s throat. She was surrounded by a cloud of flies, and for some reason, the old dog smelt.

Suddenly she had a feeling that she wasn�t alone. Hardly able to breathe with terror, she turned her head, and saw Ian watching her, a few yards away. He was carrying a loaded gun, and the look of venom on his face was the most awful thing she had ever seen.

�Oh my God!� she whimpered. �It�s you!� Her voice was a croak, and in her terror she nearly fell.

He nodded silently.

�He died,� she babbled.� He ate something which poisoned him, and he died.�

�I know,� said Ian. �I saw the bottle on the kitchen table.�

�You�ve come back too early,� she moaned.

�On the contrary, I�ve come back too late.� There was a long silence while they stared at each other, then he said, �Finish what you�re doing, and come back into the house.�

�You mean, throw Roger into the loch?�

�Yes.�

Trying to knot the rope became a nightmare. It was thick and coarse, and tore her fingernails and the flesh on her hands; by the time she had finished, she was sobbing with pain and exhaustion.

With the gun still levelled at her, Ian said, �Now throw him in.�

She tipped him out of the wheelbarrow, and dragged him by the rope to the water�s edge. Once there, she had no idea how to proceed. �I don�t know how to get him into the water,� she said, with the tears coursing down her cheeks.

�You�d have done it if I hadn�t been here,� said Ian.

With an enormous effort she dragged Roger after her, as she waded into the icy loch. He fell with a splash and a jerk, which nearly threw her off her feet. He sank quite quickly, but Ian said implacably, �Further. Go further into the water.�

�It�s cold,� she said, �and I shall drown.�

�Further,� said Ian, flatly.

�I can�t,� she said abjectly. �I�ve gone as far as I can.� She stood where she was, shivering, with the water round her knees.

�Further.� His voice held menace.

She waded up to her armpits, and stopped again.

�Further,� he called. �Go further.�

�I can�t swim.�

�You killed my dog. My Roger. My greatest friend.�

She let go of the rope under the water and walked on a few paces. The water was now above her shoulders.

�OK?� shouted Ian. �That�s enough. Come back.�

Thankfully she turned to him, and staggered back towards the bank. As she tried to crawl out onto the dry land, she slipped into the mud. Ian laughed shortly, and waited until she was clear of the water. �Now,� he said, �home, and punishment.�

They went towards the house, Ian with the gun pressed into the small of her back, and Martha stumbling and half running in her haste to do as he wanted.

�Back door,� said Ian as the house came in sight.

They went into the kitchen, and now he was shaking with fury. Like Roger, his mouth was drawn away from his clenched teeth in a snarl, and his head was nodding violently.

�Please,� she implored him. �Please! I didn�t want to hurt him, but I was frightened of him. He wouldn�t let me do your room, you see, and I was afraid you�d be angry with me, and turn me over to the police.�

�You killed my dog!� said Roger. �You killed my dog! Nothing is too bad for you! Nothing!�

�I didn�t want to, I swear it!�

He fetched her a stinging blow across the face with the butt of his gun, and she fell sprawling on the floor.

�You poisoned him, so I�ll poison you!� he said. �You made him suffer, so you will suffer; his death took a long time, so yours wilt too.�

He lunged at her, and seeing the gun pointing away from her for a moment, Martha went for him. She was very tired, but terror had given her strength. She wrestled and fought, kicked, punched, and bit the wrists that supported his clawing hands in her efforts to escape him, but he too had been given an extra strength�.�.�. the strength of a madman. He seemed hardly to notice that she was fighting him. He knocked her out, and while she was unconscious, he fetched the rest of the rope which she had used on Roger, hauled her into a chair, and tied her to it. He then poured a few drops of the weedkiller into a glass of water, and forced it down her throat.

She came to with a cry. A searing pain coursed through her gums, her tongue, and her chest, and she spluttered and gasped as her face began to swell. A foam was forming round her lips, and Ian bent over her, watching her every expression gloatingly.

�That isn�t enough to kill you,� he said, �but you�ll have a dose every day. You killed Roger. My friend! My baby!�

He went out of the room for quite a time, and she waited in terror, writhing with pain. She struggled feebly from time to time, but without conviction.

When he returned, he was carrying a red hot poker, and there was a look of satisfaction on his face. �This hurts, too,� he said. �I�m told it�s very painful indeed.�

She tried to say something, then when she found she couldn�t form the words with her swollen mouth, she attempted a scream.

Ian was startled. �Oh, dear me, no!� he said. �That will never do!�

He put the poker carefully on the kitchen stove, and taking up a glass cloth, he wound it deftly into a gag, and tied it round her face. Tears were pouring down her cheeks again, and this seemed to please him. �Good!� he said. �Keep it up. Crying is good for you they say.�

He stripped off her blouse, picked up the poker again, and very very carefully branded the flesh he had exposed, making patterns in the sizzling skin.

She was waving her head from side to side, and he could hear muffled noises.

After a few minutes he seemed to get bored. �Now what shall I do?� he asked himself petulantly. �I really don�t like the smell of burning very much, and this isn�t as much fun as I thought it would be. I�ve done it before.� He wrinkled his nose distastefully as he searched the kitchen for inspiration. His eye lit on the carving knife, and with a grunt of approval he began slashing at her. The act seemed to send him into a further paroxysm of rage, and he kept this up until he was exhausted. Then he put the knife down on the table, and said childishly, �Ian is tired. Ian is going to have a little bye-byes.�

For a week he kept her tied to the chair, visiting her from time to time, to torture her, and to gloat over her pain. Once or twice he actually cut bits off her arm, and carried them out of the kitchen door, murmuring as he went, �Another horrid smell. You are making me do very unpleasant things, you filthy woman, and I shan�t forgive you for this, you know.�

Martha spent much of the time unconscious, and even when she was aware, the enormity of the hurt was such that she could really hardly feel it.

At last one day, Ian said triumphantly, �It is time. They are waiting.�

Martha�s eyes widened questioningly, and as if in answer, he said, �The dogs. But first we must get rid of the poison from your system. A nice strong purgative is what is required.�

He dosed her with a huge draught of laxative, and left her for thirty-six hours, at the end of which he returned and unbound her.

Too feeble to stand, she fell.

He kicked her hard. �No, certainly not,� he said angrily. �You have work to do. You must clean up this mess. It�s vile. Like you are.�

She shook her head weakly and pathetically, and by bending down and listening to her closely through the gag, he thought she said, �I can�t. I really can�t.�

�You can. You really can,� he answered. �I can assure you you can, because if you don�t, what you�ve been through already will seem like a picnic.�

He threw some cloths at her, and pushed a bucket with water and suds towards her. �Quick!� he said. �We don�t want to waste time!� He took his gun off the table and levelled it at her.

So dizzy that she hardly knew what she was doing, she cleaned the kitchen. He watched her until she had finished, knocked her into the chair, and stripped her. He threw her clothes into the stove, lifted her up, and slung her over his shoulder. He marched her to the compound where the other dogs spent their time when not out for a walk, and said, �They�ve been waiting for you.�

Then he tossed her to them, and laughed as she screamed and struggled. The dogs fell on her ravenously, and tore her to pieces.

As they began eating her, Ian suddenly began to cry. �Roger!� he sobbed heartbrokenly. �Roger! I should never have left you! My darling! My baby I should never have left you!�

He blew his nose, then slowly and deliberately put the handkerchief in his pocket.

�Good doggies!� he said. �Good little doggies! Finish her up! Every scrap!�

The dogs wagged their tails as they gnawed her bones.

Blood spattered her thighs.

If she had had the opportunity�� she was a fair-minded young lady�� Miranda Merrilees would have admitted to a temporary, albeit crucial, lack of attention to what she was doing. She might, if pressed, have freely acknowledged that when crossing a road, a busy one, and during the morning rush-hour, one should take the maximum of care, should in fact treat each vehicle as a lethal weapon.

Perhaps on this June morning she had other matters on her mind: thoughts far removed from the mundane world of hurtling cars and fleeing lorries and lumbering buses. Indeed�� it is only possible to surmise�� she may well have been clutching to her the memory of that goodnight kiss, bestowed on her with chaste gallantry some ten hours earlier by Jonathan, he of the Adonis physique and the long eyelashes.

Bert Brougham knew nothing of her reasons for this lapse in diligence, and cared even less. For it was his vehicle�� a sleekly white station-wagon�� which hit Miranda as she was half-way across the main Holborn road.

He saw it all as if in some weird dream, as if he were viewing the scene from cloud level, like some celestial planetary observer. His own bulky form jammed in the driving-seat; the stunned realization that the young girl ahead was unaware of his existence; the split microsecond out of his own life, as his brain flashed its message to hands and feet; the shrieking, deafening cacophony of sound as his brakes caterwauled in protest; and finally, finally, the bitter knowledge that he could never stop the car in time, and that even before he had stamped the brake pedal flat, there had been no chance, no chance, no chance�

Impact.

Until his very last day on earth, he would remember it. That infinitesimal splinter out of time as she turned her golden head and saw the bonnet of the car scant inches from her; and the look on her face�� dear God, that face!�� as its blankness evaporated, as its chocolate-box prettiness dissolved into a grimace of pure terror.

Impact.

The station-wagon, travelling at thirty miles an hour, caught her squarely, tossed her body high in the air, slammed into it again as it dropped limply on to the tarmacadamed roadway. She lay there motionless: Miranda Merrilees, fifteen years old, limbs asprawl, clothing shredded, eyes wide and staring, teeth bared in a last supreme agony.

Blood spattered her thighs.

There was blood everywhere. It formed tiny puddles in the road and trickled feebly into a nearby grid. It lay in great patches across the bonnet of the station-wagon, its gruesome pattern startlingly scarlet against the virgin-white metal. And it gushed copiously, endlessly, out of Miranda�s once-smiling lips.

Brougham sat there at the wheel of his car, his body heaving in dry retching sobs, sweat pouring down his face and through his clothes. Noise filled his ears, the noise of screaming crowds, of honking and hooting and hoarse cries, of sirens and bells and: revving engines. He covered his ears, but could not blot out the cumulative blast of it. He had killed her, this poor young kid on the threshold of life; regardless of circumstances, he had killed her. Had�� killed�� her.

Bert Brougham, big, tough, fortyish, sat for long minutes, rocking gently to and fro, his whole frame rigid with a misery that could never be expressed in cold words.

Beneath the slowly turning fans the room was full. A sea of black faces, spotted with a score or so of white, nodded, smiled and sweated. The hum of voices was everywhere, British diplomatic voices and the wide range of African, punctuated by high delighted laughter. Among the guests at the reception the waiters moved with trays of drinks and delicate snacks.

In the crowd Elisha Ngwami stood out, by both reputation and appearance. A powerful bull of a man in his mid thirties, he wore his khaki drill so easily as almost to appear naked. Regarding his pleasant, good-natured face, Stephen Gresham found it difficult to believe all he had heard of the man�s cruelty and excess, of the brutal guard which he had built around himself. For Ngwami was general and commander of the army in Kowlongo, a powerful and dangerous figure.

It was clear that Stephen�s sister also found him attractive. He saw how her eyes shone as she dabbed the perspiration from her forehead with a handkerchief, and answered the general�s question with a smile. The light perfume on the handkerchief reached Ngwami. He took it from her and held the lace edge momentarily to his broad nose, then handed it back. His teeth were white, a scar on the cheek added to his dashing air. Observing that her glass was empty he summoned a waiter. She hesitated over crushed orange then selected a glass of sparkling wine, dewed in the warm room.

Mary Gresham was a nurse with qualifications in tropical medicine. It was largely because of her appointment to the Kowlongo District Hospital that Stephen had sought and secured a post of junior official with the European Economic Mission. They were an attractive pair, tall and fair skinned with blue British eyes, clearly recognizable as brother and sister. Further observation revealed that his eyes, beneath thicker brows, were bright sea blue, hers more misty, his hair wavy and gold, hers straight and corn-coloured.

They circulated. At seven o�clock, when darkness had succeeded the brief African twilight, the party broke up. Though Mary had a car of her own, brother and sister had been given a lift by a senior member of the mission. Unfortunately the man had found the heat and wine too much, and driven home early. Stephen and Mary were pleased and rather flattered, therefore, when General Ngwami put his car at their disposal, for they lived two miles beyond the far side of the city.

It was a beautiful car, a Mercedes, which purred past the gleaming windows of the main streets, then by shabby markets and down the rough road beyond, where stone gave way to shanties and shacks set with a few colonial manors, and the odours of drains rose on the night air.

The Greshams rented a modern bungalow. The Mercedes drew up and they stepped out into the chirruping night. Ngwami stood beside them.

�Will you come in for a drink, general?� Stephen said.

It seemed almost as if Ngwami was expecting the invitation. He inclined his head with a smile and stepped aside, allowing Mary to proceed him to the gate. Through shrubs and tropic flowers they followed the drive to the garage and turned along the front of the house. As she opened the door Stephen was aware of a second car drawing up behind the Mercedes, but paid it little attention. In so far as it registered at all, he took it for some personal bodyguard of the general.

�Do come in.� Mary hovered about the sitting room adjusting lights and slatted blinds. She drew the bright curtain of hair from her face. �Won�t you sit down?�

Lissom as a tiger, perspiration scarcely showing beneath the arms of his drill jacket, Ngwami crossed the room and seated himself on a delicate upright chair beyond the broad settee.

Stephen hesitated about removing his own jacket, and decided to leave it on.

�What can I get you, general? Wine? Gin? Beer? Juice?�

�You have ananas?� said Ngwami.

�I think so.�

�With crushed ice.�

�Right. If you�ll excuse me a minute.� Stephen left the room. He found no ananas in the fridge, but like most well-to-do people kept a supply of soft drinks in the garage. He flicked on the lights and let himself out into the velvet night.

He heard nothing. As he fitted the key into the garage lock he was suddenly seized from behind in a vice-like grip and a hand was clapped over his mouth. He smelled the clean smell of an African body, saw a black wrist protruding from a neat drill sleeve.

�You be quiet,� a voice hissed in his ear, �and no harm come to you.�

Stephen struggled. A fist struck him a stunning blow across the side of the head, a thumb pressed with frightening force on his neck beneath the ear. He felt his senses slipping away and was still. The pressure was eased, but still he was held immovable.

�Hands behind,� said a voice.

Stephen did as he was told. A garden post was between his shoulder-blades. He heard the rasp and felt the metallic bite of handcuffs against the bones of his wrists. His shoulders were released.

�Now you be quiet!� the voice repeated. �Or I gag you.�

Terrified, Stephen nodded. �I�ll be quiet.� He moved his head to ease the pain in his neck.

There were three men, all in khaki uniform. One walked along the front of the house and knocked three times on the door, then returned. A light appeared in the hallway as the living-room door was opened. Abruptly it vanished. Stephen heard voices and the sounds of brief struggle, then his sister�s voice raised in a muted scream, �No! No! No!� and a louder scream. A shadow moved across the blinds, something in the house fell.

�For Christ�s sake!� Horrified, Stephen stared from the house to his captors and back again. One of the soldiers lit a cigarette. A second grinned and laughed softly in a broken falsetto. Frightened to shout himself, Stephen struggled impotently against the post at his back.

The silence within the house was broken again by his sister�s cries, cries of outrage and pain. They did not last long. Then all was quiet for a long time.

Stephen stared at the blinds with fearful fascination. The silence was almost harder to bear than the cries. His imagination was on fire. Against the silence he became aware of little night sounds, the cicadas, the barking of a dog, a radio in a shanty a hundred yards away.

The soldier finished his cigarette. A while afterwards there was a voice within the house. Ngwami. He was speaking to Mary, but she seemed not to reply. Again the living-room light showed in the hallway. The front door opened and closed. Ngwami stood for a moment, immaculate as ever, then turned down the path towards the garage and the parked cars beyond.

�Goodnight, Mr�Gresham.� His step did not falter as he passed Stephen and the guards. His driver opened the car door. Ngwami was stepping inside when Stephen�s outrage broke. He tugged against the post.

�Ngwami!� he shouted. �You bloody bastard! You�.�.�.�

Before he could say more, two savage blows knocked his head sideways and back again. Momentarily he hung from the pole. Through the dizziness he felt his nose blocked with blood, and looking up saw the gleaming car draw away, Ngwami�s khaki drill pale at the rear window.

�I tell you, no noise!� As Stephen straightened a fist struck him low in the stomach, making him lurch forward retching. Overcome with nausea he scarcely felt the handcuffs being removed. Slowly he recovered. One guard held him while a, second pulled his arm out straight in front.

�You listen! You hear! You hear?�

Raising his head sickly Stephen nodded. A knife was in the second guard�s hand.

�You listen good. You say nothing of this. You say one word and we kill you! Mr�Gresham�� you understand!�

Heavily Stephen nodded again. The guard laid his knife against the outstretched forearm and drew it across with a quick deep slash. Stephen cried out.

�That help you remember. One word and we kill you!�

His arm was released, the knife returned to its sheath at the webbing belt. Their duty done, the guards turned and strolled unhurriedly down the drive to the road. A minute later their car followed in the wake of Ngwami�s Mercedes. Tropical bushes intervened, the noise of the engine faded against the African night.

Blood streamed down Stephen�s arm, dripping from his fingers to the ground. He raised it above his head and turned towards the house. The blood trickled past bis elbow and into the sleeve of his shirt. But though it was deep the wound was not serious. As sickness ebbed his thoughts were with his sister, fearful of what he might find.

She lay half on the settee almost as Ngwami had left her, clothes rumpled, limbs in disarray. Her face was shocked, swollen on one cheek, but beyond the ravage and emptiness lay a shadow of lust that Stephen had never seen in the face of any woman. In his pure sister it disturbed and sickened him. Heavily she drew her legs together and sat forward, staring at the floor. Her body jerked with a brief spasm.

�Oh, love!� Stephen laid his hand upon her shoulder. She drew away, violated and not wanting to be touched, too wretched and confused to cope with his comfort.

Stephen saw his blood splash scarlet on the rug and polished floor. Staunching it as well as he was able with a handkerchief, he made his way to the bathroom.

Published by Purnell.