“I’m sure we can reach some sort of mutual agreement,” Houseman said into the phone. “Let me see. Miss Doalson?” A suitable pause for dramatic effect. “Do I have time today to…Well, cancel that. It can certainly wait until I see…” Back to the phone. “What did you say your name was?”

“We aren’t going to see each other,” Lynley responded patiently. “You’re going to give me the address in York and that’s going to be the end of our relationship.”

“Oh, I don’t see how I can-”

“Certainly you do.” Lynley’s voice was steel. “Because, as you said, you haven’t been paid yet. And in order for you ever to get paid once the estate is settled-which may, incidentally, take years if we don’t get to the bottom of this-you’re going to have to give me Tessa Teys’s address.”

A pause for consideration. “What is that, Miss Doalson?” the infuriating voice asked in saccharine tones. “On the other line? Well, put him off, will you?” A martyred sigh. “I can see, Inspector, that you’re not an easy man to deal with. We all have to make a living, you know.”

“Believe me, I know,” Lynley replied curtly. “The address?”

“I’ll just have to find it in my fi les. May I give you a ring in…say an hour or so?”

“No.”

“Well, good God, man-”

“I’m on my way to Richmond.”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary. Just wait a moment, old chap.” Houseman leaned back in his chair, eyeing the grey sky for a minute. He reached over to his dented filing cabinet, opening and closing a few drawers for effect. “What’s that, Miss Doalson?” he called. “No, put her off till tomorrow, will you? I don’t care if she’s weeping buckets, sweetheart, I don’t have time to spend with her today.” He picked the scrap of memo paper off his desk. “Ah, here it is, Inspector,” he said and gave Lynley the address. “But don’t expect her to welcome you with open arms, will you?”

“I don’t particularly care how she welcomes me, Mr. Houseman. Good-”

“Oh, but you ought to, Inspector. Just a bit, you know. Hubby went mad when he heard the news. Thought he’d strangle me right on the spot, so God knows what he’ll do when Scotland Yard shows up. He’s one of those scholarly types, big words and thick specs. But trust me, Inspector, that man is deep. There’s an animal inside him.”

Lynley’s eyes narrowed. It was a cast upon the waters, an expert manoeuvre. He wanted to swim past it but admitted defeat. “What are you talking about? What news did he hear?”

“The news about hubby number one, of course.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Houseman?”

“That Tessa Teys is a bigamist, old boy,” Houseman finished with delight. “Married up with number two without seeing to the formal bye-byes to our William. Can you imagine her surprise when I popped up on her doorstep?”

The house wasn’t at all what he had expected. Women who desert husband and children should somehow end up in tenement buildings pungent with the odours of garlic and urine. They should daily subdue a bucking, quarrelsome conscience with liberal applications of soporific gin. They should be faded and worn, their looks quite destroyed by the ravages of shame. Whatever they should be, Lynley was certain they shouldn’t be Tessa Teys Mowrey.

He’d parked in front of the house, and they stared at it silently until Havers fi nally spoke. “Not exactly gone downhill, has she?” she asked.

They’d found it easily, a new, middle-class neighbourhood a few miles from the city centre, the kind of place where houses have numbers as well as coy little names. The Mowreys’ home was called Jorvik View. It was the concrete reality of every mediocre dream: a facade of brick covered the poured-block construction; red tiles swept up to form steep gables; white-curtained bay windows showed off sitting and dining rooms on either side of a polished front door. A single-car, attached garage was topped by a white iron-fenced roof terrace, and a door opened onto this from the upper floor of the house. It was on this terrace that they had their first glimpse of Tessa.

She came out of the door, blonde hair blowing lightly in the breeze, to water potted plants: spider chrysanthemums, dahlias, and marigolds that made an autumn wall of colour against the white iron. She saw the Bentley and hesitated, watering can poised in midair, appearing every bit in the late morning light as if Renoir had captured her by surprise.

And she looked, Lynley noted grimly, not a day older than her photograph taken nineteen years before and religiously enshrined at Gembler Farm.

“So much for the wages of sin,” he muttered.

“Maybe there’s a portrait in the attic,” Havers replied.

Lynley glanced at her in surprise. Thus far today, she had been so markedly diligent about behaving appropriately, about cooperating completely and promptly with his every order, that to hear her break away from that and say something amusing was a bit of a shock. A nice one, in fact. “Honours to you, Sergeant,” he chuckled. “Let’s see what Mrs. Mowrey has to say.”

She met them at the front door, looking from one to the other in confusion and-was it veiled just behind the eyes?-a touch of fear. “Good morning,” she said. Down from the roof terrace, she looked at least more like a woman approaching middle age. But the hair was still sunny-blonde, the fi gure slight, the skin lightly freckled and virtually unlined.

Lynley showed her his warrant card. “Scotland Yard CID. May we come in, Mrs. Mowrey?”

She looked from Lynley to Havers’s grim face and back again. “Of course.” Her voice was quite even, polite and warm. But there was a hesitation, a rigidity in her movements, that suggested strong emotion withheld.

She led them to the left, through an open door that took them into the sitting room, where she gestured wordlessly at the furniture, beckoning them to sit. It was a well-furnished, tasteful room, with pieces of a modern design, pine and walnut that mingled with subdued autumn colours. A clock was ticking somewhere, light and rapid like a racing pulse. Here was none of the riotous disorder of Olivia Odell nor the mechanical precision of Gembler Farm. Rather, this room was obviously the gathering place for a congenial family, with informal photographs displayed, souvenirs of trips, and a stack of boxed games and cards shelved among books.

Tessa Mowrey chose a chair in the farthest corner where the light was weakest. She sat down on its edge, her back upright, her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap. She wore a plain gold wedding band. She didn’t ask why Scotland Yard had come calling. Rather, she followed Lynley with her eyes as he walked to the mantel and took note of the photographs that were its display.

“Your children?” he asked. There were two of them, a girl and a boy, pictures taken on a family holiday in St. Ives. He recognised the familiar sweep of the bay, the grey and white buildings on the shore, and the assortment of boats left beached at low tide.

“Yes,” she responded. She volunteered nothing else. Quiescent, she awaited the inevitable. The silence continued. Lynley allowed it to do so. Eventually, sheer nervousness compelled her to go on.

“Has Russell telephoned you?” There was an edge of despair in her voice. It was dull-sounding, as if she’d experienced the full range of grief and there was nothing left in her, no depth of emotion to plummet further. “I thought he might. Of course, it’s been three weeks. I’d begun to hope he was only punishing me till we sorted everything out.” She stirred uneasily when Sergeant Havers took out her notebook. “Oh, must you?” she asked faintly.

“I’m afraid so,” Lynley replied.

“Then I’ll tell you everything. It’s best.” She looked down at her hands and tightened their grip on each other.

Odd, Lynley thought, how as members of the same species we inevitably rely on the same set of gestures for our nonverbal signals of distress. A hand raised to the throat, arms cradling the body protectively, a quick adjustment of clothing, a flinching to ward off a psychic blow. Tessa, he saw, was gathering strength now to get through this ordeal, as if one hand could give the other a transfusion of courage through the simple expedient of fi ngers intertwined. It seemed to work. She looked up, her expression defi ant.