Quilley must have stood there looking puzzled for too long. The woman’s eyes narrowed and her rosebud mouth tightened so much that white furrows radiated from the red circle of her lips.

‘May I come in?’ she asked.

Stunned, Quilley stood back and let her enter. She walked straight over to a wicker armchair and sat down. The basketwork creaked under her. From there, she surveyed the room, with its waxed parquet floor, stone fireplace and antique Ontario furniture.

‘Nice,’ she said, clutching her handbag on her lap. Quilley sat down opposite her. Her dress was a size too small and the material strained over her red, fleshy upper arms and pinkish bosom. The hem rode up as she crossed her legs, exposing a wedge of fat, mottled thigh. Primly, she pulled it down again over her dimpled knees.

‘I’m sorry to appear rude,’ said Quilley, regaining his composure, ‘but who the hell are you?’

‘My name is Peplow,’ the woman said. ‘Gloria Peplow. I’m a widow.’

Quilley felt a tingling sensation along his spine, the way he always did when fear began to take hold of him.

He frowned and said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know you, do I?’

‘We’ve never met,’ the woman replied, ‘but I think you knew my husband.’

‘I don’t recall any Peplow. Perhaps you’re mistaken?’

Gloria Peplow shook her head and fixed him with her piggy eyes. He noticed they were black, or as near as. ‘I’m not mistaken, Mr Quilley. You didn’t only know my husband, you also plotted with him to murder me.’

Quilley flushed and jumped to his feet. ‘That’s absurd! Look, if you’ve come here to make insane accusations like that, you’d better go.’ He stood like an ancient statue, one hand pointing dramatically towards the door.

Mrs Peplow smirked. ‘Oh, sit down. You look very foolish standing there like that.’

Quilley continued to stand. ‘This is my home, Mrs Peplow, and I insist that you leave. Now!’

Mrs Peplow sighed and opened the gilded plastic clasp on her purse. She took out a Shoppers Drug Mart envelope, picked out two colour photographs and dropped them next to the Wedgwood dish on the antique wine table by her chair. Leaning forward, Quilley could see clearly what they were: one showed him standing with Peplow outside the Park Plaza, and the other caught the two of them talking outside the Scotiabank at Bloor and Spadina. Mrs Peplow flipped the photos over, and Quilley saw that they had been date-stamped by the processors.

‘You met with my husband at least twice to help him plan my death.’

‘That’s ridiculous. I do remember him now I’ve seen the picture. I just couldn’t recollect his name. He was a fan. We talked about mystery novels. I’m very sorry to hear that he’s passed away.’

‘He had a heart attack, Mr Quilley, and now I’m all alone in the world.’

‘I’m very sorry, but I don’t see…’

Mrs Peplow waved his protests aside. Quilley noticed the dark sweat stain on the tight material around her armpit. She fumbled with the catch on her purse again and brought out a pack of Export Lights and a book of matches.

‘I don’t allow smoking in my house,’ Quilley said. ‘It doesn’t agree with me.’

‘Pity,’ she said, lighting the cigarette and dropping the spent match in the Wedgwood bowl. She blew a stream of smoke directly at Quilley, who coughed and fanned it away.

‘Listen to me, Mr Quilley,’ she said, ‘and listen good. My husband might have been stupid, but I’m not. He was not only a pathetic and boring little man, he was also an open book. Don’t ask me why I married him. He wasn’t even much of a man, if you know what I mean. Do you think I haven’t known for some time that he was thinking of ways to get rid of me? I wouldn’t give him a divorce because the one thing he did – the only thing he did – was provide for me and he didn’t even do that very well. I’d have got half if we divorced, but half of what he earned isn’t enough to keep a bag lady. I’d have had to go to work and I don’t like that idea. So I watched him. He got more and more desperate, more and more secretive. When he started looking smug, I knew he was up to something.’

‘Mrs Peplow,’ Quilley interrupted, ‘this is all very well, but I don’t see what it has to do with me. You come in here and pollute my home with smoke, then you start telling me some fairy tale about your husband, a man I met casually once or twice. I’m busy, Mrs Peplow, and quite frankly I’d rather you left and let me get back to work.’

‘I’m sure you would.’ She flicked a column of ash into the Wedgwood bowl. ‘As I was saying, I knew he was up to something, so I started following him. I thought he might have another woman, unlikely as it seemed, so I took my camera along. I wasn’t really surprised when he headed for the Park Plaza instead of going back to the office after lunch one day. I watched the elevator go up to the nineteenth floor, the bar, so I waited across the street in the crowd for him to come out again. As you know, I didn’t have to wait very long. He came out with you. And it was just as easy the next time.’

‘I’ve already told you, Mrs Peplow, he was a mystery buff, a fellow collector, that’s all-’

‘Yes, yes, I know he was. Him and his stupid catalogues and collection. Still,’ she mused, ‘it had its uses. That’s how I found out who you were. I’d seen your picture on the book covers, of course. If I may say so, it does you more than justice.’ She looked him up and down as if he were a side of beef hanging in a butcher’s window. He cringed. ‘As I was saying, my husband was obvious. I knew he must be chasing you for advice. He spends so much time escaping to his garden or his little world of books that it was perfectly natural he would go to a mystery novelist for advice rather than to a real criminal. I imagine you were a bit more accessible, too. A little flattery and you were hooked. Just another puzzle for you to work on.’

‘Look, Mrs Peplow-’

‘Let me finish.’ She ground out her cigarette butt in the bowl. ‘Foxgloves, indeed! Do you think he could manage to brew up a dose of digitalis without leaving traces all over the place? Do you know what he did the first time? He put just enough in my Big Mac to make me a bit nauseous and make my pulse race, but he left the leaves and stems in the garbage! Can you believe that? Oh, I became very careful in my eating habits after that, Mr Quilley. Anyway, your little plan didn’t work. I’m here and he’s dead.’

Quilley paled. ‘My God, you killed him, didn’t you?’

‘He was the one with the bad heart, not me.’ She lit another cigarette.

‘You can hardly blackmail me for plotting with your husband to kill you when he’s the one who’s dead,’ said Quilley. ‘And as for evidence, there’s nothing. No, Mrs Peplow, I think you’d better go, and think yourself lucky I don’t call the police.’

Mrs Peplow looked surprised. ‘What are you talking about? I have no intention of blackmailing you for plotting to kill me.’

‘Then what…?’

‘Mr Quilley, my husband was blackmailing you. That’s why you killed him.’

Quilley slumped back in his chair. ‘I what?’

She took a sheet of paper from her purse and passed it over to him. On it were just two words: ‘Trotton – Quilley.’ He recognized the neat handwriting. ‘That’s a photocopy,’ Mrs Peplow went on. ‘The original’s where I found it, slipped between the pages of a book called Signed in Blood by X. J. Trotton. Do you know that book, Mr Quilley?’

‘Vaguely. I’ve heard of it.’

‘Oh, have you? It might also interest you to know that along with that book and the slip of paper, locked away in my husband’s files, is a copy of your own first novel. I put it there.’

Quilley felt the room spinning around him. ‘I… I…’ Peplow had given him the impression that Gloria was stupid, but that was turning out to be far from the truth.

‘My husband’s only been dead for two days. If the doctors look, they’ll know that he’s been poisoned. For a start, they’ll find high levels of potassium and then they’ll discover eosinophilia. Do you know what they are, Mr Quilley? I looked them up. They’re a kind of white blood cell, and you find lots of them around if there’s been any allergic reaction or inflammation. If I was to go to the police and say I’d been suspicious about my husband’s behaviour over the past few weeks, that I had followed him and photographed him with you, and if they were to find the two books and the slip of paper in his files… Well, I think you know what they’d make of it, don’t you? Especially if I told them he came home feeling ill after a lunch with you.’