Occasionally she talked of siding with James, as if the breach were not of her making, but more usually she cited Leo's sins of omission and commission. "He kept stealing from us," she said once, "things that we didn't notice… most of them quite valuable. It made James so angry when he finally found out. He accused Vera… it made for a lot of unpleasantness." She fell into a troubled silence.

"What happened?"

"Oh, the usual," she sighed. "Leo owned up. He thought it was very funny. 'How would an idiot like Vera know what was valuable?' he said. Poor woman-I think Bob gave her a black eye over it because he was afraid they'd lose the Lodge. It was awful… she treated us as tyrants from then on."

"I thought Leo was fond of Vera. Didn't she look after him and Elizabeth when you were away?"

"I don't think he had any feelings for her-he doesn't have feelings for anyone except possibly Elizabeth-but Vera adored him, of course… called him her 'blue-eyed darling' and let him wrap her round his little finger."

"Did she never have children of her own?"

Ailsa shook her head. "Leo was her surrogate son. She bent over backward to protect him, which wasn't a good thing in retrospect."

"Why?"

"Because he used her against us."

"What did he do with the money?"

"The usual," she repeated dryly. "Blew it on gambling."

On another occasion: "Leo was a very clever child. His IQ was 145 when he was eleven. I've no idea where it came from-James and I are very average-but it caused terrible problems. He thought he could get away with anything, particularly when he discovered how easy it was to manipulate people. Of course, we asked ourselves where we went wrong. James blames himself for not taking a stronger line earlier. I blame the fact that we were abroad so often and had to rely on the school to control him." She shook her head. "The truth is simpler, I think. An idle brain is the devil's workshop, and Leo was never interested in hard work."

Of Elizabeth: "She lived in Leo's shadow. It made her desperate for attention, poor child. She adored her father, and used to throw tantrums whenever he was in uniform, presumably because she knew it meant he was going away again. I remember once, when she was eight or nine, she cut the legs off his regimental trousers. He was furious with her, and she screamed and yelled and said he deserved it. When I asked her why, she said she hated him dressed up." Another shake of her head. "She had a very disturbed adolescence. James blamed Leo for introducing her to his friends… I blamed our absences. We lost her effectively by the time she turned eighteen. We set her up in a flat with some girlfriends but most of what we were told about her lifestyle was lies."

She was ambivalent about her own feelings. "It's impossible to stop loving your children," she told him. "You always hope things will change for the better. The trouble is, somewhere along the line they abandoned the values we taught them and decided the world owed them a living. It's led to so much resentment. They think it's their father's bloody-mindedness that's caused the money to dry up instead of recognizing that they took the pail to the well once too often."

Mark sat back on his heels as the fire roared to life. His own feelings for Leo and Elizabeth were anything but ambivalent. He disliked them intensely. Far from taking the pail to the well once too often, they had installed permanent taps that worked through emotional blackmail, family honor, and parental guilt. His own view was that Leo was a psychopath with a gambling addiction, and Elizabeth was a nymphomaniac with an alcohol problem. Nor could he see any "mitigating circumstances" for their behavior. They had been given every advantage in life, and had failed spectacularly to build on them.

Ailsa had been putty in their hands for years, torn between maternal love and maternal guilt for her failures. To her, Leo was the same blue-eyed boy that Vera adored, and all James's attempts to contain his son's excesses had been met with pleas to give him a "second chance." It was no surprise that Elizabeth had been desperate for attention, no surprise either that she was incapable of sustaining relationships. Leo's personality dominated the family. His mood swings created strife or calm. At no point was anyone allowed to forget his existence. When he wanted, he could charm the birds from trees; when he didn't, he made life miserable for everyone. Including Mark…

The sound of the phone intruded into his thoughts, and he glanced up to find James looking at him.

"You'd better go and listen," the Colonel said, offering him a key. "They might stop if they see you in the library."

"Who?"

A tired shake of the head. "They obviously know you're here," was his only answer.

When he first entered the room, Mark assumed the caller had hung up till he leaned toward the answerphone on the desk and heard the sound of stealthy breathing through the amplifier. He lifted the receiver. "Hello?" No response. "Hello?… hello?…" The line went dead. What on earth…?

Out of habit, he dialed 1471 and scouted 'round for a pen to jot down the caller's number. It was an unnecessary exercise, he realized, as he listened to the computerized voice and noticed a piece of card, propped against an old-fashioned inkstand, with the same number alongside the name "Prue Weidon" already written on it. Puzzled, he replaced the receiver.

The answerphone was an old-fashioned one with tapes rather than voicemail. A light flashed at the side, indicating messages, with the number 5 showing in the "calls" box. Miniature tape boxes were piled in stacks behind the machine, and a quick search showed that each one was dated, suggesting a permanent record rather than regular erasure. Mark pressed the "new messages" button and listened to the tape rewinding.

After a couple of clicks, a woman's voice filled the speaker.

"You won't be able to pretend innocence much longer… not if your solicitor listens to these messages. You think by ignoring us we'll go away… but we won't. Does Mr. Ankerton know about the child? Does he know there's living proof of what you did? Who does she take after, do you think…? You? Or her mother? It's all so easy with DNA… just one hair will prove you a liar and a murderer. Why didn't you tell the police that Ailsa went to London to talk to Elizabeth the day before she died? Why won't you admit that she called you insane because Elizabeth told her the truth…? It's why you hit her… it's why you killed her… How do you think your poor wife felt to find out that her only grandchild was your daughter…?"

After that, Mark had little choice but to stay. In a bizarre reversal of roles, it was James who now set out to reassure. He hoped Mark understood that none of it was true. James wouldn't have kept the tapes if there was any question of guilt. It had started in the middle of November, two or three calls a day accusing him of all manner of beastliness. Recently the frequency of the disturbance had risen, with the phone ringing through the night to stop him sleeping.

This fact was certainly true. Even though the bell was muffled by the shut library door and the phones in other rooms had been disconnected, Mark, infinitely more sensitive to the sound than his host, lay awake, his ears waiting for the distant jangle. It was a relief each time it came. He told himself he had an hour to try for sleep before the next one, and each time his brain went into overdrive. If none of it were true, why was James so frightened? Why hadn't he told Mark when it first began? And how-why?-did he endure it?

Some time during the night the smell of burning pipe tobacco told him James was awake. He toyed with the idea of getting up and talking to him, but his thoughts were too confused to attempt a discussion in the dark hours. It was a while before he questioned how he could smell tobacco when James's room was on the other side of the house, and curiosity drew him to his window, where a pane was open. He saw with astonishment that the old man was sitting on the terrace where Ailsa had died, swathed in a heavy coat.