“I can’t help observing that to ensure Sir Owain’s liberty you seem to have given up your own.”

“I am well rewarded. The work is light and the life is pleasant. I believe you’ll find that our arrangement is the equal of any more oppressive or restrictive regime, and offers a humane and enlightened alternative.”

“In other words … as long as you’re steering Sir Owain and whispering in his ear, I should recommend against any form of asylum.”

“Sir Owain is not mad,” Dr. Sibley said.

“What is he, then?”

Sir Owain spoke up for himself. “I speak my mind, I say what I see, and for reasons of their own some choose to call me mad because of it. The mere whiff of the word around a rich man brings the Masters of Lunacy running. Lawyers and parasites with no other interest than to get control of a man’s fortune and squander it. They are a plague, and it’s the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor who moves ahead of them and marks the foreheads of the doomed.”

At that point he realized that Sibley was giving him a warning look.

“Is one possible opinion,” Sir Owain amended.

“You can hold whatever opinion you wish,” Sebastian said, and he reached for the folder on the desk. “Believe me. I have a duty to be impartial, and my employer is a fair man. I will read this report. I shall pass along the treatment diary for someone more medically qualified to assess. And I shall establish whether this live-in arrangement is a genuine form of care or a deliberate ploy to stave off the appropriate legal process.”

Dr. Sibley said, “How can we convince you?”

“Don’t try to convince me. Just conduct yourselves as you normally would. Sir Owain.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been reading your book.”

A new and subtle tension seemed to enter the room.

“As have many,” Sir Owain said with care.

“A well-wrought piece of fiction,” Sebastian suggested, and waited to see Sir Owain’s response.

Sir Owain could not help it. He looked at his doctor. His doctor said nothing, but the implication hung there. I can’t prompt you. Be careful.

“If you say so,” Sir Owain said.

“What do you say, Sir Owain?” Sebastian pressed. “Do you still insist on it as an honest account of your Amazon adventure? Is it a faithful memorial to those who failed to return?”

Sir Owain looked again at the doctor, who now was looking at the floor as if to show that any response was Sir Owain’s, and Sir Owain’s alone.

Sebastian went on, “Just between us. In this room. Do you still hold it to be the truth? Or is it, as so many say, a miscalculated hoax that has caused the loss of your position and earned you the scorn of your peers?”

Dr. Sibley could keep his silence no longer.

“This is unfair,” he said.

“I know it, Doctor Sibley,” Sebastian said. “It’s not a choice that I’d care to be faced with. Stick to my story and be deemed insane, or abandon it and stand revealed as a fraud.”

“And whatever I answer,” Sir Owain said, “you’ll have the option of calling it a response that I learned for the occasion, to achieve an end.”

“And so we go round and round.”

“If a man can feign sanity to perfection, is he not therefore sane?”

“Why did you view the bodies of those dead girls?”

The abrupt change of tack threw Sir Owain for a moment, as Sebastian had meant it to.

He floundered for a moment and then said, “They were found on my land. And I wished to offer my help.”

“Ah, yes. Your theory. Torn by beasts.” From the deep pocket inside his coat, Sebastian took his copy of Sir Owain’s book and searched for the page that he’d located and marked. “You must be aware that the exact same phrase occurs here in your mendacious memoir.”

“It’s but a phrase, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain said. “You saw the condition of those children. Tell me that the wording is anything other than accurate.”

Sebastian regarded him for a few moments.

Then he closed the book.

“Please call your car for me,” he said, and rose to his feet.

Sir Owain seemed bewildered.

“Is that it?” he said. “What happens now?”

“I’ll be in the area for a day or two. Making my inquiries. You’ll hear from me again.”

“When will we know the decision?”

“That, I cannot say. The decision won’t be mine to make.”

HE DECLINED a tour of the house. He’d seen a sufficient number of great houses to know that the gentry were equally indifferent to magnificence and squalor, and that their homes were no guide to anything. He’d once reported on a marquis who kept a pig in his dining room, and Sir James had been happy to sign him off.

As the car was once more drawing up in front of the building, Sir Owain said, “Who will pay for my broken window glass?”

Sebastian said, “I think you will.”

“You speak sharply to me,” Sir Owain complained. “In a way I do not believe I deserve. But how can I respond in kind to a man who has power over my liberty?”

“If I seem sharp, sir, then I apologize. I do not mean to be. You can be assured that my only interest is in the facts behind the matter.”

“Then,” Sir Owain said, phrasing his courtesy in such a way as to leave no doubt that he was sorely aggrieved by the obligation, “I should support your discovery of the facts in full. My car and driver are at your disposal during your stay. Wherever you may wish to go. Just telephone the house and I’ll send them out.”

THE OFFER OF THE CAR HAD BEEN MADE WITHIN THE DRIVER’S earshot, and he remained sullen and silent at his wheel throughout the return journey. The vehicle had been swept clear of broken glass during the interview, but the window was still open to the elements.

Sebastian looked through the pages in the folder. They were the work of a careful typist, but not a trained one.

After the car had dropped him off on Arnmouth’s main street, Sebastian went into the first tearoom that he saw. Over lunch he studied the restaurant’s copy of the Daily Mail, scanning it for any details of Sir James’s address to the British Association.

There was no mention of the murders in the early edition. The rest of the news was much as usual—a new terrorist outrage in the Middle East, a ban on infected cattle movements in Wales. Army maneuvers continued in Cambridgeshire, mirroring those of the Kaiser’s forces in Switzerland. If the shadowplay were ever to turn into real conflict, those boy soldiers from yesterday would probably be sent to join it. Meanwhile, the Mail saw German spies behind everything. The newspaper’s estimate of their numbers regularly exceeded the total of German nationals in Britain.

Sebastian folded the paper and laid it down. Someone on another table asked for it, and he passed it over.

He looked out the window. Take away the shadow that hung over it, and this was a nice little town. Not exactly the kind of place that he and Elisabeth had dreamed of, but somewhere they might settle for. If they had the money. And didn’t have Robert’s needs to consider.

After checking the time by his pocket watch, he paid his bill and went outside. He walked up the street to the preventative officer’s house, where he showed his credentials and begged the use of the telephone.

DESPITE THE fact that they’d agreed a time for the call, it took almost half an hour for the staff to locate Sir James in his Dundee hotel. Without any preamble, Sir James said, “So what do you make of our mad Sir Owain?”

“It’s a rum setup,” Sebastian said. “He’s dismissed most of the staff and the estate’s going to ruin.”

“I could commit him for that alone.”

“Except that his doctor now claims to be managing his affairs as well as his treatment. They’ve given me the books to look over. But, Sir James, I have to tell you that there have been other developments.”