Weist, who felt he was being crowded out by recent comers, said, "The Lolita of Lamorna!" When Peg ignored this explication of her story, he said, "Lolita, Nabokov's Lolita."

She glared at him. "I know who bleedin' Lolita is." She waited for Melrose to light her fresh cigarette and plowed on. "There come a man t'Lamorna, a London man name of Simon Bolt. Well, if our Sadie was bad news, this Bolt fella, he was worse. Ain't surprising them two found each other real quick. He said he was a 'fil-um producer.' " Here she drew squiggles in air to show her suspicion of Bolt.

The woman in white silk raised her satiny eyebrows and asked, "p.o.r.nography?"

Abruptly, Peg Trott nodded. "An' worse." She seemed a trifle annoyed that some good-looking city woman was getting a march on her story. "There's some said devil chased 'em across Bodmin Moor."

Some always do say the devil in these parts, thought Melrose.

"That's hardly surprising in good old haunted Cornwall," said Weist, not one to get out while the getting's good. He tamped tobacco down in his briar pipe.

"Tim here-"

Tim nodded eagerly, though he didn't know how he would feature in this tale. "Tim said he seen the piskies over in the bluebell woods, and Lydi Ruche-over there"-she pointed to a table where sat three men and one rather hard-looking dark-haired woman-"says she be drivin' by the Merry Maidens an' seen this specter-this specter." Peg enunciated clearly here, seeming to like the sound of the word.

"The Merry Maidens, that's the stone circle," said Weist, offering an explanation no one had asked for.

Muscling Weist out with her voice, which she raised a decibel or two, Peg Trott went on. "Anyway, that ain't my point. This Bolt fella made fil-ums, like I said. He was livin' in the old Leary house that sits atop that cliff out there, and we heard from a woman used to char for him there was a room he kept just for runnin' these fil-ums. Oh, she never fooled with 'em; she was takin' her chances just to go in the room. But she said there was a projector and a stack of these tapes beside it.

"Simon Bolt and Sadie May-those two just had t'git together. Simon liked 'em young, is what people said, the younger the better. Sadie'd say t'me, 'I'm goin' t'be in the pictures, me. I'm goin' to be a star.' "

"He was shooting p.o.r.nographic films, is that it?" Peg Trott nodded. "Worse'n that. T'was bairns. T'was Sadie helped 'em find the poor tikes." Peg shook her head. "Why'd anyone want t'see kiddies die?"

Melrose frowned. "Die?"

"Well, that's what I heard."

In the awful silence that befell them, they all stared at Peg Trott.

"Snuff films," said the man in the black turtleneck.

47.

The idea was so repugnant that several of them turned away just on hearing it. Yet the subject was too seductive to make them leave the little circle at the bar, and they turned back again.

"How is it that the Devon and Cornwall police didn't know this?" asked Jury.

Peg shrugged. "Prob'ly did and couldna catch him at it, like." She accepted a light from Melrose. "He was in London lots when he warn't livin' up atop 'ere."

Jury frowned. "Atop where, Peg?"

With her gla.s.s, she pointed off in some northerly direction and upwards toward the moon. "There's a road I kin show ya."

"We'd appreciate it." Jury tossed money on the bar and rose.

They did as Peg Trott directed-parked the car on the paved area and walked the rest of the way, about an eighth of a mile-on the public footpath.

The house had a beautiful prospect, finer than the view from Seabourne. It was a stark building unrelieved by any sort of architectural embellishment that might have softened its facade. There was at least none that Plant and Jury could see by the light of their torches. Jury kept a spare in the car, which he had given to Melrose.

He also kept a small box of lock-picking equipment. "Remind me to get a warrant next time I'm in Exeter." The lock was old and easy. "I could've done it with my finger," Jury said, as he pushed the door open.

The inside was bleaker than the outside. In the room facing seaward, there were a sofa and two overstuffed and ugly chairs. There was a small fireplace with a tiled surround and ugly Art Deco wall sconces.

They roamed from room to room, upstairs and down, then farther down into a bas.e.m.e.nt that seemed to be doing service as a wine cellar.

"Good stuff," said Melrose, blowing dust from a bottle of Meursault, a Premier Cru (straight from the abbe, doubtless. Or was he mixing it up with Lindisfarne?) "G.o.d, what a waste. Isn't anyone going to collect this wine?"

Jury was adding a skin of light to the walls as he shone his torch carefully round. But he saw nothing that might have served as a hiding place for the videos he was sure must be here and said so.

"Why do you think they'd be here instead of in London? According to Peg Trott he spent most of his time in London."

"I don't think 'instead'; rather, I think 'in addition to'; he would have at least a small collection here."

Melrose was studying a simple appellation of Puligny when Jury started up the cellar stairs and asked, "You going to have a wine tasting or are you coming along?"

Regretfully, Melrose returned the bottle to its shelf.

Upstairs, Jury made another torch circuit of the room. Melrose said, "We've already done that. What do you expect to find?" He switched off his torch and sat down on one of the chairs and lit a cigarette.

"I don't know. I'm working on the a.s.sumption that this house might have been the meeting place chosen."

"Meeting place?"

"She obviously had a meeting arranged; I doubt she just ran into her killer on the public footpath."

"They could have arranged to meet at the point where her body was found."

"Yes, they could've. It's just that it's difficult to know a point in advance, unless there's a very clear marker. Sada Colthorp might have chosen to meet here because she was familiar with the house and because the house was out of the way; no one would see them." Jury switched the light off and sat down too, on a sofa across from the chair.

It was the darkest dark Melrose had ever experienced. He could barely distinguish Jury's outline.

"I imagine they left the house to walk along the public footpath. Whose idea was that? The killer's, most likely. He-or she-wouldn't have wanted the body found too close to the house, so he put some distance between the house and the spot where he killed her."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why not have the body found in the house?"

"Because it would raise the possibility of a connection between Bolt and the Bletchley children's deaths."

"You think that's what happened?"

"I do. Lured by G.o.d only knows what reward or reason, they stumbled down those stone steps while Simon Bolt recorded it on film. He watched them drown."

"How could a man do that?"

"Because there's a market for it. A big one."

Melrose switched his torch on and off, on and off. "One thing I fail to understand is why a man would trust a young girl with knowing what he was up to, the way he did with young Sadie."

"Ever read Lolita?"

"Yes, both Peg Trott and I are familiar with Lolita."

"It's not a question of trust, anyway. People in Bolt's line of work probably don't trust anybody." Jury flicked his own flashlight on, then off, and asked, "Did you ever take food and stuff up to a tree house at night and a torch to read by?"

Melrose's cigarette glowed in the pitch blackness. "No, I can't remember ever having a tree house. Did you?"

"No. I guess some kids must have. You hear about that sort of childhood. Idyllic." He swept the torch in Melrose's direction.

Melrose ducked, but not soon enough. "I suppose no one ever did. An idyllic childhood is probably illusion." He aimed his torchlight at the sofa and Jury moved quickly out of its way.

"Maybe," said Melrose. Then, "It's hard being an only child. You were one. It's as if there's something missing, like a hole in the world that someone fell through. Of course, my childhood wasn't as obviously bad as yours was. A person can empathize with yours, but probably not with mine."

"You mean yours was only superficially better? Yet you had your mother, your father."

Melrose was quiet, flicking the torch on and off, aimed at the floor. "My mother, yes; my father. . . ." He changed the subject. "You know there's something I've always wondered about." Lights out, cigarette snuffed, they were plunged into darkness again. "You and Vivian."

There was an engulfing stillness. No one moved. Until Melrose flashed the light on Jury.

"Cheat! You knew that question would distract me!"

"Oh, come on, sport." Melrose laughed. "So, there's something in it, eh? You and Vivian?"

"That Christmas dinner years ago. Remember?"

"Yes." Melrose wanted another cigarette, but it would give his position away.

"I walked Vivian home and we had a drink and a talk. You see, what I couldn't understand was this business of her marrying Simon Matchett. He wasn't at all her type. It was pretty clear that she wasn't in love with Matchett from the pa.s.sionless way she talked about him. You know Vivian. Though at times she can be very straightforward, when it comes to her feelings she's-well, indirect. So in the course of our talking about various people, I inferred that Vivian loved somebody, but who was the somebody?" Jury flashed his torch and caught Melrose full in the face.

"Hey! Not in the middle of something important."

"That's what you just did to me, isn't it?"

They sat in darkness again.

"You want a cigarette?" asked Melrose.

"No. You know I haven't smoked for over a year."

"Okay, then we've got to have a time-out while I light one. Because obviously you'd see the match flare."

"I can also see the coal end as you smoke it, so what's the big deal? I could get you anytime you inhale." Jury leaned his head against the back of the sofa. "Simon Bolt," he said, exploring the name.

"Yes. Simon Bolt was taking a h.e.l.l of a chance," Melrose said, "appearing at Seabourne, even if it was at night. He could so easily have been seen."

"If the Bletchleys had been there, but they were out. The only possible witness would be the aging housekeeper. Didn't you say her room was on the other side of the house?"

"How would Bolt have known that?" asked Melrose.

"From the person who put Simon Bolt onto the kids in the first place."

"You mean Sada Colthorp."

"No. Sada was probably the middleman, is my guess. Whoever wanted these kids killed and thought of this way of doing it knows the habits of people in Bletchley. Possibly Bolt and Colthorp were the people in the woods. At any rate, the kids saw somebody."

"Correction: Their mother said they saw somebody."

Jury said, "You think her story was fabricated."

"I think Henry James wrote it."

There was a long silence.

"You sure you don't want a cigarette?"

"What? Jesus, some friend you are, encouraging me to go back to that foul habit."

"Oh, don't sound so much like a missionary selling Christianity to the natives. I just thought if we both had one we'd be at the same disadvantage."

"Ye G.o.ds! I'm supposed to smoke just so you can shine that b.l.o.o.d.y light in my face?"

"Go on with what you were saying about Vivian, about her being-Good lord!" Melrose dropped his torch but quickly recovered it. "Vivian! I forgot to tell you. Vivian claims she's going to marry Giopinno in a few weeks."

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not."

"You're just trying to catch me off guard."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous. I've completely forgotten about the torch."

Jury moved on the sofa, sitting forward. "Are you telling me she's really going to marry this creep?"

Melrose shook his head. "Who knows? With that weird relationship, anything could happen. Maybe Viv's going to ditch him."

"Ditch him? How can you ditch anyone after all these years? Kill him, maybe, but ditch him, no."

"Well, anyway." Melrose's torch went on suddenly.

Jury switched his own on. "Oh, for G.o.d's sake, you can't put the torch somewhere else on the sofa. How childish!"