After what seemed like a very long interval, nor did the plane drop from the sky, I said, creakily, "So what're you saying, Paul? That we're phase two in the plan to breed the master race? I thought that mongrelization was what they were trying to avoid."

"Yes, but they were fascinated by mutts and the idea of breeding. They even saved Aryan-looking Jewish kids from the ovens and gave them to good n.a.z.i families to raise, which they shouldn't have done at all if they really believed their racial purity line. And all that skull measuring they did and the Mengele experiments with twins..."

I recalled something he'd just said and interrupted. "What did you mean by 'lucky me' just now?"

"Oh, just that Mutti gave me and Miri the blood lecture, which apparently you didn't get. I mean, did you think I figured all this out myself?"

"She told told you she married Dad to advance the racial theories of the Third Reich?" you she married Dad to advance the racial theories of the Third Reich?"

"Not in so many words, but we were often told that the n.a.z.is lost because they were too pure and n.o.ble and so she was sacrificing herself to inject some sneaky-smart Jew genes into the mix. I mean, didn't you think that the peculiar a.s.sortment of physical characteristics in our family had something to do with the way she treated the three of us? Oh, right, you kind of forgot some of that. In any case, we were disappointments in the ubermensch ubermensch department, although of unimpeachable Aryan appearance: I was a thug and Miri was a wh.o.r.e, but you were, so to speak, the golden mutt who would make all of it worthwhile. That's why she killed herself. The two of us were out of reach and she didn't want to distract you from your studies with having to care for an old lady. department, although of unimpeachable Aryan appearance: I was a thug and Miri was a wh.o.r.e, but you were, so to speak, the golden mutt who would make all of it worthwhile. That's why she killed herself. The two of us were out of reach and she didn't want to distract you from your studies with having to care for an old lady. Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillianten Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillianten for heroic Mutti. You look surprised, Jake. You never figured this out?" for heroic Mutti. You look surprised, Jake. You never figured this out?"

"No, and I want to thank you for bringing it to my attention. We should have more of these brotherly talks-I feel so terrifically up up now. Gosh, and what a shame Mutti didn't stick around to see the prodigal return in glory to judge the living and the dead. She would've been so proud!" now. Gosh, and what a shame Mutti didn't stick around to see the prodigal return in glory to judge the living and the dead. She would've been so proud!"

Paul ignored my sarcasm as he almost always does and replied mildly, "Yes, I've always regretted it. Are we finished with this, by the way? Because I have some thoughts about your present situation."

After that, we talked strategy, and he developed his idea that the whole thing was a con and what that meant for our actions while in the U.K., and I thought he made sense. Of course it was a con. Wasn't everything?

The plane landed. We drove to London, in a limo supplied by Osborne Security Service, the security firm Paul had engaged. The driver, one Brown, was an agent of said firm and according to Paul an ex-SAS piano wire artist. He did not impress me, being rather slight and weaselly in appearance. At the hotel I had rather too much to drink-understandable under the circ.u.mstances, I believe-and went to bed. In the morning, far too early, I awoke to a crus.h.i.+ng headache, a foul, dry tongue, and my brother, dressed in his clericals, with the information that we were moving immediately. Apparently, his security team had spotted some bad guys and we needed to shake them. I allowed him to get me together and in short order we had picked up Crosetti, who seemed to have turned into a hostile little twerp overnight. He was barely civil on the ride to Oxford. We drove to London, in a limo supplied by Osborne Security Service, the security firm Paul had engaged. The driver, one Brown, was an agent of said firm and according to Paul an ex-SAS piano wire artist. He did not impress me, being rather slight and weaselly in appearance. At the hotel I had rather too much to drink-understandable under the circ.u.mstances, I believe-and went to bed. In the morning, far too early, I awoke to a crus.h.i.+ng headache, a foul, dry tongue, and my brother, dressed in his clericals, with the information that we were moving immediately. Apparently, his security team had spotted some bad guys and we needed to shake them. I allowed him to get me together and in short order we had picked up Crosetti, who seemed to have turned into a hostile little twerp overnight. He was barely civil on the ride to Oxford.

I may have dozed but awoke to Paul's voice describing something he had found at some church in the old City. He thought it was the grille Bracegirdle had used to encipher the letters, which I suppose was a major find, but, frankly, I could not work up much interest at the time. I am a man of settled habits, as I believe I have indicated, and zooming around in cars in foreign parts holds no attraction. I noticed young Crosetti's eyes were s.h.i.+ning, though, and I might have drifted back to sleep were it not for Paul's mentioning that this grille had been swiped by a young woman. Who else could it have been? I dismissed out of hand Crosetti's opinion that it could also have been Carolyn Rolly. The crime had Miranda's prints all over it: the innocent come-on, the inveigling into the confidence of the perhaps lonely curate, the swift, violent denouement...Miranda! I didn't even bother to argue with him. I recall thinking that we have the ciphers so she had to come to us with her grille, and I recall a sense of antic.i.p.ation such as I have rarely known, like a kid on the way to a carnival.

We approached the outskirts of Oxford as it was, getting on toward noon, and I was growing hungry. I mentioned this to Paul and he told me that we were to meet Oliver March in a country pub. Shortly after this information pa.s.sed, Brown started to drive like a lunatic, swerving across four lanes of the M40 at the last moment to shoot onto the A40 and then quickly leaving that for a local road, just west of Oxford.

Crosetti asked him if he were trying to lose our pursuers and Brown replied, "No, just one of them." After this we roared down smaller roads, throwing up rooster tails of water and mud and tossing us all around unmercifully. I caught a look at my companions, who seemed to be enjoying the ride, and perhaps also enjoying my increasing discomfort. Then, after a particularly jarring turn down what looked like a farm track, Brown halted the car, leaped out, popped the trunk, and dragged from it a long black nylon bag. I left the car too, staggered over to a low fence, and was sick for a good long time. When I recovered, I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and looking in that direction saw our Brown under a bare roadside willow, with a huge exotic-looking rifle propped in a crotch of that tree and pointing down the road. A blue BMW drove toward him at speed and when it was about a hundred yards away he shot it. Its engine made expensive breaking noises and the car rolled to a stop, with steam rising from its hood. Brown put his rifle back in its bag and noticed me standing there goggling and dabbing at my mouth with a handkerchief.

"Are you all right, sir?" he asked.

"I'm fine. Did you just shoot somebody?"

"No, sir, just the vehicle. This is a Barrett rifle, sir, nothing like it for stopping a car. Father Paul wanted some privacy for this meeting."

I stared at him and he took my elbow. "We should get back in our car now, sir."

We did and drove off down some more little roads until we came to a perfect little English village, whose name I have quite forgotten: Dorking Smedley? Inching Tweedle? Something like that; and pulled up in the yard of what looked like a coaching inn off the cover of a fancy biscuit package: thatched roof, black Tudor beams, heavy, purplish, leaded gla.s.s, the kind of place d.i.c.k Bracegirdle used to frequent for a pint of malmsey. We all trooped inside except for Brown, who waited with the car, talking into a crackling radio.

Inside it was dim and cozy, with a fire in the grate. A large man with unfas.h.i.+onable red sideburns was behind the bar, and when he saw us he nodded and gestured to one side, where there was a door. Through the door was a small room with a gas fire and a battered round table in it, at which sat a slight, handsome man in his late fifties wearing a tweed jacket, a tattersall s.h.i.+rt, and a black wool tie. He stood when we came in, and Paul made the introductions and we all shook and sat. This was Oliver March, the companion. Another evidence that Paul has taken charge of this expedition. I didn't mind. I felt like one of those great black bladders of industrial chemicals one sees in barges in the harbor, inert and ma.s.sive, pushed about by little tugs.

After some small talk, March said, "Well, secret meetings. It all seems so odd: when did you last see your father and all that..."

At this I started and looked wildly at Paul, who explained that it was a famous painting of a Cavalier boy being questioned by Roundhead soldiers, a figure of speech. The professor continued. "Yes, quite: and I would not have agreed to meet with you in such an inconvenient place were it not for your suggestion, Father Mishkin, that the police explanation of Andrew's death was not accurate."

This was the first I had heard of Paul's involvement in the Bulstrode case and I listened with interest as he explained. "No it's not. They found a doped-up rent boy named Chico Garza using your friend's credit card and muscled a confession out of him. The boy had nothing to do with Andrew's death."

"On what evidence?"

"Well, first, I visited the boy in jail. He was sleeping in a squat at the time of the murder and he woke up with Andrew's wallet in his bag. He never met Andrew Bulstrode, but he was carefully framed for the killing. The police found forensic traces of Garza in Andrew's apartment, so it was well prepared. The other, and more compelling, reason is that no one outside of my brother and his secretary knew that Andrew had deposited the Bracegirdle papers with the law firm, yet within days of the murder, Russian thugs were shadowing him. How did they know? They must have extracted that information from your friend."

The word "extracted" hung in the air, and March briefly shut his eyes. What I was thinking at that moment was this: Shvanov had mentioned "sources" when he told me how he had come to take an interest in me and I hadn't pressed him on it. Of course, gangsters have "sources." People tell them things, or they have people followed. Or maybe Shvanov was lying, maybe he was the torturer...

(Again, in hindsight, at an emotionless remove, things are marvelously clear, but in the instant of occurrence they are covered in layers of fog. And we are so good at denying what is before our eyes, as for example, the vignettes of Mutti and me that Paul had provided on the plane, and which I have, from that moment to this, thought about on a daily basis. So you must not blame me for not coming up with what became so obvious later.) A barmaid came in at this point, not the sort of barmaid such an inn should have had, a jolly pink blonde in a peasant blouse and a canvas ap.r.o.n, but a thin, dark, dour girl in an olive pantsuit, a Maltese or Corsican perhaps, who took our drink and food orders and departed without any Falstaffian badinage at all. March now said, "I fail to see how Andrew could have got himself mixed up with Russian gangsters. I mean it just boggles the mind."

"He needed money to finance the validation of the ma.n.u.script," I said, "and if found valid, for locating the ma.n.u.script play Bracegirdle mentioned."

"Excuse me...Bracegirdle?" said March, and the three of us gaped at him in surprise. Crosetti blurted out, "Didn't Andrew tell you anything anything about why he came to England last summer?" about why he came to England last summer?"

"Only that he was doing some research. But he was always on to some research or other. Who is Bracegirdle?"

I gave him the short version, and while I was doing this the barmaid came in with our food and drink. I had ordered a pint of bitter and finished it in time to flag the girl for another. March listened carefully, asking few questions. When I was done, he shook his head ruefully. "Andrew and I have been together more or less continuously for nearly thirty years," he said, "and we've always been reasonably open about what's going on in our lives-open for dons, I mean, not actual gus.h.i.+ng or anything like that-but I must say that I had not the slightest clue about any of this. Andrew could keep things dark, of course, especially after the b.l.o.o.d.y catastrophe he went through, but still...and this doesn't answer the original question at all. Why, if he needed funding, did he not come to me?"

"Are you particularly wealthy?" I asked.

"Oh, not at all, but I do have some a.s.sets, some property, some inherited things. I suppose at a pinch I could have raised a hundred or so without descending into absolute beggary. Would you say he would have needed much more than that?"

"If you're talking about a hundred thousand pounds, then no. We have no indication that what he got was more than about twenty thousand dollars from the Russians."

"Good Lord! Then it makes even less sense. Why didn't he come to me?"

I said, "Perhaps he was embarra.s.sed because of the scandal," and mentioned that Mickey Haas had asked the same question. As soon as the name was out I was surprised to see a sour expression appear on March's refined face.

"Well, of course he wouldn't have approached Haas," he said. "Haas hated him."

"What! How can you say that?" I objected. "They were friends. Mickey was one of the few people in academia who stuck up for him when the fake quarto scandal broke. He gave him a place to work at Columbia when no one else would look at him."

"I take it Haas is a particular friend of yours," said March.

"Yes, he is. He's my oldest friend and one of the most decent and generous people I know. Why did Andrew imagine that Mickey hated him?"

"It had nothing to do with imagination," snapped March. "Look here, twenty odd years ago, Haas produced a book on Shakespeare's women, female characters in the plays, that is, the point of which was that thinking about Shakespeare as an original genius simply reinforced the toxic individualism of bourgeois culture. I believe he said that Macbeth Macbeth was really all about the three witches, and a load of similar twaddle. Andrew was asked to review it for the was really all about the three witches, and a load of similar twaddle. Andrew was asked to review it for the Times Literary Supplement Times Literary Supplement and gave it the mighty b.o.l.l.o.c.king it deserved, not only poking holes in its logic and scholars.h.i.+p, but also implying that Haas knew better, on the evidence of his own earlier writing, and that he had produced this farrago merely to curry favor with the Marxists and feminists and whatnot who control, I am informed, all hiring at American universities. Not that I know a thing about it myself, barely pa.s.sed my A-levels in the d.a.m.ned stuff, just a simple biologist really. Amazing that Andrew and I got on so well together; absence of rivalry perhaps, two halves making a whole. He used to read me bits in the evenings. Well, it was a great scandal, outraged letters back and forth to the and gave it the mighty b.o.l.l.o.c.king it deserved, not only poking holes in its logic and scholars.h.i.+p, but also implying that Haas knew better, on the evidence of his own earlier writing, and that he had produced this farrago merely to curry favor with the Marxists and feminists and whatnot who control, I am informed, all hiring at American universities. Not that I know a thing about it myself, barely pa.s.sed my A-levels in the d.a.m.ned stuff, just a simple biologist really. Amazing that Andrew and I got on so well together; absence of rivalry perhaps, two halves making a whole. He used to read me bits in the evenings. Well, it was a great scandal, outraged letters back and forth to the TLS TLS, screeds in the little journals, and I recall thinking at the time how happy I was to be in a business where you have actual data. It blew over, as these things always do, and when Andrew lost his reputation because of that awful little man, Haas was there with a stout defense, and later a job offer. As I recall, neither of us mentioned the earlier dogfight. We a.s.sumed that it had been forgotten, simply part of the usual give-and-take of academic debate. But it hadn't been. Almost as soon as Andrew arrived in New York, Haas began to torment him. At first it was just sly digs, little things that could have been confused with some kind of b.u.mptious American humor, but then it grew worse, petty acts of tyranny..."

"Such as?"

"Oh, he was promised a Shakespeare seminar, and some graduate courses, but instead he was given freshman composition sections, rather like a brain surgeon being asked to tidy up the wards, mop up the blood, and empty the pans. When he complained of this outrageous treatment, Haas told him he was lucky to have anything at all, he was lucky not to be on the dole, or selling watches on the street. Andrew called and told me about this gruesome business, and of course I demanded that he tell Haas what he could do with his b.l.o.o.d.y appointment and come straight home. But that he would not do. I think he felt it was a kind of expiation for his scholarly sin. And...you know I see that this will sound odd, as if Andrew were descending into some h.e.l.l of paranoia, but he told me that he believed Haas was tormenting him in more underhanded ways as well. His salary cheques would go missing. Little items would vanish from his briefcase, from his room. Someone changed the lock on his office door. One day he came to work and found all his things in the hall. He'd had his office moved without notice. Cla.s.ses he was meant to meet in one room were mysteriously scheduled for another room on the other side of the campus, and he had to rush to meet them in the heat of the summer. Those terrible New York summers, and he suffered so from the heat. Not used to it, you see, being from here. And his air-conditioning was always breaking down...."

"Did he blame Mickey for that too?" I asked unkindly.

"Yes, I see where you're going and I confess I thought that as well. Is he running mad? But it was the weight of evidence, you see, I mean the acc.u.mulation of horrible details-could he possibly have made them up? Unlikely, in my opinion: poor Andrew wasn't a fantasist, not in the least. We used to joke that he had no imagination at all, and then there's what I saw when he returned last August."

He paused here and drank some of his beer. His eyes looked wet to me, and I fervently wished for him not to break down about poor Andrew. I took on some of my own pint, my third.

"It's difficult to describe. Manic and frightened at the same time. He had a young woman with him and insisted she had to stay in our house, although there are some perfectly adequate hotels nearby."

"Carolyn Rolly," said Crosetti.

"Yes, I believe that was her name. She was helping him in some research...."

"Did he say what the research was?" Paul asked.

"Not really, no. But he said it was the most important find in the whole history of Shakespeare scholars.h.i.+p, and dreadfully hush-hush. As if I would blab. In any case they were out and about. He seemed to have plenty of ready money, renting a car, staying away for days, returning in a mood of exhilaration. One thing he did say, that he was authenticating the antiquity of a ma.n.u.script and couldn't be seen to be doing so. That was the main reason for Miss Rolly tagging along. From what I could gather, they did authenticate it by technical means and then they were off to Warwicks.h.i.+re."

"Where in Warwicks.h.i.+re, do you know?" I asked.

"Yes, I happened upon some papers Miss Rolly left behind that suggested they had visited Darden Hall. Andrew returned alone, and he seemed much deflated and more frightened. I asked him about Miss Rolly, but he put me off. She was 'away' doing research. I didn't believe him for a moment-I thought perhaps they'd had some sort of falling-out. In any case, as I say, he was a changed man. He insisted on having all the curtains drawn and he would stalk the house at night, holding a poker and s.h.i.+ning a torch in dark corners. I begged him to tell me what the problem was, but he said I was better off not knowing."

Crosetti pressed March on what had become of Rolly. Did he think she had gone back to the States when Bulstrode had? He didn't know, and that was more or less the end of our interview. After a.s.suring the don that we would have all of Bulstrode's personal items delivered to him and that Ms. Ping would handle the decedent's will (and of course avoiding the issue of the lost ma.n.u.script), we took our leave.

Back in the car, we had a small disagreement about what to do next. Paul thought that we should continue with our original plan of following Bulstrode's tracks, which meant going to Warwicks.h.i.+re and visiting Darden Hall. Crosetti objected that Bulstrode did not seem to have found anything there and why did we think we'd do any better than an expert? He was for staying and investigating at March and Bulstrode's home and looking at these "papers" March had mentioned. I observed that he seemed far more interested in finding Ms. Rolly than in locating the Item. He replied that Rolly was the source, key, and engine of the entire affair. Find Rolly and you had all currently available information about the Item, including in all probability the purloined grille. We tossed this bone back and forth for some minutes, with increasing irritation on my part (for, naturally, I knew it was Miranda Miranda who had stolen the grille!) until Brown reminded us that other agents would be cruising these roads and asking the locals whether anyone had seen a Mercedes SEL, of which there were probably not many on the lanes of rural Oxfords.h.i.+re, and by such means arriving back on our heels. who had stolen the grille!) until Brown reminded us that other agents would be cruising these roads and asking the locals whether anyone had seen a Mercedes SEL, of which there were probably not many on the lanes of rural Oxfords.h.i.+re, and by such means arriving back on our heels.

Paul suggested that Crosetti return to the inn and ask if March would consent to an inspection of these papers; he could stay at one of the perfectly adequate hotels. March was not averse to this plan, and we left Crosetti there with him. I was relieved, for I'd been finding the man ever more annoying. I mentioned this to Paul as Brown drove us away from the pub and he asked me why that was, since Crosetti struck him as mild enough. He'd hardly said a word in the car during the journey north.

"I don't like him," I said. "A typical poseur from the outer boroughs. A screenwriter screenwriter, for G.o.d's sake! Completely untrustworthy. I can't imagine what I was thinking when I invited him along."

"You should pay attention to the people who irritate you," said Paul.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I think you know," he said in that irritatingly confident tone he sometimes has, like a voice from the clouds.

"I don't don't know. I would have said if I knew, or have you been vouchsafed the power to read minds?" know. I would have said if I knew, or have you been vouchsafed the power to read minds?"

"Hm. Can you think of another poseur from the outer boroughs, this one an actor rather than a screenwriter? But this one didn't have a family as happy as Crosetti's, didn't have a loving mom, didn't have a heroic dad-"

"What, you think I'm jealous jealous of him? That I'm of him? That I'm like like him?" him?"

"-who decided to play it safe and go to law school instead of taking a shot at what he really wanted to do, and he sees a kid with a warm and loving family who has the guts to follow his dreams-"

"That is such horses.h.i.+t...."

"Not. Plus, you practically accused him of trying to seduce your wife, in fact, you encouraged him to do so. Just before you wrecked the bar in your hotel and put the bartender in the hospital."

"I did no such thing," I said spontaneously.

"I know you think you didn't, but you really did. Have you ever had blackouts like that before?"

"Oh, thank you! I'm sure you have an AA group in your church bas.e.m.e.nt that I'd fit right into."

"No, I don't think you're a drunk, or not yet, although three pints of strong English beer is a lot to drink in the middle of the day."

"I'm a big guy," I said, a little lamely, for it was all starting to come back, little fragments of horrid memory. I am not not a drinker ordinarily. a drinker ordinarily.

The h.e.l.l with this.

We got to Darden Hall about four, under sodden skies. The surprisingly short autumn day of these lat.i.tudes was nearly gone and our headlights illuminated dark drifts of leaves on the long drive up from the road. The place had recently come into the National Trust, on the demise of the final Baron Reith in 1999, and had not yet been renovated for public view. We had called ahead to arrange a conversation with the resident conservator, a Miss Randolph. Darden Hall about four, under sodden skies. The surprisingly short autumn day of these lat.i.tudes was nearly gone and our headlights illuminated dark drifts of leaves on the long drive up from the road. The place had recently come into the National Trust, on the demise of the final Baron Reith in 1999, and had not yet been renovated for public view. We had called ahead to arrange a conversation with the resident conservator, a Miss Randolph.

The place was the usual crumbling pile familiar to us all from horror films and Masterpiece Theatre Masterpiece Theatre anglophiliac fantasias, although the hour and the weather gave it the look more of the former's sort of prop. It had a Jacobean core, a couple of Georgian wings, and some Victorian gewgaws despoiling the facade. We chance to meet a workman on a tiny tractor in front of the house and he directed us around to what was once the servants' entrance. Our knock was answered by a solid fortyish woman of the English Rose type who wore half gla.s.ses, a tweed skirt, and two cardigans, wisely in the case of these last, for the room she showed us into was almost cold enough to show breath. A tiny electric fire hummed valiantly, but clearly to little avail. It was the old steward's office, she explained, the only habitable room in the house, and her headquarters. anglophiliac fantasias, although the hour and the weather gave it the look more of the former's sort of prop. It had a Jacobean core, a couple of Georgian wings, and some Victorian gewgaws despoiling the facade. We chance to meet a workman on a tiny tractor in front of the house and he directed us around to what was once the servants' entrance. Our knock was answered by a solid fortyish woman of the English Rose type who wore half gla.s.ses, a tweed skirt, and two cardigans, wisely in the case of these last, for the room she showed us into was almost cold enough to show breath. A tiny electric fire hummed valiantly, but clearly to little avail. It was the old steward's office, she explained, the only habitable room in the house, and her headquarters.

She asked what she could do for us and I said, "We're here to see Count Dracula." She grinned and replied in an appropriately Masterpiece Theatre- Masterpiece Theatre-ish accent, "Yes, everyone says that, or else something about the peasants coming for Frankenstein. Too many Gothic novels and films, but I think there's something in all that nonsense, you know. I think that even then, in the nineteenth century, when it seemed as if the life that produced these houses would go on forever, writers knew there was something wrong with them, that they rested ultimately on the most dreadful suffering, and it bubbled up in the Gothic tale."

"What sort of suffering is this one built on?"

"Oh, take your pick. The original Lord Dunbarton stole it courtesy of Henry VIII from some Benedictine nuns who ran a charity hospital here. None of that for the baron, of course, and afterward the Dunbartons made their pile in sugar and slaves. That funded the Georgian buildings and afterward they had coal and gas and urban property in Nottingham and Coventry. None of them ever did an honest day's work in their lives and they lived like emperors. But..."

"What?" Paul asked.

"It's difficult to explain. Come with me, I'll show you something."

We followed her out of the office and down a dim corridor lit by wall sconces holding fifteen-watt bulbs. The chill in that room was coziness itself compared with the damp cold of the corridors, cold as the grave I recall thinking, slipping easily into Gothic mode. We went through a door and she pressed a light switch. I gasped.

"This was the Jacobean dining hall and later the breakfast room. It's considered the finest example of linenfold walnut paneling in the Midlands, not to mention the carving on the sideboards and the inlaid parquet flooring. Look at the detail! This was done by English craftsmen for thugs who couldn't tell a dado from sheep dip, so why did they put their souls into this walnut? Love is why, and I honor them for it, which is why I'm in the business of preserving it. Come, there's more."

The next room was a ballroom. "Look at the ceiling. Giacomo Quarenghi, circa 1775, Britannia ruling the waves. There she is in her amphibious chariot drawn by dolphins and all the darkies paying homage around the border. The room itself is by Adam. Look at the proportions! The windows! The parquet! No one will ever build a house like this again, ever, even though we have people in this country who could buy any of the Lords Dunbarton with the change in their pockets, and that means that something wonderful has gone out of the world, and I'd love to know why."

"So would I," said Paul. "I know the feeling. It's one I often have in Rome. Corruption and vice of every sort, the ruin of real religion, and yet...what gorgeous stuff they made!"

After that, they chatted animatedly about Rome and aesthetics while I stared up at Britannia and tried to ID the subject peoples. Then we went back to the half-warm office and the business of the day. Paul did the talking, he having already established a relations.h.i.+p, and besides he had the collar-who cannot trust a priest? After he'd finished she said, "So you've come all this way because of a miscarriage of justice? You're following the track of this Bulstrode fellow in the hope of pulling a thread that will lead you to his real killer?"

"You have it," said Paul. "Do you recall his visit at all?"

"Oh, yes, of course I do. I don't get many vistors with whom I can discuss anything more than the football and the price of petrol, so I'm afraid I rather seized on them and simply chatted their heads off. As I did with you, shame upon me. Yes, Professor Bulstrode, ex Brasenose, seconded to some university in the States, and he had a young woman with him, Carol Raleigh? Is that right?"

"Close enough. Do you happen to recall what they were looking for?"

The woman considered the question for a moment, staring at the coils of the electric fire. "They said they were researching the family history of the Dunbartons, but there was something else going on, I think. They were exchanging looks, if you follow me, and they were rather short on details. Scholars, I've found, are typically expansive on their subjects, and Professor Bulstrode and his a.s.sistant were distinctly not. But it was none of my affair after all, he had the proper scholarly credentials, and so I gave them the key to the muniment room and went on with my own affairs. They were up there for the entire day, remarkable really, because the place is a mare's nest, never really been properly cataloged, and they descended covered in the dust of ages. I asked them if they'd found what they'd been looking for and they said yes, and thanked me and the professor made a contribution to the trust to help with the restoration, a hundred pounds, actually, very generous, and they left."

"Did they take anything?"

"You mean make off with a doc.u.ment? I shouldn't think so, but they might have taken rafts of them. I wasn't looking, and I certainly didn't search them before they left."

At that point the telephone rang, and Miss Randolph picked up the heavy antique instrument and listened, and said she had to take this call, it was the builder, and they thanked her and left.

Back in the warmth of the car I asked Paul what he thought.

"My guess," he replied, "is that they did find something and Rolly ran off with it. She seems to be quite a piece of work."

"I suppose. Well, brother, what now? We seem to have exhausted our possibilities."

"Yes, on this line anyway." He looked at his watch. "Today is shot, obviously. I suggest we return to Oxford, spend the night in a perfectly adequate hotel, pick up Crosetti in the morning, and go over to Aylesbury."

"What for? What's in Aylesbury?"

"Springhill House, one of Her Majesty's prisons. I want to have a talk with Leonard Pascoe, the internationally famous forger of old doc.u.ments. Mr. Brown, do you think we could arrange to be followed there?"