When Eight Bells Toll

ever had anything to do with them.'

'They won't, they won't. I was with Mr, Lavorski when be promised Daddy that no one would come to any harm. He said they were businessmen, and killing was no part of business. He meant it.'

'Lavorski, is it? It had to be.' I looked at the earnest scared face. 'He may have meant it when he said it. He wouldn't have mentioned that they've murdered four people in the last three days, or that they have tried to murder me four times in .the last three days,'

'You're lying! You're making this up. Things like that- things like that don't happen any more. For pity's sake leave us alone!'

'There speaks the true daughter of the old Scottish clan chieftain.' I said roughly. 'You're no good to me. Where's your father?'

'I don't know. Mr. Lavorski and Captain Imrie - he's another of them - came for him at eleven tonight. Daddy didn't say where he was going. He tells me nothing.' She paused and snatched her hands away. Faint red patches stained her cheeks. 'What do you mean, I'm no good to you?'

'Did he say when he would be back?'

'What do you mean I'm no good to you?'

'Because you're young and not very clever and you don't know too much about this world and you'll believe anything a hardened criminal will tell you. But most especially because you won't believe me. You won't believe the one person who can save you all. You're a stupid and pig-headed young fool, Miss Kirkside. If it wasn't that he was jumping from the frying-pan into the fire, I'd say the Honourable Rollinson has had a lucky escape.'

'What do you mean?' It is hard for a mobile young face to be expressionless, but hers was then.

'He can't marry you when he is dead,' I said brutally. 'And he is going to dk. He's going to die because Sue Kirkside let him die. Because she was too blind to know truth when she saw it.' I had what was, for me, an inspiration. I turned down my collar and pulled my scarf away. 'Life it?' I asked.

She didn't like it at all. The red faded from her cheeks. I could see myself in her dressing-table mirror and I didn't like it either. Quinn's handiwork was in full bloom. The kaleidoscope of colour now made a complete ring round my neck.

'Quinn?' she whispered.

'You know his name.   You know him?'

'I know them all. Most of them, anyway. Cook said that one night, after he'd too much to drink, he'd been boasting in the kitchen about how he'd once been the strong man in a stage act. He'd an argument one night with his partner. About a woman. He killed his partner. That way.' She had to make a physical effort to turn her eyes away from my neck. 'I thought - I thought it was just talk.'

'And do you still think our pals are unpaid missionaries for the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge?' I sneered. 'Do you know Jacques and Kramer?'

She nodded.

'I killed them both to-night. After they had killed a friend of mine. They broke his neck. Then they tried to kill my boss and myself. And I killed another. He came out of the dark to murder us. I think his name was Henry. Do you believe me now? Or do you still think we're all dancing round the old maypole on the village green, singing ring-a-ring-o'-roses as we go?'

The shock treatment worked almost too well. Her face wasn't pale now, it was ashen. She said; 'I think Pm going to be sick.'

'Later,' I said coldly. What little self-regard I had was down among my shoe-laces, what I would have liked to do was to take her in my arms and say: 'There, there, now, don't you worry your pretty head, just you leave everything to your old Uncle Philip and all will be well at the end of the day.' In fact, it was damned hard not to do it. Instead, what I said, still in the same nasty voice, was: 'We've no time for those little fol-de-rols. You want to get married, don't you? Did your father say when he would be back?'

She looked at the wash-basin in the corner of 'the room as if she were still making up her mind whether TO be sick or not then pulled her eyes back to me and whispered: 'You're just as bad as they are. You're a terrible man. You're a killer.'

I caught her shoulders and shook them. I said savagely: 'Did he say when he would be back?'

'No.' Her eyes were sick with revulsion. It was a long time since any woman had looked at me like that I dropped my hands.

'Do you know what those men are doing here?'

'No.'

I believed her. Her old man would know, but he wouldn't have told her. Lord Kirkside was too astute to believe that their uninvited guests would just up and leave them unharmed. Maybe he was just desperately gambling that if he told his daughter nothing and if he could swear she knew nothing then they would leave her be. If that was what he thought, he was in urgent need of an alienist. But that was being unjust, if I stood in his shoes — or, more accurately, was swimmingin the murky waters he was in — I'd have grabbed at any straw.

'It's obvious that you know that your fiance is still alive,' I went on. 'And your elder brother. And others. They're being held here, aren't they?'

She nodded silently. I wished she wouldn't look at me like that.

'Do you know how many?'

'A dozen. More than that. And I know there are children there. Three boys and a girl.'

That would be right. Sergeant MacDonald's two sons and 'the boy and the girl that had been aboard the converted lifeboat that had disappeared after setting off on the night cruise from Torbay. I didn't believe a word that Lavorski had said to Susan about their reverence for human life. But I wasn't surprised that the people in the boats who had accidentally stumbled across his illegal operations were still alive. There was a very good reason for