Four Past Midnight

'As if he had been carrying it sideways or even upside down,' Ted broke in. 'Isn't that what you said at the hearing?'

'Yes - and people who know anything about wine don't do it. With most wines, it disturbs the sediment. And with champagne

'It shakes it up,' Ted said.

Evans nodded. 'If you shake a bottle of champagne really hard, it will burst from the pressure.'

'But there was no champagne in it, anyway,' Amy said quietly.

'No. Still, it was not proof. I canvassed the area gas stations to see if anyone who looked like Mr Rainey had bought a small amount of gas that night, but had no luck. I wasn't too surprised; he could have bought the gasoline in Tashmore or at half a hundred service stations between the two places.

'Then I went to see Patricia Champion, our one witness. I took a picture of a 1986 Buick - the make and model we assumed Mr Rainey would have been driving. She said it might have been the car, but she still couldn't be sure. So I was up against it. I went back out to the house to look around, and you came, Amy. It was early morning. I wanted to ask you some questions, but you were clearly upset. I did ask you why you were there, and you said a peculiar thing. You said you were going down to Tashmore Lake to see your husband, but you came by first to look in the garden.'

'On the phone he kept talking about what he called my secret window ... the one that looked down on the garden. He said he'd left something there. But there wasn't anything. Not that I could see, anyway.'

'I had a feeling about the man when we met,' Evans said slowly. 'A feeling that he wasn't ... quite on track. It wasn't that he was lying about some things, although I was pretty sure he was. It was something else. A kind of distance.'

'Yes - I felt it in him more and more. That distance.'

'You looked almost sick with worry. I decided I could do worse than follow you down to the other house, Amy, especially when you told me not to tell Mr Milner here where you'd gone if he came looking for you. I didn't believe that idea was original with you. I thought I might just find something out. And I also thought . . .' He trailed off, looking bemused.

'You thought something might happen to me,' she said. 'Thank you, Mr Evans. He would have killed me, you know. If you hadn't followed me, he would have killed me.'

'I parked at the head of the driveway and walked down. I heard a terrific rumpus from inside the house and I started to run. That was when you more or less fell out through the screen door, and he came out after you.'

Evans looked at them both earnestly.

'I asked him to stop,' he said. 'I asked him twice.'

Amy reached out, squeezed his hand gently for a moment, then let it go.

'And that's it,' Evans said. 'I know a little more, mostly from the newspapers and two chats I had with Mr Milner

'Call me Ted.'

'Ted, then.' Evans did not seem to take to Ted's first name as easily as he had to Amy's. 'I know that Mr Rainey had what was probably a schizophrenic episode in which he was two people, and that neither one of them had any idea they were actually existing in the same body. I know that one of them was named John Shooter. I know from Herbert Creekmore's deposition that Mr Rainey imagined this Shooter was hounding him over a story called 'Sowing Season,' and that Mr Creekmore had a copy of the magazine in which that story appeared sent up so Mr Rainey could prove that he had published first. The magazine arrived shortly before you did, Amy - it was found in the house. The Federal Express envelope it came in was on the seat of your ex-husband's Buick.'

'But he cut the story out, didn't he?' Ted asked.

'Not just the story - the contents page as well. He was careful to remove every trace of himself. He carried a Swiss-army knife, and that was probably what he used. The missing pages were in the Buick's glove compartment.'

'In the end, the existence of that story became a mystery even to him,' Amy said softly.

Evans looked at her, eyebrows raised. 'Beg pardon?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing.'

'I think I've told you everything I can,' Evans said. 'Anything else would be pure speculation. I'm an insurance investigator, after all, not a psychiatrist.'

'He was two men,' Amy said. 'He was himself ... and he became a character he created. Ted believes that the last name, Shooter, was something

Mort picked up and stored in his head when he found out Ted came from a little town called Shooter's Knob, Tennessee. I'm sure he's right. Mort was always picking out character names just that way ... like anagrams, almost.

'I don't know the rest of it - I can only guess. I do know that when a film studio dropped its option on his novel The Delacourt Family, Mort almost had a nervous breakdown. They made it clear - and so did Herb Creekmore - that they were concerned about an accidental similarity, and they understood he never could have seen the screenplay, which was called The Home Team. There was no question of plagiarism ... except in Mort's head. His reaction was exaggerated, abnormal. It was like stirring a stick around in what looks like a dead campfire and uncovering a live coal.'

'You don't think he created John Shooter just to punish you, do you?' Evans asked.

'No. Shooter was there to punish Mort. I think . She paused and adjusted her shawl, pulling it a little more tightly about her shoulders. Then she picked up her teacup with a hand which wasn't quite steady. 'I think that Mort stole somebody's work sometime in the past,' she said. 'Probably quite far in the past, because everything he wrote from The Organ-Grinder's Boy on was widely read. It would have come out, I think. I doubt that he even actually published what he stole. But I think that's what happened, and I think that's where John Shooter really came from. Not from the film company dropping his novel, or from my ... my time with Ted, and not from the divorce. Maybe all those things contributed, but I think the root goes back to a time before I knew him. Then, when he was alone at the lake house . . .'

'Shooter came,' Evans said quietly. 'He came and accused him of plagiarism. Whoever Mr Rainey stole from never did, so in the end he had to punish himself. But I doubt if that was all, Amy. He did try to kill you.'

'No,' she said. 'That was Shooter.'

He raised his eyebrows. Ted looked at her carefully, and then drew the pipe out of his pocket again.

'The real Shooter.'

'I don't understand you.'

She smiled her wan smile. 'I don't understand myself. That's why I'm here. I don't think telling this serves any practical purpose - Mort's dead, and it's over -but it may help me. It may help me to sleep better.'

'Then tell us, by all means,' Evans said.

'You see, when we went down to clean out the house, we stopped at the little store in town - Bowie's. Ted filled the gas tank - it's always been self-service at Bowie's - and I went in to get some things. There was a man in there, Sonny Trotts, who used to work with Tom Greenleaf. Tom was the older of the two caretakers who were killed. Sonny wanted to tell me how sorry he was about Mort, and he wanted to tell me something else, too, because he saw Mort the day before Mort died, and meant to tell him. So he said. It was about Tom Greenleaf - something Tom told Sonny while they were painting the Methodist Parish Hall together. Sonny saw Mort after that, but didn't think to tell him right away, he said. Then he remembered that it had something to do with Greg Carstairs

'The other dead man?'

'Yes. So he turned around and called, but Mort didn't hear him. And the next day, Mort was dead.'