door, but in his own house he still called the shots. Outside was the place to protect his privacy. She said, 'I don't think so. Mr Rampling said to be sure you didn't tire yourself out with visitors, so I'd best set a good example.' The door opened and Marilou came in with a tray. 'Aren't you staying?' she said. 'Thanks, but no. I was just telling Mr Bellmain that maybe he shouldn't be bothered by visitors for a while.' 'You were?' said Marilou frostily. 'Tell me, young woman, are you a doctor?' 'Only of philosophy,' said Linda, flashing her keyboard smile. 'Have a nice day.' She let herself out and saw that she had made the right decision just in time. Standing at the gate was Cissy Kohler. She hurried down the path towards her and said pleasantly, 'Hi, honey. It's Miss Kohler, isn't it? My name is Linda, Linda Steele. We haven't met but we've got a lot of friends in common. Mind if I stroll along with you a while?' Cissy Kohler said, 'Excuse me, but I have to go in.' 'Save yourself the bother,' said Linda. 'I've just been talking to Mrs Bellmain and she says her husband's too ill to see anyone. So why don't we take that walk and talk things over?'
She smiled as she spoke and took Kohler's arm with all the confidence of one who'd done all the training necessary in her profession, and more besides, because she belonged to that generation of women who know there's no such thing as a safe street. What she didn't know, because there's only one way to find out, is that hours in the multi-gym are but a lightly taken breath alongside twenty-seven years in the slammer. A finger jabbed at her throat, forcing the thyroid cartilage hard against the larynx. She choked, gasped, tried to gulp, but her epiglottis remained firmly closed, her knees buckled, she staggered forward against the picket fence and jack-knifed over it. At last some air was getting slowly, painfully to her lungs. She partially straightened, turned her head and through her tear-filled eyes saw the slight, middle-aged woman who'd so easily brushed her aside vanishing into the house. 'Cissy Kohler?' said Marilou. 'Oh my God.' 'Yes,' said Cissy. She screwed her eyes up and said, 'I seem to recall you were kind to me. I don't think I ever thanked you.' 'No.
Well, it doesn't matter, I only… What do you want?' 'Tell me one thing. You're married to him, right? Were you making it with him that weekend at Mickledore Hall? Had it started then?' 'No!' cried Marilou.
'I hardly knew him. It wasn't till we met in Mexico… But why am I telling you this?' It wasn't altogether a rhetorical question. She truly found it hard to explain the effect this very ordinary-looking woman was having on her. There was about her a kind of authority, the kind that comes from extraordinary experience – a trip to the moon, a descent into hell, a life out of time… ‘I'd like to see Jamie,' she said. Jamie…? No one called him Jamie. No one she knew. She drew in a long breath. She was Marilou Bellmain of Williamsburg in the house that her family had built and lived in for more than two centuries. That was experience worth having too, that left its own mark of authority. She said, 'Miss Kohler, Cissy, you were my stepson's nanny; you may or may not have killed my husband's first wife; you were certainly responsible in some measure for the death of his daughter. What gives you the right to come into my house and make demands?' Cissy Kohler said patiently, 'Would you tell him I'm here, please?' 'I know you're here, Cissy,' said Westropp. He was on his feet, standing in the doorway, his fingers lightly touching the doorknob, otherwise unsupported. To Marilou Bellmain he looked marvellous, stronger, more alert than she had seen him in many long months. Then she saw Cissy Kohler's face. Gone was the prison mask of patient blankness. In its place was a silent scream of shock and pain.
Cissie hadn't seen this man for twenty- seven years. Her mind's eye was not so ingenuous as to let time stand still. It had greyed the black hair a little, lined the smooth brow, stooped the narrow shoulders, but the basic model had remained the same. This long sack of bones, this papier-mache face beneath a bald and wrinkled dome, these eyes peering out like small creatures of the desert from some deep burrow, had nothing to do with that man. For a moment Marilou saw her husband with the newcomer's eyes but she saw also with relief that his gaze was fixed too firmly on Kohler's face to register the transfer of shock to her own. James, here's Cissy Kohler to see you,' she heard herself saying briskly. 'Miss Kohler, why don't you go through and I'll make us some coffee.' 'We've got the coffee you made for our last visitor who decided not to stay, remember?' said Westropp. 'Cissy, come and sit down.' The woman walked slowly through into the sitting- room. She was back in control now. Westropp closed the door firmly in his wife's face, mouthing, 'Ten minutes.' They sat opposite each other, he in the rocker, she on a chaise-longue. For a long while, neither spoke. It was not the silence of competitors, each hoping to force the other into a false move, but the silence of two people long accustomed to self-containment. Finally he poured two cups of coffee. She said, 'I've dreamt of this moment many times over many years. Sometimes it ended with you making love to me, sometimes it ended with me killing you.' 'And which dream did you enjoy most?' he asked courteously. It was the delicately weighted irony which brought him back to life, like a fuzzy distorted image suddenly slipping into focus. She said, 'Hello, Jamie.' He said, 'Hello, Cissy.' She said, 'You answered my letter cruelly.' He said, 'You wrote your letter threateningly.' She said, 'All I wanted was… understanding.'
'That's not how it read to me.' 'I was out of practice letter-writing.' 'I was out of practice understanding.' 'Don't you and … she understand each other, then?' 'We love each other. That is how I have survived. When we met I was ready to give up on survival.
Then this new chance came. And with it your letter. The future and the past together. It was no contest, Cissy.' 'And no contest where I've been either. The past is all there is.' 'But now you're out of there.
The future has started for you.' 'Not yet, Jamie. This is still the past.' He moistened his lips with the coffee. He was a strange colour, almost yellow. She might have been talking to some ancient Oriental sage. He said, 'When I read about your release in the papers, I thought: She won't come here. But somehow I knew you would. That's why I decided to head for home.' 'Because you wanted to hide?' she said.
'Why on earth should I want to hide? Because a hospital bed's no place for a man to receive visitors. In any case I'd always planned to come back here to die. Why have you come, Cissy?' 'Why did you think I would come?' 'Because I could see that, while for me there'd been twenty-seven years of forgetting, for you there's been twenty- seven years of remembering.' 'What are you trying to say, Jamie?' she asked gently. 'That it's all so long ago and I'm dying and you're free. That I can only guess at what prison has done to you. Cissy, but it doesn't matter whether you've come here in search of revenge or of forgiveness. I freely forgive you if that's what you want, and a few more weeks will provide any revenge you imagine you need. So why not walk away now and start your new life and leave me to finish my old one?' He couldn't tell if she were seriously considering the proposal or not. She was certainly considering something. And as presumably she had discounted making love as a real possibility, he had to guess that she was weighing up the alternative consummation of her dream. She was carrying a large handbag. She opened it and put her hand inside. He slipped his right hand under the cushion of the rocker and felt the smooth butt of the little silver automatic. Strange the motives for killing. Was she willing to take a life which a couple more weeks would bring to a close anyway? And was he willing to kill to protect such a life? Another moment might tell. The doorbell rang. She took a handkerchief from her bag and blew her nose. He drew his hand from beneath the cushion and lifted his coffee cup. His hand was trembling slightly, but no more than you'd expect in a dying man. He could hear voices, Marilou's and a man's. The door opened and Marilou appeared.
She said, lightly, 'You told me to wheel them in.' She was studying him with concern but also with the wry amusement she had always shown at what she called his nursery games. Her utter openness was what had drawn him to her in the first place. In a life full of watchfulness, it had been marvellous to be at last with someone whose motives were never concealed. His heart swelled with love for her and with self-disgust at the long deceit he had practised on her. She must be spared knowledge of that. That alone would be worth killing, or dying for. He smiled and said, ‘It's open house. You always said I needed to learn about good old southern hospitality.' Marilou stood aside and Westropp looked with interest at the figure who filled the doorway. He was fat, but it wasn't a blubbery fatness, more the redistribution of bulk you get in an ageing wrestler whose muscles have lost their youthful elasticity but still retain much of their ancient strength.
He had a head which would have seemed huge on shoulders less broad.
What hair remained was cropped and grizzled, and the eyes which shone beneath the shaggy overhang of his brows were hard and unblinking.
They were fixed firmly on Cissy Kohler. Westropp coughed drily and said, 'I don't think we've had the pleasure…' 'That's where you're wrong, Mr Westropp, or do you prefer Bellmain? Except it weren't much of a pleasure. Nineteen sixty-three, Mickledore Hall.
Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. Only I were just a young detective then.' 'I'm afraid I don't remember you. Names didn't really register, except for Mr Tallantire's. As for faces, well, I think we've all changed.' 'Aye. Some things change. Some not.' He advanced into the room. Marilou moved quickly after him, as if fearing he purposed an assault, and stood behind her husband with her hands on his thin shoulders. But Dalziel halted when he reached the chaise and said, 'Hello again, Miss Kohler. Nice to see you dry for a change.' She looked at him calmly and said, 'What do you want?' 'The truth.' A ray of amusement touched her lips palely. 'You've taken your time,' she said.
