The Hellfire Club

head and shoulders as he talked to Barbara Widdoes, who was wandering back and forth in front of his desk. Several other people, dark shapes in the back of the room, also seemed to be present. Through the humid air, Nora rushed past the row of police cars. She had put on a blue chambray shirt, jeans, and brown loafers. Wet hair clung to her ears. Her heart pounded.

It isn't quite that simple. What did that mean?

The back door swung open as she hurried up the concrete path. A red-haired, acne-pitted fullback in a tight uniform skin stepped out. He looked from side to side before turning his corrugated face to her.

'Mrs Chancel, okay? I'm going to take you down the hall to Chief Fenn's office, and we're going to have to do this fast. Things are real complicated here today.'

They're real complicated here, too, she said. The policeman gave her a neutral look. She moved through the door into relative coolness. A chaos of voices came from the front of the building.' This way,' the policeman said, moving past her to walk briskly down the cement-block corridor. It occurred to Nora that she spent a great deal of time following men. They passed the door marked STATION COMMANDER and approached the metal door to the double row of cells. A vivid memory of Dick Dart's winking at her reminded Nora to look straight ahead, and she took in no more than that men in the tribal uniforms of police officers and lawyers crowded the passage between the cells. An intense, quiet conversation was going on among the lawyers, but she could not, and did not wish to, make out their words. The babble from the front of the station increased as she double-timed behind the officer. At last they came to Fenn's office.

The policeman knocked on the door and leaned in. He said, 'Mrs Chancel. Several people moved into different positions. A chair scraped. Fenn said, 'Show her in.'

Behind his desk Fenn was standing with his arms at his sides, looking at her in a distinctly unsmiling fashion echoed by Barbara Widdoes who stood at attention at the far corner of his desk. Nora felt panic's icicle jab her stomach. Two men in dark suits and white shirts, one wearing black-framed sunglasses, stepped forward from the adjacent wall: Slim and Slam, the FBI men who had been in Natalie Weil's house.

'Hello, Mrs Chancel,' said Fenn. So Nora was no longer Nora. 'I think you've met all the people in this room. Barbara Widdoes, our station commander, and the federal agents assigned to this case, Mr Shull and Mr Hashim.' Mr Shull, the taller of the two, wore the sunglasses. They gave him a vaguely hipsterish air which suddenly struck Nora as hilarious.

'Nice to see you again,' she said, and a second of silence greeted her remark.

'I guess we can get this thing straight,' Fenn said, and became Holly once again. 'Let's try to figure out what we have here.'

'About time,' said Mr Shull, speaking either to himself or to Mr Hashim, who crossed his arms and watched Nora take one of the chairs. Holly sat down, and Barbara Widdoes perched herself on the edge of the chair next to Nora's and put her fat knees and calves together. The two federal agents stayed on their feet.

Mr Shull folded the sunglasses into the top pocket of his suit jacket.

'Well now, Nora,' Holly said, and smiled at her. 'The people in this room have differing opinions on various matters, one of them being what to do with you, but with your help we might work out a consensus. It's going to be important for you to be completely frank and open with me. Can you do that?'

'What did Natalie say?' Nora asked. Behind her, one of the FBI men made a little popping sound with his lips.

'Mrs Weil said a lot of things, which we'll get to in a minute. I want you to go back to the time we met on her front lawn. We had a little discussion there that made me think you and your husband might be able to help us. Do you remember that?'

'I remember,' Nora said. 'We said we'd been there a couple of times.'

'Six, if I recall. The last time being two weeks before her disappearance.'

Nora nodded, silently condemning Davey for his self-serving lie.

'Do you want to stand by that statement, or have you had second thoughts about it?'

'Well, the truth is, I hadn't been in that house in over two years,'

Barbara Widdoes clasped her hands on top of her knees, and Mr Hashim and Mr Shull slowly moved to the other side of Holly's desk.

'That agrees with what Mrs Weil told us. If there was some point to misleading me as to the nature of your relationship with Mrs Weil, I'd certainly like to hear it.'

Nora sighed. 'Actually, it was Davey, my husband, who said we'd been there all those times, and that we had dinner at her place two weeks before. Remember? He said we had Mexican food and watched wrestling on TV, but that was what we did about a month before we bought our house, the time we did go there.'

'Do you have any idea why he'd say all that?'

She sighed again. 'He has this, I don't know, habit of stretching the truth. Almost always, it isn't anything more than exaggerating - like decorating the facts.'

'As I remember, you went along with this particular decoration.'

'We'd just had a quarrel, and I didn't want to irritate him, especially by contradicting him in front of you. Now that I'm thinking about this, I thought you knew he was lying right away.'

'Didn't take Sherlock Holmes,' Holly said. 'From our point of view, this made the two of you kind of interesting. So I decided to let you into the house and see if any other interesting things might come up.'

'Are we getting to it now?' asked Mr Shull. 'Can we skip the cracker-barrel stuff?'

'It?' Nora looked at Mr Shull, who smiled at her.

'There's something all of us find puzzling,' Holly said. 'It has to do with the physical evidence at the crime scene, and also a couple of remarks made by you and your husband. Do you recall your husband telling me that you didn't think Mrs Weil was dead?'

'I don't know where he got that from. I was sure she was dead.'

'Your husband's comment showed considerable foresight, wouldn't you say?'

'To tell you the truth, I think he was just trying to make me look foolish.'

'Because of your quarrel?'

'I suppose.'

'What was your quarrel about?'

'He thinks I don't show his father enough respect, and I think his father's a bully. We go round and round.'

'The argument isn't important,' said Mr Shull, 'If you don't get to it right now, I'm taking over.'

'We're there,' Holly said. He smiled at Nora again, but not vindictively, as Mr Shull had done. 'Let's get to when we were standing outside Mrs Weil's bedroom. Do you remember the condition of the room?'

Nora nodded.

'Do you remember what I said to you?'

'I didn't have to go in if I didn't want to.'

'Do you remember what I said right after that?'

'No, I don't. I'm sorry.'

'I suggested that you might want to reconsider the idea that Mrs Weil was not dead.'

'I don't remember that,' Nora said.

'You don't remember your response? It concerned the blood in the room.'

'It did?'

'You said, 'Maybe it isn't her blood.' Do you remember now?'

'Oh, you're right, I did, I remember. But that just popped into my mind because of Davey, what he told you outside.' She glanced up at Mr Shull, who, smiling, looked back. 'Of course it was her blood, it couldn't have been anything else.' She turned to Holly Fenn. 'It wasn't her blood? It was some kind of blood.'

'Yes, it was some kind of blood.'

'What kind?'

'Animal blood,' Holly said. 'Pig, most likely. You see why we're interested in your remark.'

'I guess I do,' Nora said. 'But it was just this dumb thing I said.'

'We're in sort of a quandary here, Nora.'

'You're in a quandary,' said Mr Shull.

'So you weren't speaking with any real knowledge when you told me that the stains in that room might not