Fear In The Sunlight Part 22

1.

Penrose stared down at the prison photograph of David Franks and remembered Josephine's doubts about him. He should have listened more carefully, although that was true of many things that she had told him during their relationship. At least most of the others only affected him personally; this, he thought, glancing again at the charge sheet, would have been the time to take more notice.

Franks had actually changed very little in the intervening years, but the starkness of the black-and-white image and the absence of that ready smile made him look entirely different. Penrose had seen enough ordinary-looking murderers in his time to know that there was no such thing as the face of a killer, but he guessed that most Americans glancing at their newspaper over the breakfast table would have no trouble in believing that this was a guilty man: there was a blankness in his eyes that suggested a withdrawal from reality and a complete lack of empathy with the world around him a both vital ingredients in the decision to take a life. He picked up Franks's statement again and continued reading, intrigued by the doc.u.ment's tone; perhaps they did things differently across the pond, but these words had an intimacy about them which bore no resemblance to any confession he had ever read.

'That day was significant for us both, I think, because it showed Gwyneth what I might be capable of. She watched Taran so closely over those last few months, sensitive to any trouble and more protective than ever a always knowing, though, that the danger wasn't in the cellar or the water or the woods but somewhere far less obvious, somewhere hidden away inside. I watched him, too, whenever I was with them. It was clear to me that my fate would always be tied to his. I would flourish as he faded, my life would begin when his ended, and I felt an overwhelming affection for him because of it a a reverence, almost, which I bore with a strange mixture of resentment and grat.i.tude.

'I suppose it's too easy to read meaning into coincidence, but I killed Taran a year to the day after she had watched me kill the dog. I woke him early, while the rest of the house was still sleeping, and helped him to put his clothes on. There was no problem in persuading him to come with me: I was the brother he could never havea and he trusted me. That sounds shocking, I suppose, but does it really make what I did any worse? Ask yourself this: if we have to die a and I've thought about this a great deal recently, for obvious reasons a isn't it better to do so at the hands of someone we love? To him, this was just another adventure, like many we had had before and a for all he knew a many which were still to come.

'The estuary was black and secretive, as it always is in the half-light of the early morning. I walked down to the quayside, the child in my arms, and told him to lie quietly in the bottom of the boat. It was all part of the game to hima and he snuggled down as good as gold, using my coat as a blanket against the chilliness of the day. The sh.o.r.eline was deathly quiet. I dampened the rowlocks to stop them squeaking and we set off, past the island and across to the other side, the oars leaving hollows in the water. At the landing stage by the house I let him help me secure the boat, then carried him on my shoulders across the road and up the garden path, he laughing and pulling my hair, his feet small and vulnerable in my hands. The house had been closed up for three years or more by then. Everything about it spoke of neglect, and it sat still and mistrustful in the silence, like an unpopular child wary of sudden attention. We let ourselves in through the kitchen doora and I swung him down onto the floor. He ran off into the house a his family home and birthright, although he would never know it a and I hesitated, aware that if I followed him there was no going back. Even then, I might have changed my mind, but he turned to me and beckoned, and his eagerness seemed to be a strange kind of blessing.

'I killed him in the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs where the first sunlight of a new day catches the corner of the rug. He struggled, and it was a shock to me to find so much strength in a tiny boy. As I held him down, my hands around his throat, my knee in his stomach, pressing him to the floor, I thought about what Gwyneth had suffered to bring him into the world, and I confess a I can say this to you now, certain that the knowledge will never reach her a the memory made me crueller than I needed to be. His death wasn't kind or peaceful. It wasn't mercifully quick. He was a clumsy child, forever hurting himself, but the marks on his face that day were of my makinga and there were others that were harder to see. By the time I had finished with him, the hall was bathed in sunlight. I cried a violent, choking sobs, wracking my whole body long after his was still. I have no idea now how long we stayed there. The only other memory I have of that morning is the look on my father's face as I docked the boat back at the quayside. In that one moment, he seemed to see everything that I would become. Perhaps it was my imagination; you would call it the product of a guilty conscience, I suppose. Either way, I was never entirely surea and very soon it ceased to matter.

'I wonder a if Henry Draycott had understood what he was setting in motion when he raped his wife, would he have stopped himself? Knowing what I know now, I doubt it. There is no such thing as self-control in moments like that. I was there the very first time he crossed the line, and I remember it clearly. I used to go to the house whenever I could, slipping happily into the role of the child Gwyneth believed she would never have. (There will come a time, I know, when everyone says I was incapable of real affection. That isn't true. For some reason a don't ask me why a it's important to me that you know it isn't true.) It was a hot, thundery afternoon, oppressive like that Sat.u.r.day in Portmeirion. I was supposed to have gone back across the watera but I didn't want to be caught in a storm so I crept back inside to wait until it had pa.s.sed. They were in his study, and I watched them from the hallway through the narrow crack in the door a the archetypal voyeur, innocent until that first shameful flicker of interest, then complicit in the violence by the very act of witnessing it. I suppose you could say it was the first film I ever saw.

'Even a weak man can become powerful, and that was Uncle Henry's legacy a what you want, you take. Money. s.e.x. Influence. Love, too, in a funny sort of way. Think about that before you wipe his slate clean, before you start to feel sorry for him. He had Gwyneth against the walla and she was screaming at him to stop, threatening him with what would happen if he didn't, but he was beyond all reason. It wasn't about s.e.xual satisfaction. Rape rarely is, although few people understand that. It's about anger. Something switches in youa and the rage pours outa and you want to knock them off their pedestal. Some fight back, some try to talk you out of it but you don't hear a word they say and the more they plead, the more you want to hurt them. When they're scared, you can do anything you wanta and the exhilaration is addictive. I knew I'd be caught eventually; I knew my freedom was short-lived, but still I went on, as if some force inside were controlling me, something stronger than I was. I could never fight it. In that sense, I have so much in common with Gwyneth's little boy.

'But I'm straying from the point. What interests you most is that weekend and why I killed three people in Portmeirion. Every ugly thing we do has a reason, you say, and you're right a but sometimes that reason is simply ugliness. If it would help you to understand, I could say that I killed Bella for her money; I killed her because she forced me to leave somewhere I loved, because I was tired of her meddling in my life, because she had finally realised that you can't keep someone out of trouble if they carry it with them; I could admit that she had begun to see a darkness in me which horrified her, but to which she refused to turn a blind eye; that she had set out on a path which would lead her to an earlier truth, that she was old, that she was dying, that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time; I could tell you that I needed to make Henry Draycott pay for a crime that went unpunished and it was easy to frame him for Bella because everyone knew they were enemies. If I wanted to, I could offer you a different reason for every single time I stuck the knife into her bodya and all of them would be true a but it wouldn't be the truth. I killed Bella Hutton a I killed them all, in fact a because I wanted to.

'I return to that place in my mind, you know: I'm there at the end of each day when the last shaft of sunlight disappears and a brooding quiet falls over the cemetery. The image fades more quickly now, no match for this concrete-and-steel cubicle or for the babble of voices along the row, endlessly shouting and bickering because talk is all they have. It's nearly five o'clock, and soon one of them will be gone. Further down the corridor, bolts are slid back against steel, a key is thrust into a lock and a gate swings open. The man they have come to fetch is three cells down. He can say goodbye to the rest of us or go straight to the room where he'll spend his last night, and he chooses the latter. He can't face our pity. He wants it to be donea and I don't blame him.

'One day soon, of course, it won't be the other man. I try not to think of the wheel that will seal the chamber door or the straps on my wrists or the pungent smell of peach blossom as the fumes invade my body, and I hold on to the peace and the darkness of home. They elude me more often now, those images, but they're still there. They'll always be there.'

Penrose put the sheaf of papers down, disturbed by the insight into Franks's mind, and tried to concentrate on the facts. Detective Doyle was right: the confession to three murders at Portmeirion could not have been more clearly stated, although the only victim actually mentioned by name was Bella Hutton. If Franks had really found a way of killing Leyton Turnbull a Penrose still found it hard to think of Turnbull as Henry Draycott a would his arrogance allow him to be discreet about it? Wouldn't he want to explain how perfectly his plan had been executed? Unless, of course, he was protecting an accomplice: perhaps someone else had been waiting in the Bell Tower to push Turnbull to his death while Franks remained safely visible on the terrace. If so, there was no doubt in Penrose's mind that Franks would delight in taking the truth to his grave.

The other possibility was a third body at Portmeirion that had never been discovered. Was that the twisted purpose of this confession? To taunt the authorities with an unsolved crime? As far as Penrose could see, the only person unaccounted for that weekend was. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's nun, who seemed to have left her hotel without checking out a but that was no reason to suppose she was dead. He could try to establish what had happened to Joan Sidney, although it would probably be a wild goose chase: he didn't suppose for a moment that a p.o.r.n star used her real name.

He skimmed through the doc.u.ment again to make sure he hadn't missed anything, then looked through the box that Doyle had left him and took out the other film reel. It was unlabelled, and he began to thread it onto the projector, swearing under his breath at the awkwardness of the process. He managed it at last, but before he had a chance to start the machine, there was a knock at the door. 'Devlin a that was quick. Is there something I should know about our American friend?'

'He doesn't exist, sir.'

Penrose glared at him, as if it were the sergeant's fault that the phrase made no sense. 'What do you mean?'

'There is no Detective Tom Doyle with the Los Angeles Police Department, and there never has been. I spoke to someone called Larry Hunter a that's his number a but he didn't know the namea and he didn't recognise the description I gave him of the man who was here.'

'Get on to the Adelphi and . . .'

'I've already done it, sir. Tom Doyle checked out this morning. He arrived late last night, made no calls, took no meals and spoke to no one a as far as they know. He paid his bill in cash.'

's.h.i.t. Didn't they take any personal details from him when he booked in?'

'Oh yes. He gave an LA home address and a telephone number.'

'And?' Penrose asked, his heart sinking.

'It's a poodle parlour.'

'So what the h.e.l.l is all this about?' Bewildered, he looked down at the materials on his desk a and then it dawned on him. 'How could I have been so b.l.o.o.d.y stupid?' he exclaimed angrily. 'I should have known the minute Doyle mentioned Hitchc.o.c.k that this was all some sort of elaborate joke. Well, he's not getting away with it this time. I don't care how famous he is.'

He reached for the telephone, but Devlin stopped him. 'It's not a joke, sir. The LAPD might not have heard of a Detective Tom Doyle, but someone called David Franks is on death row for murder. Hunter's sending the files over so you can look at the case in detail, but in the meantime he's given me an overview.'

'Go on.'

'Franks was arrested earlier this year and charged with the murders of twelve women in various cities across America and Canada. The earliest case dates from 1940, and he struck at the rate of roughly one a year. It took a while for the murders to be linked because they were in so many different states, but the women were all killed in the same way a raped, beaten and strangled. It was the papers who dubbed them the cemetery murders. That's where the bodies were dumped each time a in the city's cemeteries. They were left overnight, usually tied up and blindfolded, and laid out on one of the most elaborate memorials.'

'Like a sacrifice,' Penrose said quietly, remembering Bella Hutton's body. 'Who were the victims?'

'All of them were hookers,' Devlin said, and the American slang a repeated verbatim from his informant a jarred with his English accent. 'After Franks was arrested, it emerged that he had been a major player in the p.o.r.n industry a serious stag films, all very explicit and a lot of them violent. He made a fortune from it, apparently. Most of the victims have been identified as women he used in the films.'

'Used' being the operative word, Penrose thought. 'Anything else?' he asked.

'One of the newspapers did some digging into Franks's past and found out he used to work for Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k.'

'I bet Hitch was thrilled about that. It must have kept the studio lawyers busy for quite some time.'

'It was played down very quickly, I understand. But not before the same paper had pointed out that some of the murders coincided with the release of a new Hitchc.o.c.k movie and that the locations of the bodies mirrored the films' settings: New York for Saboteur and Rope; Santa Rosa for Shadow of a Doubt; Vermont for Spellbound; Miami for Notorious; Washington DC for Strangers on a Traina and so on. Hunter was very keen to stress, though, that none of that is official.'

'So how did he explain the Rear Window killings?'

'He didn't. He denies they ever took place.'

'What?'

'First he just laughed, and then he got defensive about it.'

'Another Hitchc.o.c.k fan, no doubt,' Penrose said caustically. He wasn't surprised that Hollywood might try to cover up its links to a serial killer, but none of that explained the confession he had just read or why these materials had found their way to his desk.

'Perhaps. Hunter wants to talk to you about it, and he's asked me to make sure the film reels are sent to him.'

'I think we'll take our time over that. I haven't even looked at them myself yet. So how does he claim that Franks was caught?'

'According to the LAPD, the last victim was found in a cemetery in Quebec City. A vehicle seen parked outside was traced back to Franks.'

'And is there a Quebec film?'

Devlin nodded. 'I Confess. Quite appropriate, really.' Penrose nodded thoughtfully. 'Franks is at San Quentin, waiting for the gas chamber. The date for his execution has been set for 1 December this year. He hasn't made any attempt to lodge an appeal.'

'Did you ask Hunter about that confession and the murders in Portmeirion?'

'Yes. Franks has bragged about other murders, apparently, but he hasn't made a formal confession for anything other than what's on the original charge sheet. I don't think they're bothered, sir. They can only gas him once.'

Even so, Penrose could think of one person to whom Franks's claims would matter very much indeed. 'I'm going to take a look at this film, but I need you to do some more digging for me. First of all, see if you can trace a woman called Gwyneth Draycott. In 1936, she was living in a house between Portmeirion and Harlech. If she's still alive, I need to talk to her. Then get on to San Quentin and see if they'll give you a list of people with whom Franks has communicated, either by letter or by personal visit.'

'Right away, sir. Anything else?'

Penrose shook his head, then changed his mind. 'Actually, there is one more thing: about seven years ago, a woman's body was found in Highgate. That was before you joined us, wasn't it?' Devlin nodded. 'Get the details for me. There's a Hitchc.o.c.k film set in London.' He remembered going to see it with Josephine a something long and tedious with a courtroom scene; it was loosely based on true crimes and had reminded them both of their conversation with the director over breakfast that day in Portmeirion. 'See if the dates coincide.'

He lowered the blinds again and sat down at his desk. The footage started abruptly with a close-up of a woman's face. She was staring in disbelief at someone out of camera shot, her eyes darting to left and right as she tried to guess his intentions, her fear turning to horror when she realised what was about to happen. As Penrose watched, her breathing quickened in panica and her mouth opened in a scream. There was a flurry of hands at her throat while she tried to prevent an unseen a.s.sailant from tying something around her neck, but he was too quick for her. She twisted her head from side to side, choking for air as the material dug into her skin and squeezed the life from her body. Her hands a well manicured and heavy with rings a continued to claw at the knot, but gradually she lost her strengtha and the clawing became a caress, then stopped altogether. She wore a crucifix, and the cord that had been used to strangle her hung down on either side, framing the cross and mocking her faith in any sort of divine protection. For a long time, the camera lingered on her face, her eyes still and lifeless, her tongue protruding grotesquely from her mouth; eventually it panned away and the film stopped as abruptly as it had started, but not before Penrose had glimpsed the outstretched hand of another victim in the background.

Sickened by what he had seen, he had to force himself to watch the footage again and was just rewinding the reel for the fourth time when Devlin returned. 'You were right, sir,' he said. 'The film was called The Paradine Case and it came out here around Christmas 1947. Susan Dunn's body was found in Highgate Cemetery on the morning of 28 January by a woman walking her dog. She'd been strangled by her own stocking.'

He handed over the file. 'She wasn't a prost.i.tute, though, was she?' Penrose said, flicking through it to remind himself of the case.

'No, a housewife. Her husband reported her missing the night before. She popped out to get him a bottle of beer and never came back. We didn't find her killer.'

'Perhaps we have now.' He looked down at the image of a woman's body slumped against a gravestone, one stocking around her neck, the other in her mouth, and thought about Branwen Erley. 'Did the prison cooperate?' Devlin pa.s.sed him a short list of names and Penrose nodded to himself: things were beginning to make more sense.

'And Gwyneth Draycott is still living at the same address. That's her telephone number.'

'Thank you.' Penrose picked up the receiver, then thought better of it. The sort of news he had for Gwyneth Draycott needed to be delivered in person. Everything else could wait.

2.

Penrose stayed in Shrewsbury overnight and set out early the next morning for North Wales. It was a relief to be away from London, and he was grateful for any distraction that took his mind off the sadness of the time of year and his anxiety about the future: he had never subscribed to the school of thought that welcomed retirement as an opportunity; almost everything he had wanted in life he had achieved through his worka and, while he knew that the decision to go now, when he would still be missed, was the correct one, there was a part of him that longed to cling to his desk until he was forcibly removed, an embarra.s.sing relic from the old school whose only value was his longevity. He could never have admitted it to those closest to him, but he feared the type of man he might become with no real purpose to his day other than contentment.

The road stretched out ahead of him, a meandering ribbon of grey between fertile green fields, and he shook off his mood and concentrated instead on the pleasures of the journey. Even on a cloudy day like this, when a light drizzle and persistent breeze conspired to undermine all thoughts of summer, he delighted in the subtle variety of the Welsh countryside. The overcast skies could do nothing to rob the hills and valleys of their colour, and Penrose found a spa.r.s.eness and simplicity in the landscape which made it welcome company.

He bypa.s.sed the Portmeirion turning and took the road to Harlech, finally making the journey he had wanted to make all those years ago. As he drove, he considered how best to approach his meeting with Gwyneth Draycott, presuming she agreed to talk to him at all. He had no intention of sharing the harsher details of Taran's murder with her, only the name of the person responsible, and he sensed that the news would bring both comfort and pain: if Franks's words were to be believed in their entirety, there had been a genuine affection between the two of them, something more than a distant relationship through a fractured family, and Gwyneth Draycott's relief in knowing the truth at last was unlikely to temper her sense of betrayal.

The house was harder to find than he expecteda and he tried two lanes down to the estuary before locating the right one. He parked the car at the side of the road and took in the reality of something he had only ever seen in miniature. It was a handsome house, one of those solid-looking Victorian structures, built to suggest a quiet but enduring status and given greater authority by its commanding position. Everything about it spoke of care and attention, and Penrose wondered if the tidiness was Gwyneth Draycott's way of restoring some semblance of order to a life scarred by events beyond her control. If he hadn't known what had happened here, he would have said there was an air of peace about the property, and he questioned the wisdom of what he had come to do. Was it really fair to rake over the ashes of forty years in the name of justice, or was he simply playing to Franks's vanity? Before he had made up his mind, the decision was taken out of his hands: a woman was standing at one of the downstairs windows, looking inquisitively at his car, and Penrose had no choice but to get out and explain himself.

She opened the front door before he had a chance to knock. Her dark hair was tinged with greya and she must have been in her mid-sixties, but it was only her hands and the lines on her neck that gave away her age; her face had a fresh, youthful complexiona and her eyes a an unusually dark shade of blue a were bright and questioning, making it easy to imagine how beautiful she had been as a young woman. Even now, she was still remarkably attractive. 'Mrs Draycott?' Penrose asked.

'Who wants to know?' Her accent was soft, her voice pleasant, but the coolness of the words was unmistakable.

'My name is Archie Penrose. I'm with the Metropolitan Policea and I was staying at Portmeirion eighteen years ago when your husband died. I've recently been given some information which I think you should know about. It relates to him and to your son.'

'Henry Draycott was dead to me long before he had the decency to do it properly,' she said. 'Whatever news you have, you're wasting your time by bringing it here.'

'And your son?' She hesitated, and Penrose guessed that so many years of silence had schooled her against even daring to hope. 'Can I come in, Mrs Draycott? Just for a moment?'

She nodded reluctantly and stood aside to allow him into the hallway. He tried to be discreet as she showed him through to the kitchen, but could not resist a lingering glance over his shoulder towards the bottom of the staircase. Gwyneth Draycott had been living in this house for nearly forty years, oblivious to the violence that had taken place there, walking innocently across that floor several times a day, and the thought horrified him. Whatever else he told her, he was determined to keep that part of the story to himself: there was no sense in turning her refuge into a house of horror; her home was probably the one thing that had kept her sane.

The kitchen smelt of tomatoes and freshly baked bread. He took the chair offered to him while she went over to the stove, resolved, it seemed, not to let him disrupt the course of her day. 'I'm sorry to bring painful memories back after so many years,' he began cautiously, 'but . . .'

'Have you found Taran?'

She asked the question without turning round, but he heard the anxiety in her voice and wished he could offer something more than just a name. 'I'm afraid not.' She walked across to the windowa and Penrose gave her a moment to compose herself. 'I'm here because of your nephew, David Franks.' He waited in vain for a response. 'You do remember him?'

'Of course I remember David,' she said, sitting down opposite him, 'but he left here a long time ago and under terrible circ.u.mstances. His father was killed because of what happened to Taran, although I expect you know that already.'

'Yes. Did you keep in touch with David after he left?'

'No.' She must have noticed the look of surprise on his face because she addeda 'He was upset about leaving, and Bella thought it would be best if he made a clean break.'

'So he didn't visit you when he came to Portmeirion in 1936?' Penrose asked, curious that Franks should claim such affection for Gwyneth Draycott but not take a twenty-minute journey down the road to see her.

'No.' She flushed slightly. 'I thought you were here to tell me something, Mr Penrose?'

It was a fair point: old habits died hard, but this was supposed to be a mission of mercy, not an interrogation. 'This will come as a shock to you, Mrs Draycott, but David Franks is currently in America awaiting execution. He went back there to live in 1938 and was arrested earlier this year and charged with the murders of twelve women over a fourteen-year period.' Her face was impa.s.sive, and Penrose wondered if she already knew of her nephew's arrest. He carried on, interested to see how she would react to news which she could not have come by in any other way, and which was more personal to her. 'I've been shown a doc.u.ment which suggests that it was David Franks and not your husband who murdered Bella Hutton and Branwen Erley in Portmeirion.'

'What sort of doc.u.ment?'

'A letter which he wrote from prison. There's no easy way to say this, but the letter also contains a confession to Taran's murder.' Penrose searched in vain for the reaction he had expected, then continued gentlya 'I thought you had a right to know who took your son's life after all these years. It's also right that the people who have taken the blame for David Franks's crimes, officially or not, should have their names cleared.' Still she said nothing, and Penrose found himself watching the second hand of the kitchen clock complete two full circles before he spoke again. 'Forgive me, but you don't seem very . . .'

'Grateful?' It was not the word that Penrose had been about to usea but he realised, on reflection, that it was perhaps more honest. He had wanted to feel that he could bring comfort to a woman whose life had been so senselessly destroyed, but his motives were far from selfless: even if David Franks was made to account for Taran's death, it did not change the fact that Penrose had walked away too easily from the murders at Portmeirion, and Gwyneth Draycott's grat.i.tude would never absolve him from that. 'It's hard for me to explain, Mr Penrose,' she said, 'but it's nearly forty years since Taran dieda and the question that haunts me is no longer who, but why. Can you answer that for me? Have you gleaned anything from this letter which might help a mother make more sense of the world?' This time, it was Penrose's turn to remain silent. 'Taran was a happy, beautiful little boy who didn't deserve the fate that G.o.d gave him. I don't mean to be rude, but I think it would take a higher authority than yours to put that right.'

'I'm afraid David has given no indication of where Taran's body is,' Penrose said quietly. 'I could ask the American police to press him for the information if it would help you.'

'What good would that really do? Taran suffered enough when he was alivea and I'd rather he was left in peace. Thank you, though. It was kind of you to take the trouble.'

The words were spoken as a dismissal and Penrose stood up to go, feeling oddly flat and thwarted. There were still so many things that he did not understand about Franks's claims, but he reminded himself again that he was not here for his own satisfaction; Gwyneth Draycott had suffered enough, tooa and he had no right to pry into her marriage. She was not the accused. As she walked him to the door, there was a noise from upstairs, the sound of something crashing to the floor, and she looked up, startled. 'You don't live alone, Mrs Draycott?' Penrose asked.

'No. My sister joined me here a few years ago. The house is far too big for one person. But she's illa and I must go to her, unless there's anything else?'

'Just one more thing: did Branwen Erley ever contact you about trying to find her mother?'

She stiffened at the reminder of her husband's adultery. 'No.'

'And you didn't have any contact with your husband during the weekend of his death?'

'Absolutely not.' She shut the door without any further conversationa and he walked over to his car. Looking back at the house, he saw her face appear briefly at one of the upstairs windowsa and then the curtains were drawn across, an eloquent closure to his visit. The stretch of water which David Franks had described lay before hima and he stared at the run-down landing stage, imagining the small hands on the rope, the sound of laughter and footsteps as Taran ran up the path towards his death. He shook his head to get rid of the image and concentrated instead on the rugged dignity of the Snowdon line which dominated the horizon opposite. The morning was still sulking, stubbornly bland and grey, but, as he watched, a shaft of sunlight broke tentatively through the cloud and fell on Portmeirion; it seemed to confine itself strictly to the small cl.u.s.ter of buildings, a blessing for Clough's endeavours and an invitation to lay his own ghosts, and Penrose smiled.

Half an hour later, he left his Riley in the car park, paid his five shillings at the gate and joined the throng of day visitors to the village. Walking down the driveway, he could only imagine how frustrating Clough had found the fifteen-year period of war and its aftermath which had prevented him from expanding his vision; with the restrictions now lifted, he seemed to be making up for lost timea and work was already well under way on the new Gate House, a Baroque-style structure designed to straddle the road on the way into the village. The familiar figure of Portmeirion's creator a clad in waistcoat, breeches and long yellow stockings a was standing nearby, overseeing the work, and Penrose raised his hand in greeting. As he made his way round the Piazza, taking the long route down to the hotel, it occurred to him that the gradual evolution of the village had contributed much to its beauty.

From the terrace, he noticed another new addition high up to the right of the village, a round single-storey structure that peered over the clifftop like some sort of wartime lookout post. Penrose changed his mind about going to the hotel and looked instead for a route up to the building from the sh.o.r.eline. He found the path eventually and climbed the rock via a series of steep steps, pausing at the top to catch his breath.

'Great minds, Archie.'

He looked up, embarra.s.sed to realise that Marta must have watched his entire ungainly ascent. He had not seen her since before Josephine's death, although they had spoken often on the telephone a stilted, trivial conversations that skirted around their grief but which, in the unspoken solidarity of loss, gave each of them comfort. Her skin was pale and he could see that she had been crying. In middle age, Marta's face had always stayed loyal to its younger beauty a a fact that had simultaneously delighted and infuriated Josephine a but today she looked tired and defeated. 'I don't know why I'm surprised to see you,' he said, 'bearing in mind what the date is.'

'I come here because I don't know what else to do.' It was the first time Archie had heard her acknowledge her despair so openly. He sat down next to her and took her hand. 'I can't forgive her for lying to me, you know. She told me it was nothing serious. She said she'd be back to normal in about a year. A nice simple treatment by tablet, she called it a all so b.l.o.o.d.y innocent.'

'She told herself that, Marta.'

'Since when has an aspirin cured cancer?' He understood her anger too well to reason with it. 'Then she let me go out of the country. Actually, she encouraged me to go. I remember her telling me that three months was nothing, when she must have known that it was far too long.' She lit a cigarette, using the diversion to rein in her emotions. 'I read it in the newspaper,' she said, her voice unnaturally calm. 'I picked up the New York Times, and there it was.'

'I'm sorry. I wanted to tell youa but I didn't know how to find you.' He thought back to that cold, dreary day in February, when Josephine's sister had telephoned him at Scotland Yard to give him the news, and the hours he had spent calling American hotels, trying to find Marta as a distraction from his own grief. 'She was the only person who knew where you were.'

'I'm not blaming you, Archie. It shouldn't have been down to you.'