Puppet On A Chain Part 15

'Most d.a.m.nably hot in there,' Goodbody said complain-ingly. 'And ticklish.' He smiled in that fashion that made little children want to take him by the hand. 'Your calling leads you into the most unexpected places, I must say, my dear Sherman.'

'My calling?'

'Last time I met you, you were, if I remember correctly, purporting to be a taxi-driver.'

'Ah, that time. I'll bet you didn't report me to the police after all.'

'I did have second thoughts about it,' Goodbody conceded generously. He walked across to where my gun lay and picked it up distastefully before throwing it into the hay. 'Crude, unpleasant weapons.'

'Yes, indeed,' I agreed. 'You now prefer to introduce an element of refinement into your killing.'

'As I am shortly about to demonstrate.' Goodbody wasn't bothering to lower his voice but he didn't have to, the Huyler matrons were at their morning coffee now and even with their mouths full they all appeared capable of talking at once. Goodbody walked across to the hay, unearthed a canvas bag and produced a length of rope. 'Be on the alert, my dear Marcel. If Mr Sherman makes the slightest move, however harmless it may seem, shoot him. Not to kill. Through the thigh.'

Marcel licked his lips. I hoped he wouldn't consider the movement of my shirt, caused by the accelerated pumping of my heart, as one that could be suspiciously interpreted. Goodbody approached circ.u.mspectly from the rear, tied the rope firmly round my right wrist, pa.s.sed the rope over a rafter and then, after what seemed an unnecessarily lengthy period of readjustment, secured the rope round my left wrist. My hands were held at the level of my ears. Goodbody brought out another length of rope.

'From my friend Marcel here,' Goodbody said conversationally, 'I have learned that you have a certain expertise with your hands. It occurs to me that you might be similarly gifted with your feet.' He stooped and fastened my ankles together with an enthusiasm that boded ill for the circulation of my feet. 'It further occurs to me that you might have comment to make on the scene you are about to witness. We would prefer to do without the comment.' He stuffed a far from clean handkerchief into my mouth and bound it in position with another one. 'Satisfactory, Marcel, you would say?'

Marcel's eyes gleamed. 'I have a message to deliver to Sherman from Mr Durrell.'

'Now, now, my dear fellow, not so precipitate. Later, later. For the moment, we want our friend to be in full possession of his faculties, eyesight undimmed, hearing unimpaired, the mind at its keenest to appreciate all the artistic nuances of the entertainment we have arranged for his benefit.'

'Of course, Mr Goodbody,' Marcel said obediently. He was back at his revolting lip-licking. 'But afterwards -- '

'Afterwards,' Goodbody said generously, 'you may deliver as many messages as you like. But remember -- I want him still alive when the barn burns down tonight. It is a pity that we shall be unable to witness it from close quarters.' He looked genuinely sad. 'You and that charming young lady out there -- when they find your charred remains among the embers -- well, I'm sure they'll draw their own conclusions about love's careless young dream. Smoking in barns, as you have just done, is a most unwise practice. Most unwise. Goodbye, Mr Sherman, and I do not mean au revoir. I think I must observe the hay dance from closer range. Such a charming old custom. I think you will agree.'

He left, leaving Marcel to his lip-licking. I didn't much fancy being left alone with Marcel, but that was hardly of any importance in my mind at that moment. I twisted and looked through the gap in the planking.

The matrons had finished their coffee and were lumbering to their feet. Trudi and Maggie were directly beneath where I was standing.

'Were the cakes not nice, Maggie?' Trudi asked. 'And the coffee?'

'Lovely, Trudi, lovely. But I have been too long away. I have shopping to do. I must go now.' Maggie paused and looked up. 'What's that?'

Two piano accordions had begun to play, softly, gently. I could see neither of the musicians: the sound appeared to come from the far side of the haystack the matrons had just finished building.

Trudi jumped to her feet, clapping her hands excitedly. She reached down and pulled Maggie to hers.

'It's the hay dance!' Trudi cried, a child having her birthday treat. 'The hay dance! They are going to do the hay dance! They must like you too, Maggie. They do it for you! You are their friend now.' They do it for you! You are their friend now.'

The matrons, all of them middle-aged or older, with faces curiously, almost frighteningly lacking in expression, began to move with a sort of ponderous precision. Shouldering their hayforks like rifles, they formed a straight line and began to clump heavily to and fro, their beribboned pigtails swinging as the music from the accordions swelled in volume. They pirouetted gravely, then resumed their rhythmic marching to and fro. The straight line, I saw, was now gradually curving into the shape of a half moon.

'I've never seen a dance like this before.' Maggie's voice was puzzled. I'd never seen a dance like it either and I knew with a sick and chilling certainty that I would never want to see one again -- not, it seemed now, that I would ever have the chance to see one again.

Trudi echoed my thoughts, but their sinister implication escaped Maggie.

'And you will never see a dance like this again, Maggie,' she said. They are only starting. Oh, Maggie, they must like you -- see, they want you I'

'Me?'

'Yes, Maggie. They like you. Sometimes they ask me. Today, you.' They like you. Sometimes they ask me. Today, you.'

'I must go, Trudi.'

'Please, Maggie. For a moment. You don't do anything. You just stand facing them. Please, Magg For a moment. You don't do anything. You just stand facing them. Please, Maggie. They will be hurt if you don't do this.' They will be hurt if you don't do this.'

Maggie laughed protestingly, resignedly. 'Oh, very well.'

Seconds later a reluctant and very embarra.s.sed Maggie was standing at the focal point as a semi-circle of hayfork-bearing matrons advanced and retreated towards and from her. Gradually the pattern and the tempo of the dance changed and quickened as the dancers now formed a complete circle about Maggie. The circle contracted and expanded, contracted and expanded, the women bowing gravely as they approached most closely to Maggie, then flinging their heads and pigtails back as they stamped away again. The circle contracted and expanded, contracted and expanded, the women bowing gravely as they approached most closely to Maggie, then flinging their heads and pigtails back as they stamped away again.

Goodbody came into my line of view, his smile, gently amused and kindly as he partic.i.p.ated vicariously in the pleasure of the charming old dance taking place before him. He stood beside Trudi, and put a hand on her shoulder: she smiled delightedly up at him.

I felt I was going to be sick. I wanted to look away, but to look away would have been an abandonment of Maggie and I could never abandon Maggie: but G.o.d only knew that I could never help her now. There was embarra.s.sment in her face, now, and puzzlement: and more than a hint of uneasiness. She looked anxiously at Trudi through a gap between two of the matrons: Trudi smiled widely and waved in gay encouragement.

Suddenly the accordion music changed. What had been a gently lilting dance tune, albeit with a military beat to it, increased rapidly in volume as it changed into something of a different nature altogether, something that went beyond the merely martial, something that was harsh and primitive and savage and violent. The matrons, having reached their fully expanded circle, were beginning to close in again. From my elevation I could still see Maggie, her eyes wide now and fear showing in her face: she leaned to one side to look almost desperately for Trudi. But there was no salvation in Trudi: her smile had gone now, her cotton-clad hands were clasped tightly together and she was licking her lips slowly, obscenely; I turned to look at Marcel, who was busy doing the same thing: but he still had his gun on me, and watched me as closely as he watched the scene outside. There was nothing I could do.

The matrons were now stamping their way inwards. Their moonlike faces had lost their expressionless quality and were now pitiless, implacable, and the deepening fear in Maggie's eyes gave way to terror, her eyes staring as the music became more powerful, more discordant still. Then abruptly, with military precision, the shoulder-borne pitchforks were brought sweeping down until they were pointed directly at Maggie. She screamed and screamed again but the sound she made was barely audible above the almost insanely discordant crescendo of the accordions. And then Maggie was down and, mercifully, all I could see was the back view of the matrons as their forks time and again jerked high and stabbed down convulsively at something that now lay motionless on the ground. For the s.p.a.ce of a few moments I could look no longer. I had to look away, and there was Trudi, her hands opening and closing, her mesmerized entranced face with a hideous animal-like quality to it: and beside her the Reverend Goodbody, his face as benign and gently benevolent as ever, an expression that belied his staring eyes. Evil minds, sick minds that had long since left the borders of sanity far behind. She screamed and screamed again but the sound she made was barely audible above the almost insanely discordant crescendo of the accordions. And then Maggie was down and, mercifully, all I could see was the back view of the matrons as their forks time and again jerked high and stabbed down convulsively at something that now lay motionless on the ground. For the s.p.a.ce of a few moments I could look no longer. I had to look away, and there was Trudi, her hands opening and closing, her mesmerized entranced face with a hideous animal-like quality to it: and beside her the Reverend Goodbody, his face as benign and gently benevolent as ever, an expression that belied his staring eyes. Evil minds, sick minds that had long since left the borders of sanity far behind.

I forced myself to look back again as the music slowly subsided, losing its primeval atavistic quality. The frenzied activities of the matrons had subsided, the stabbing had ceased, and as I watched one of the matrons turned aside and picked up a forkful of hay. I had a momentary glimpse of a crumpled figure with a white blouse no longer white lying on the stubble, then a forkful of hay covered her from sight. Then came another forkful and another and another, and as the two accordions, soft and gentle and muted now, spoke nostalgically of old Vienna, they built a haystack over Maggie. Dr Goodbody and Trudi, she again smiling and chattering gaily, walked off arm in arm towards the village. Dr Goodbody and Trudi, she again smiling and chattering gaily, walked off arm in arm towards the village.

Marcel turned away from the gap in the planks and sighed. 'Dr Goodbody manages those things so well, don't you think? The flair, the sensitivity, the time, the place, the atmosphere -- exquisitely done, exquisitely done.' The beautifully modulated Oxbridge accent emanating from that snake's head was no less repellent than the context in which the words were used: he was like the rest of them, quite mad.

He approached me circ.u.mspectly from the back, undid the handkerchief which had been tied round my head and plucked out the filthy lump of cotton that had been shoved into my mouth. I didn't think that he was being motivated by any humanitarian considerations, and he wasn't. He said offhandedly: 'When you scream, I want to hear it. I don't think the ladies out there will pay too much attention.'

I was sure they wouldn't. I said: 'I'm surprised Dr-Goodbody could drag himself away.' My voice didn't sound like any voice I'd ever used before: it was hoa.r.s.e and thick and I'd difficulty in forming the words as if I'd damaged my larynx.

Marcel smiled. 'Dr Goodbody has urgent things to attend to in Amsterdam. Important things.'

'And important things to transport from here to Amsterdam.'

'Doubtless.' He smiled again and I could almost see his hood distending. 'Cla.s.sically, my dear Sherman, when a person is in your position and has lost out and is about to die, it is customary for a person in my position to explain, in loving detail, just where the victim went wrong. But apart from the fact that your list of blunders is so long as to be too tedious to ennumerate, I simply can't be bothered. So let's get on with it, shall we?'

'Get on with what?' Here it comes now, I thought, but I didn't much care: it didn't seem to matter much any more.

'The message from Mr Durrell, of course.' Pain sliced like a butcher's cleaver through my head and the side of my face as he slashed the barrel of his gun across it. I thought my left cheekbone must be broken, but couldn't be sure: but my tongue told me that two at least of my teeth had been loosened beyond repair.

'Mr Durrell,' Marcel said happily, 'told me to tell you that he doesn't like being pistol-whipped.' He went for the right side of my face this time, and although I saw and knew it was coming and tried to jerk my head back I couldn't get out of the way. This one didn't hurt so badly, but I knew I was badly hurt from the temporary loss of vision that followed the brilliant white light that seemed to explode just in front of my eyes. My face was on fire, my head was coming apart, but my mind was strangely clear. Very little more of this systematic clubbing, I knew, and even a plastic surgeon would shake his head regretfully: but what really mattered was that with very little more of this treatment I would lose consciousness, perhaps for hours. There seemed to be only one hope: to make his clubbing unsystematic.

I spat out a tooth and said: 'Pansy.'

For some reason this got him. The veneer of civilized urbanity couldn't have been thicker than an onion skin to begin with and it just didn't slough off, it vanished in an instant of time and what was left was a mindless beserker savage who attacked me with the wanton, unreasoning and insensate fury of the mentally unhinged, which he almost certainly was. Blows rained from all directions on my head and shoulders, blows from his gun and blows from his fists and when I tried to protect myself as best I could with my forearms he switched his insane a.s.sault to my body. I moaned, my eyes turned up, my legs turned to jelly and I would have collapsed had I been in a position to: as it was, I just hung limply from the rope securing my wrists.

Two or three more agony-filled seconds elapsed before he recovered himself sufficiently to realize that he was wasting his time: from Marcel's point of view there could be little point in inflicting punishment on a person who was beyond feeling the effects of it. He made a strange noise in his throat which probably indicated disappointment more than anything else, then just stood there breathing heavily.

What he was contemplating doing next I couldn't guess for I didn't dare open my eyes.

I heard him move away a little and risked a quick glance from the corner of my eye. The momentary madness was over and Marcel, who was obviously as opportunistic as he was s.a.d.i.s.tic, had picked up my jacket and was going through it hopefully but unsuccessfully, for wallets carried in the inner breast pocket of a jacket invariably fall out when that jacket is carried over the arm and I'd prudently transferred my wallet with its money, pa.s.sport and driving licence to my hip pocket. Marcel wasn't long in arriving at the right conclusion for almost immediately I heard his footsteps and felt the wallet being removed from my hip pocket.

He was standing by my side now. I couldn't see him, but I was aware of this. I moaned and swung helplessly at the end of the rope that secured me to the rafter. My legs were trailed out behind me, the upper parts of the toes of my shoes resting on the floor. I opened my eyes, just a fraction.

I could see his feet, not more than a yard from where I was, I glanced up, for the fleeting part of a second. Marcel, with an air of concentration and pleased surprise was engrossed in the task of transferring the very considerable sums of money I carried in my wallet to his own pocket. He held the wallet in his left hand, while his gun dangled by the trigger-guard from the crooked middle finger of the same hand. He was so absorbed that he didn't see my hands reach up to get a better purchase on the securing ropes.

I jack-knifed my body convulsively forward and upwards with all the hate and the fury and the pain that was in me and I do not think that Marcel ever saw my scything feet coming. He made no sound at all, just jack-knifed forward in turn as convulsively as I had done, fell against me and slithered slowly to the floor. He lay there and his head rolled from side to side whether in unconscious reflex or in the conscious reflex of a body otherwise numbed in a paroxysm of agony I could not say but I was in no way disposed to take chances. I stood upright, took a long step back as far as my bonds would permit and came at him again. I was vaguely surprised that his head still stayed on his shoulders: it wasn't pretty but then I wasn't dealing with pretty people.

The gun was still hooked round the middle finger of his left hand. I pulled it off with the toes of my shoes. I tried to get a purchase on the gun between my shoes but the friction coefficient between the metal and the leather was too low and the gun kept sliding free. I removed my shoes by dragging the heels against the floor and then, a much longer process, my socks by using the same technique. I abraded a fair amount of skin and collected my quota of wooden splinters in so doing, but was conscious of no real sensation of hurt: the pain in my face made other minor irritation insignificant to the point of non-existence.

My bare feet gave me an excellent purchase on the gun. Keeping them tightly clamped together I brought both ends of the rope together and hauled myself up till I reached the rafter. This gave me four feet of slack rope to play with, more than enough. I hung by my left hand, reached down with my right while I doubled up my legs. And then I had the gun in my hand.

I lowered myself to the floor, held the rope pinioning my left wrist taut and placed the muzzle of the gun against it. The first shot severed it as neatly as any knife could have done'. I untied all the knots securing me, ripped off the front of Marcel's snow-white shirt to wipe my bloodied face and mouth, retrieved my wallet and money and left. I didn't know whether Marcel was alive or dead, he looked very dead to me but I wasn't interested enough to investigate.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

It was early afternoon when I got back to Amsterdam and the sun that had looked down on Maggie's death that morning had symbolically gone into hiding. Heavy dark cloud rolled in from the Zuider Zee. I could have reached the city an hour earlier than I did, but the doctor in the put-patients department of the suburban hospital where I'd stopped by to have my face fixed had been full of questions and annoyed at my insistence that sticking-plaster -- a large amount of it, admittedly -- was all I required at the moment and that the st.i.tching and the swathes of white bandaging could wait until later. What with the plaster and a.s.sorted bruises and a half-closed left eye I must have looked like the sole survivor from an express train crash, but at least I wasn't bad enough to send young children screaming for their mothers.

I parked the police taxi not far from a hire-garage where I managed to persuade the owner to let me have a small black Opel. He wasn't very keen, as my face was enough to give rise in anyone's mind to doubts about my past driving record, but he let me have it in the end. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall as I drove off, stopped by the police car, picked up Astrid's handbag and two pairs of handcuffs for luck, and went on my way.

I parked the car in what was by now becoming a rather familiar side-street to me and walked down towards the ca.n.a.l. I poked my head around the corner and as hastily withdrew it again: next time I looked I merely edged an eye round.

A black Mercedes was parked by the door of the Church of the American Huguenot Society. Its capacious boot was open and two men were lifting an obviously very heavy box inside: there were already two or three similar boxes deeper inside the boot. One of the men was instantly identifiable as the Reverend Goodbody: the other man, thin, of medium height, clad in a dark suit and with dark hair and a very swarthy face, was as instantly recognizable: the dark and violent man who had gunned down Jimmy Duclos in Schiphol Airport. For a moment or two I forgot about the pain in my face. I wasn't positively happy at seeing this man again but I was far from dejected as he had seldom been very far from my thoughts. The wheel, I felt, was coming full circle.

They staggered out from the church with one more box, stowed it away and closed the boot. I headed back for my Opel and by the time I'd brought it down to the ca.n.a.l Goodbody and the dark man were already a hundred yards away in the Mercedes. I followed at a discreet distance.

The rain was falling in earnest now as the black Mercedes headed west and south across the city. Though not yet midafternoon, the sky was as thunderously overcast as if dusk, still some hours away, was falling. I didn't mind, it made for the easiest of shadowing: in Holland it is required that you switch your lights on in heavy rain, and in those conditions one car looked very like the dark shapeless ma.s.s of the next.

We cleared the last of the suburbs and headed out into the country. There was no wild element of pursuit or chase about our progress. Goodbody, though driving a powerful car, was proceeding at a very sedate pace indeed, hardly surprising, perhaps, in view of the very considerable weight he was carrying in the boot. I was watching road signs closely and soon I was in no doubt as to where we were heading: I never really had been.

I thought it wiser to arrive at our mutual destination before Goodbody and the dark man did, so I closed up till I was less than twenty yards behind the Mercedes. I had no worry about being recognized by Goodbody in his driving mirror for he was throwing up so dense a cloud of spray that all he could possibly have seen following him was a pair of dipped headlamps. I waited till I could see ahead what seemed to be a straight stretch of road, pulled out and accelerated past the Mercedes. As I drew level Goodbody glanced briefly and incuriously at the car that was overtaking him, then looked as incuriously away again. His face had been no more than a pale blur to me and the rain was so heavy and the spray thrown up by both cars so blinding that I knew it was impossible that he could have recognized me. I pulled ahead and got into the right-hand lane again, not slackening speed.

Three kilometres further on I came to a right-hand fork which read 'Kasteel Linden 1 km 5 I turned down this and a minute later pa.s.sed an imposing stone archway with the words 'Kasteel Linden' engraved in gilt above it. I carried on for perhaps another two hundred yards, then turned off the road and parked the Opel in a deep thicket.

I was going to get very wet again but I didn't seem to have much in the way of options. I left the car and ran across some thinly wooded gra.s.sland till I came to 'a thick belt of pines that obviously served as some kind of windbreak for a habitation. I made my way through the pines, very circ.u.mspectly, and there was the habitation all right: the Kasteel Linden. Oblivious of the rain beating down on my unprotected back, I stretched out in the concealment of long gra.s.s and some bushes and studied the place.

Immediately before me stretched a circular gravelled driveway which led off to my right to the archway I'd just pa.s.sed. Beyond the gravel lay the Kasteel Linden itself, a rectangular four-storeyed building, windowed on the first two stories, embrasured above, with the top turreted and crenellated in the best medieval fashion. Encircling the castle was a continuous moat fifteen feet in width and, according to the guide-book, almost as deep. All that was lacking was a drawbridge, although the chain pulleys for it were still to be seen firmly embedded in the thick masonry of the walls: instead, a flight of about twenty wide and shallow stone steps spanned the moat and led to a pair of ma.s.sive closed doors, which seemed to be made of oak. To my left, about thirty yards distant from the castle, was a rectangular, one-storeyed building in brick and obviously of fairly recent construction.

The black Mercedes appeared through the gateway, crunched its way on to the gravel and pulled up close to the rectangular building. While Goodbody remained inside the car, the dark man got out and made a complete circuit of the castle: Goodbody never had struck me as the kind of man to take chances. Goodbody got out and together the two men carried the contents of the boot into the building: the door had been locked but obviously Goodbody had the right key for it and not a skeleton either. As they carried the last of the boxes inside the door closed behind them.

I rose cautiously to my feet and moved around behind the bushes until I came to the side of the building. Just as cautiously I approached the Mercedes and looked inside. But there was nothing worthy of remark there -- not what I was looking for anyway. With an even greater degree of caution I tip-toed up to a side window of the building and peered inside.

The interior was clearly a combination of workshop, store and display shop. The walls were hung with old-fashioned -- or replicas of old-fashioned -- pendulum clocks of every conceivable shape, size and design. Other clocks and a very large a.s.sortment of parts of other clocks lay on four large work-tables, in the process of manufacture or rea.s.sembly or reconstruction. At the far end of the room lay several wooden boxes similar to the ones that Goodbody and the dark man had just carried inside: those boxes appeared to be packed with straw. Shelves above those boxes held a variety of other clocks each having lying beside it its own pendulum, chain and weights.

Goodbody and the dark man were working beside those shelves. As I watched, they delved into one of the open boxes and proceeded to bring out a series of pendulum weights. Goodbody paused, produced a paper and proceeded to study it intently. After some time Goodbody pointed at some item on this paper and said something to the dark man, who nodded and went on with his work: Goodbody, still studying the paper as he went, pa.s.sed through a side door and disappeared from sight. The dark man studied another paper and began arranging pairs of identical weights beside each other.

I was beginning to wonder where Goodbody had got to when I found out. His voice came from directly behind me.

'I am glad you haven't disappointed me, Mr Sherman.'

I turned round slowly. Predictably, he was smiling his saintly smile and, equally predictably, he had a large gun in his hand.

'No one is indestructible, of course,' he beamed, 'but you do have a certain quality of resilience, I must confess. It is difficult to underestimate policemen, but I may have been rather negligent in your case. Twice in this one day I had thought I had got rid of your presence, which, I must admit was becoming something of an embarra.s.sment to me., However, I'm sure third time, for me, will prove lucky. You should have killed Marcel, you know.'

'I didn't?'

'Come, come, you must learn to mask your feelings and not let your disappointment show through. He recovered for a brief moment but long enough to attract the attention of the good ladies in the field. But I fear he has a fractured skull and some brain haemorrhage. He may not survive.' He looked at me thoughtfully. 'But he appears to have given a good account of himself.'

'A fight to the death,' I agreed. 'Must we stand in the rain?'

'Indeed not.' He ushered me into the building at the point of his gun. The dark man looked around with no great surprise: I wondered how long had elapsed since they had the warning message from Huyler.

'Jacques,' Goodbody said. 'This is Mr Sherman -- Major Sherman. I believe he is connected with Interpol or some other such futile organization.'

'We've met,' Jacques grinned.

'Of course. How forgetful of me.' Goodbody pointed his gun at me while Jacques took mine away.

'Just the one,' he reported. He raked the sights across my cheek, tearing some of the plaster away, and grinned again. 'I'll bet that hurts, eh?'

'Restrain yourself, Jacques, restrain yourself,' Goodbody admonished. He had his kindly side to him; if he'd been a cannibal he'd probably have knocked you over the head before boiling you alive. 'Point his gun at him, will you?' He put his own away. 'I must say I never did care for those weapons. Crude, noisy, lacking a certain delicacy -- '

'Like hanging a girl from a hook?' I asked. 'Or stabbing one to death with pitchforks.'

'Come, come, let us not distress ourselves.' He sighed. 'Even the best of you people are so clumsy, so obvious. I had, I must confess, expected rather more from you. You, my dear fellow, have a reputation which you've totally failed to live up to. You blunder around. You upset people, fondly imagining you are provoking reactions in the process. You let yourself be seen in all the wrong places. Twice you go to Miss Lemay's flat without taking precautions. You rifle pockets of pieces of paper that were put there for you to discover, and there was no need,' he added reproachfully, 'to kill the waiter in the process. You walk through Huyler in broad daylight -- every person in Huyler, my dear Sherman, is a member of my flock. You even left your calling card in the bas.e.m.e.nt of my church the night before last -- blood. Not that I bear you any ill-will for that, my dear fellow -- I was in fact contemplating getting rid of Henri, who had become rather a liability to me, and you solved the problem rather neatly. And what do you think of our unique arrangements here -- those are all reproductions for sale ...'

'My G.o.d,' I said. 'No wonder the churches are empty.' 'Ah! But one must savour those moments, don't you think? Those weights there. We measure and weigh them and return at suitable times with replacement weights -- like those we brought tonight. Not that our weights are quite the same. They have something inside them. Then they're boxed, Customs inspected, sealed and sent on with official Government approval to certain -- friends -- abroad. One of my better schemes, I always maintain.'

Jacques cleared his throat deferentially. 'You said you were in a hurry, Mr Goodbody.'

'Ever the pragmatist, Jacques, ever the pragmatist. But you're right, of course. First we attend to our -- ah -- ace investigator, then to business. See if the coast is clear.'

Goodbody distastefully produced his pistol again while Jacques made a quiet reconnaissance. He returned in a few moments, nodding, and they made me precede them out of the door, across the gravel and up the steps over the moat to the ma.s.sive oaken door. Goodbody produced a key of the right size to open the door and we pa.s.sed inside. We went up a flight of stairs, along a pa.s.sage and into a room.

It was a very big room indeed, almost literally festooned with hundreds of clocks. I'd never seen so many clocks in one place and certainly, I knew, never so valuable a collection of clocks. All, without exception, were pendulum clocks, some of a very great size, all of great age. Only a very few of them appeared to be working, but, even so, their collective noise was barely below the level of toleration. I couldn't have worked in that room for ten minutes.

'One of the finest collections in the world,' Goodbody said proudly as if it belonged to him, 'if not the finest. And as you shall see -- or hear -- they all work.'

I heard his words but they didn't register. I was staring at the floor, at the man lying there with the long black hair reaching down to the nape of his neck, at the thin shoulder-blades protruding through the threadbare jacket. Lying beside him were some pieces of single-core rubber-insulated electrical cable. Close to his head lay a pair of sorbo-rubber-covered earphones.

I didn't have to be a doctor to know that George Lemay was dead.

'An accident,* Goodbody said regretfully, 'a genuine accident. We did not mean it to happen like this. I fear the poor fellow's system must have been greatly weakened by the privations he has suffered over the years.'

'You killed him,' I said.

'Technically, in a manner of speaking, yes.'